January 15th local time, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree setting a date for the new Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections.
According to this presidential decree, Palestinian parliamentary elections will be held on May 22 this year and Palestinian presidential elections will be held on July 31 this year.
The last Palestinian presidential election was on January 9, 2005.
Abbas succeeded Arafat, the former Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee, and has been elected President of Palestine since then.
In January 2006, Palestinian parliamentary elections were held, and the Palestinian armed faction Hamas won and controlled the Gaza Strip to this day.
For many years, due to the ongoing dispute between Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas, Palestine has not held parliamentary and presidential elections.
That night, Hamas welcomed the announcement of a new parliamentary and presidential election by Palestinian President Abbas.” “We have been working on all the obstacles over the past few months in order to achieve this goal,” Hamas said in a statement.
