February 2, 2026 PA’s Mahmoud Abbas calls first-ever direct PLO parliament elections

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas waves as he arrives for the opening the Fatah youth conference in Ramallah on November 27, 2025. (Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas says elections will be held on November 1 for the Palestinian National Council, the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the PA’s official news agency Wafa reports.

This is the first time members of the council will be elected by direct popular vote. In the past, they were appointed or co-opted from within the movement.

Abbas, who is president both of the Palestinian Authority and of the PLO, issues a decree saying that: “Elections will be held wherever possible, both inside and outside Palestine, to ensure the broadest possible participation of the Palestinian people wherever they reside.”

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The PNC is one of several largely dormant political bodies controlled by Abbas.

The PLO is supposed to be the over-arching umbrella body representing Palestinians worldwide, whereas the PA is supposed to be a transitional administrative body providing services for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Abbas has announced elections for the different political bodies he controls, but those have not always been held for a variety of reasons.

Even if a PNC election is held in November, the body is very rarely convened by Abbas. The last session it held was in 2018. The last PNC election, which was not open to all voters, was in 2006. The terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which are not members of the PLO, are not represented in the council.

While dubbed the parliament of the PLO, the PNC’s main role is to elect the more powerful PLO Executive Committee. The actual parliamentary body for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is called the Palestinian Legislative Council, which has not convened since 2007, when splits between Abbas’s Fatah party and Hamas rendered the body inoperative.

Analysts say the more consequential development in Palestinian politics will take place in May, when Fatah holds its eighth General Conference. During that gathering, a vote will be held to fill the party’s powerful central committee, with many of Abbas’s confidants vying for spots.

Many of those individuals will then be poised to hold positions on the PLO Executive Committee.

Another exercise in futility.

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