Palestinian president decides on his own to postpone elections The rationale was that Israel refused to allow residents of East Jerusalem to participate. A man uses his phone to film a televised speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas regarding planned Palestinian elections at a coffee shop in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on April 29, 2021. Abbas said he was postponing the vote. - HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images
April 30, 2021
While he appears to have received the support of the majority of an unelected group of Palestinians that are referred to as the leadership, it seems 86-year-old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has unilaterally decided to postpone elections. Abbas said the night of April 29 that the vote was postponed because of Israel’s refusal to allow residents of East Jerusalem to participate, but most of those who were running for the May 22 legislative elections he had called for in a January set of presidential decrees wa