Greg Bouwer
IINZ
Today, Israelis will head to the polls to elect a new Knesset. It will be their 1oth parliamentary election since 2005.
Ten elections. Governments formed and dissolved. Prime ministers challenged, coalitions negotiated, political careers made and destroyed. A political system in which governments can fall because their own parliamentary supporters withdraw confidence.
Across the border, Mahmoud Abbas is still president of the Palestinian Authority.
Abbas was elected on 9 January 2005 for a four-year term. His mandate expired in 2009. Nearly 22 years after his election, he remains in office without having faced the electorate again. The Palestinian Legislative Council was last elected in 2006, and the political division between Fatah in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and Hamas in Gaza has helped perpetuate the paralysis.
This is not a minor administrative delay. It is an entire generation of Palestinians reaching adulthood without ever having had the opportunity to vote for their national president.
And yet, when Western politicians, activists and international institutions discuss the democratic rights of Palestinians, the conversation overwhelmingly centres on Israel.
The Arab voters who supposedly do not exist
There is another inconvenient fact in this debate. Arab citizens of Israel vote.
They do not need special permission from Jewish politicians. They do not have a separate, inferior national franchise. They possess the same legal right to vote in Knesset elections as Jewish citizens.
They can form political parties, campaign against the government, stand for election and elect representatives to parliament. Arab politicians have served in the Knesset since Israel’s earliest years. Arab citizens have also served as ministers, judges and senior public officials.
In 2021, the Islamist Arab party Ra’am joined Israel’s governing coalition. Its parliamentary support helped sustain a government that removed Benjamin Netanyahu from power.
Think about what that means. An Arab political party helped determine who governed the Jewish state.
Israel’s electoral franchise is based on citizenship, not ethnicity or religion. Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens vote under the same electoral law. Meanwhile, the Palestinian national leadership has failed to provide its own people with a presidential election since 2005.
That does not establish that Arab citizens experience complete equality in every aspect of Israeli society. Discrimination and unequal outcomes are legitimate subjects of scrutiny.
But it does establish something fundamental: Arab citizens of Israel possess and exercise national electoral rights that Palestinians have been unable to exercise under their own national leadership for more than two decades.
The contrast is unmistakable: Arab citizens of Israel participate in choosing their national government, while Palestinians have been denied the opportunity to choose their own president for nearly 22 years.
The president whose term never ends
Mahmoud Abbas has become a permanent fixture of international diplomacy. He addresses the United Nations, meets foreign leaders, is received by foreign leaders as the representative of the Palestinian people and speaks in the name of the Palestinian people. Yet his original four-year electoral mandate expired in 2009, 17 years ago.
His continued presidency is defended through arguments about institutional continuity, Palestinian constitutional arrangements, the Fatah-Hamas split and the practical difficulties of conducting elections across divided territories. Those difficulties are real. Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, the rivalry between Palestinian factions, Israeli restrictions and disputes over voting in East Jerusalem have all complicated attempts to hold national elections.
But explanations are not substitutes for democratic accountability.
In 2021, Abbas postponed Palestinian presidential and legislative elections, citing Israeli restrictions on voting in East Jerusalem. Neither election subsequently took place, leaving Palestinians without another opportunity to replace their national leadership.
The latest developments are particularly significant because promises of Palestinian elections formed part of the diplomatic commitments accompanying international recognition of Palestinian statehood in 2025. Abbas pledged democratic renewal, including presidential and parliamentary elections. Canada explicitly linked its recognition to elections in 2026, while France and Britain welcomed commitments to Palestinian institutional reform.
Yet on 10 October 2026, Abbas revoked the decree scheduling Palestinian Legislative Council elections for 28 November 2026 and instead set simultaneous presidential and legislative elections for 11 September 2027. This followed earlier plans for Palestinian National Council elections in November 2026 and a presidential election in early 2027. His administration cited Israeli restrictions, security conditions and the difficulties of conducting elections across Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
The presidential election had not been formally scheduled for 2026, but the broader commitment to democratic renewal has nevertheless been deferred. International recognition proceeded in 2025, partly on the strength of promised reforms, before those reforms had been delivered. Western governments may criticise the delay, but criticism cannot substitute for the elections that Palestinians have been promised.
Recognition was granted. The promised elections have not taken place. And Mahmoud Abbas remains president nearly 22 years after Palestinians last elected him.
Self-determination must include the right to replace your government
Western governments routinely speak about Palestinian self-determination. They recognise Palestinian diplomatic representatives, discuss statehood, fund Palestinian institutions and call for Palestinian rights.
Those are legitimate subjects of foreign policy. But self-determination cannot be reduced to recognition at the United Nations or the establishment of another flag outside an embassy.
It must also mean the ability of ordinary Palestinians to choose their government, reject failed leaders and replace those who no longer command public confidence.
A state whose citizens cannot peacefully remove their president through an election has a serious democratic problem, whatever its international diplomatic status.
Israel’s political system has flaws. Its coalition politics can be chaotic, its governments can be deeply unpopular, and its democratic institutions face intense scrutiny. None of that changes the fact that Israeli citizens, Jewish and Arab alike, have repeatedly been able to exercise their parliamentary voting rights.
Palestinians deserve that same opportunity to hold their own leaders accountable.
The question nobody should evade
The next time a politician demands Palestinian freedom, it is worth asking what that freedom means in practice.
Does it include the freedom to vote against Mahmoud Abbas? To remove Fatah from office? To challenge Hamas’s rule in Gaza? To elect a new national leadership without intimidation or coercion?
Or is Palestinian self-determination to be discussed exclusively in relation to Israel, while the democratic responsibilities of Palestinian leaders remain an afterthought?
The two questions are not mutually exclusive. Palestinian rights in relation to Israel deserve scrutiny, and so does the absence of democratic accountability within Palestinian institutions.
This week, Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel again have the opportunity to choose their parliamentary representatives.
Mahmoud Abbas will remain president of the Palestinian Authority, an office to which he was elected in 2005.
Ten Israeli parliamentary elections. One Palestinian presidential election. Nearly 22 years without another.
If democracy matters, that contrast deserves considerably more attention than it receives.
This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.
