Hamas Influence Threatens Legitimacy of Planned Gaza Elections

On April 26, 2026, roughly 70,000 residents of Deir al-Balah walked to one of 12 polling centers to choose a 15-member municipal council [2][11]. It was the first election held anywhere in the Gaza Strip in more than two decades — a modest, local affair that nonetheless carries outsized symbolic weight. The vote is a test case: can democratic governance take root in a territory still shaped by Hamas's armed presence, an unresolved disarmament timeline, and an international oversight structure that has no precedent in modern peacekeeping?

The answer matters far beyond one city's sanitation department. If this experiment succeeds, it becomes the template for elections across Gaza and, eventually, for Palestinian legislative and presidential contests. If it fails — through manipulation, low turnout, or violence — it risks discrediting the broader post-war governance framework that the international community has spent months constructing.

The Test Case: Deir al-Balah

Deir al-Balah was chosen as the pilot city because it sustained less infrastructural damage during the war than areas like Khan Younis or northern Gaza, and because it is not under direct Israeli military control [2]. Four largely family-based electoral lists competed for seats, with voters selecting one list and then choosing up to five individual candidates within it. At least four of the 15 council seats were reserved for women [12].

Hamas did not officially field or endorse any candidate list, according to Reuters [19]. But the boundaries are blurry. One list, "Deir al-Balah Unites Us," included candidates who had been photographed with Hamas officials or police officers [1]. Neither Hamas nor Fatah treated the vote as a formal test of their legitimacy, but the results will inevitably be read that way — as the first available data point on public sentiment since the war.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, called the election "extremely reckless and irresponsible," arguing that "Gazans are being arrested, jailed, tortured, shot, and killed daily for social media posts and anything they say that's perceived as being critical of Hamas" [1]. Others view the vote as exactly the kind of incremental democratic step that post-conflict societies need, however imperfect.

Twenty Years Without a Vote: What Changed Since 2006

The last Palestinian legislative election, held in January 2006, produced a result that reshaped the Middle East. Hamas won 74 of 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, even though its candidates received only 44.45% of the popular vote [3]. Fatah's defeat was partly self-inflicted: the party ran too many candidates in constituency races, splitting its own vote while Hamas ran disciplined single-candidate slates [3].

The 2006 election did have structural safeguards. The EU deployed over 185 observers from 23 member states, led by Belgian MEP Véronique De Keyser. International monitors assessed the process as broadly free and fair. But the aftermath was catastrophic. The Quartet — the US, EU, Russia, and the UN — demanded that any Hamas-led government commit to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements [14]. Hamas refused all three conditions. Western aid was cut. Factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah killed hundreds, and by 2007, Hamas controlled Gaza by force while the Palestinian Authority governed the West Bank.

Twenty years later, the safeguards are thinner. No EU Election Observation Mission has been announced for Gaza's current municipal votes. The international oversight structure is different in kind: instead of election monitors, the framework rests on UN Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted in November 2025, which created the Board of Peace — a transitional governing body with international legal personality — and authorized the deployment of an International Stabilization Force [5][6]. The Board of Peace is not a UN subsidiary body but a sui generis entity chaired by the head of state of a permanent Security Council member, an arrangement with no precedent in UN practice [5].

The governance architecture is designed for post-conflict stabilization, not election administration. The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a technocratic body, manages day-to-day public services [20]. Elections were not the primary focus of Resolution 2803; they are an add-on, organized by the Palestinian Authority's Central Elections Commission, that operates within — and sometimes in tension with — the Board of Peace framework.

Who Votes, and What Do They Want?

Gaza's demographics shape any electoral outcome before a single ballot is cast. Approximately 75% of the population is under 25 [17]. An estimated 43% is under 15 and not yet eligible to vote, but the 22% between ages 15 and 24 have spent their entire conscious lives under Hamas governance — they have no memory of a functioning Palestinian legislature or a competitive election [17].

Source: World Population Review

Data as of Jan 1, 2025CSV

In Deir al-Balah, about 70,449 registered voters were eligible to participate [11]. Extrapolating registration numbers across Gaza is difficult given mass displacement, infrastructure destruction, and the absence of a recent census. Before the war, Gaza's population was estimated at over 2 million; casualties, forced migration, and the destruction of civil registries have made precise figures unreliable.

Available polling data suggests a fractured political landscape. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) — the most established independent polling institution in the Palestinian territories — conducted its Poll No. 96 in October 2025 [4]. The results show Hamas leading Fatah in party preference, with 34% expressing support for Hamas, 20% for Fatah, and a striking 46% identifying with no party or other factions [4].

Source: PCPSR

Data as of Oct 28, 2025CSV

That 46% figure is significant. It suggests that nearly half the Palestinian population is disenchanted with both major factions — a constituency that could break in any direction in a competitive election. PCPSR also found that a significant majority opposes President Mahmoud Abbas's precondition that all electoral candidates accept PLO obligations, including agreements with Israel [4]. Gazans were found to be more open to negotiated arrangements, while West Bank Palestinians favored armed struggle — a counterintuitive split that complicates assumptions about Hamas's base.

The Disarmament Question

No issue casts a longer shadow over Gaza's electoral prospects than Hamas's weapons. The Board of Peace disarmament plan, presented in March 2026, calls for Hamas to lay down arms in stages over eight months under the principle of "one authority, one law, one weapon" [8]. The timeline begins with the NCAG taking security and administrative control of Gaza, followed by Israeli withdrawal of heavy weapons, Hamas destruction of its tunnel network within 90 days, and full weapons collection verified by a Board of Peace committee [8].

As of mid-April 2026, Hamas publicly rejected the plan [7]. Privately, the picture is more complicated. Two senior Hamas officials told the New York Times that the group was prepared to relinquish thousands of automatic rifles and other weapons belonging to its police force and internal security services [18]. But when asked whether weapons from Hamas's military wing — the Qassam Brigades — would be included, the officials "did not provide a clear answer" [18].

This distinction between police weapons and military weapons is not semantic. It mirrors the strategy Hamas has used for years: maintaining a formal separation between its political and military wings that most Western governments no longer accept. When the UK formally designated all of Hamas — not just the Qassam Brigades — as a proscribed terrorist organization in 2021, the Home Office explicitly stated that "the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial" [15].

Elections held while a designated terrorist organization retains military capability raise a question that has no clean answer: can a vote be free when one participant has an army and the others do not?

The Shrinking Space for Dissent

The conditions for free expression in Gaza are constrained from multiple directions. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented 98 arrests of journalists and media workers in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, and Jerusalem since October 7, 2023, with Israeli authorities responsible for 92 of those arrests and Palestinian authorities for six [10]. As of December 2025, Israel held 29 Palestinian journalists in detention, most under administrative detention without charge [10].

Hamas's pressure on journalists and civil society operates differently — through informal coercion rather than formal arrest. CPJ reported that Hamas security agents warned journalists not to cover protests, sometimes followed reporters as they worked, and in at least one case threatened a journalist's family for potential involvement in a demonstration [9]. One journalist told the Washington Post that covering anti-Hamas protests risked being accused of spying for Israel [9].

For civil society organizations, the squeeze comes from both sides. In December 2025, Israel banned 37 international NGOs from operating in Gaza and the West Bank [10]. Separately, Israeli military documents recovered from Gaza described an "institutionalized framework" through which Hamas sought to infiltrate, control, and manipulate both international and local NGOs [1].

The number of independent Palestinian political opposition figures currently operating openly in Gaza is, by all available accounts, very small. No credible accounting exists because the conditions that would allow such an accounting — press freedom, organizational transparency, safe access for researchers — do not prevail.

The Legal Arguments: Terrorist Group or Political Movement?

Hamas's participation in elections while designated as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, UK, and others raises contested legal questions. Hamas itself has mounted a direct legal challenge: in a case filed in London, the organization argued that its proscription under the UK's Terrorism Act 2000 undermines the possibility of a peaceful settlement [15]. The filing cited the African National Congress in South Africa and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland as precedents for armed movements that transitioned to political participation before fully disarming [15].

Hamas does not deny that its actions fall within the statutory definition of terrorism. Instead, it argues that the definition is so broad that it encompasses "all groups and organisations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian Army and, indeed, the British armed forces" [15].

The precedents Hamas cites are real but imperfect analogies. The ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, suspended armed operations in 1990 as a precondition for negotiations that led to South Africa's 1994 elections. The IRA's political wing, Sinn Féin, participated in Northern Ireland elections for decades before the IRA formally ended its armed campaign in 2005 — but the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 created a power-sharing framework specifically designed to accommodate this transition. In both cases, a negotiated political horizon preceded or accompanied electoral participation.

The US Congress passed a resolution asserting that Hamas and other designated terrorist organizations "should not participate in elections held by the Palestinian Authority" [15]. The Quartet's conditions from 2006 — nonviolence, recognition of Israel, acceptance of prior agreements — remain the standing framework for Western recognition of any Hamas-inclusive government [14].

What Would the International Community Accept?

The question of legitimacy is, in practice, a question about whose recognition matters and what it buys. The Quartet conditions set a clear threshold: any government including Hamas must meet three requirements that Hamas has consistently refused [14]. After the 2006 election, when Hamas won and rejected the conditions, the US and EU cut aid to the Palestinian Authority government [14].

Twenty years later, the stakes are higher because reconstruction funding dwarfs anything previously at issue. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has noted that aid conditionality is "central to understanding delays in past reconstruction efforts," with donors attaching political, security, and governance requirements before releasing funds [13]. The US and EU have made PA leadership of reconstruction a "non-negotiable condition" for funding [16].

Arab states — particularly the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia — have their own conditions. They will not fund reconstruction absent Palestinian self-governance and at least a rhetorical commitment to a political horizon that includes statehood [16]. But they do not necessarily require that Hamas be excluded from governance; rather, they require that Hamas not dominate it.

This creates an asymmetry. A scenario in which Hamas wins a clear electoral majority would likely trigger the same Western aid cutoff as 2006 — regardless of whether the vote itself was procedurally sound. A scenario in which Hamas participates but does not dominate might be tolerable to Arab donors but still unacceptable to the US and EU. The framing of "legitimacy concerns" may, in effect, predetermine which outcomes are acceptable: only those in which Hamas is marginal.

The European Council on Foreign Relations has argued that Western states need to engage with electoral outcomes rather than pre-reject them, noting that "Palestinians do not need an a priori recognition from anybody" to hold elections [14]. But recognition has material consequences. Without it, reconstruction funding evaporates, and the governance framework collapses.

Second-Order Consequences

If elections proceed across Gaza and Hamas wins or retains significant representation, the consequences cascade across several domains.

Reconstruction funding: International financial commitments to Gaza are explicitly conditioned on governance benchmarks. The Board of Peace framework ties funding to PA reform and the completion of its "reform program" [5][13]. A Hamas-dominated government would almost certainly fail to meet these conditions, freezing billions in pledged aid and leaving Gaza's shattered infrastructure unrepaired.

The two-state framework: The Gaza peace plan frames Palestinian statehood as "contingent on meeting governance and security benchmarks" [16]. A Hamas electoral win would not end the two-state framework, but it would remove the timeline entirely — no Western or Arab government would advance statehood negotiations with a Hamas-led entity under current conditions.

Regional security: Neighboring states, particularly Egypt and Jordan, would face pressure to maintain border restrictions. Israel would almost certainly retain its military presence in buffer zones and continue security operations, undermining the phased withdrawal envisioned by Resolution 2803.

Internal Palestinian politics: The most likely outcome of a Hamas electoral showing is not a clean win or loss but a contested result that reignites Fatah-Hamas rivalry. The PCPSR data showing 46% of Palestinians aligned with neither faction suggests that neither party commands majority support, but the electoral system — depending on its design — could still produce disproportionate outcomes, as it did in 2006 [4].

Source: UNHCR Population Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV

The Palestinian displacement crisis also intersects with electoral politics. Palestinians are among the world's largest refugee populations, and UNHCR data shows the scale of global displacement from conflict zones [1]. Any electoral framework must eventually address the political rights of displaced Gazans who cannot physically access polling stations.

The Road Ahead

The Deir al-Balah vote is a beginning, not an endpoint. It tests logistics — can polling stations operate, can voter rolls function, can results be tabulated without interference — more than it tests political legitimacy. The harder questions arrive when elections scale beyond a single municipality to encompass all of Gaza, and eventually the West Bank, in legislative and presidential contests that will determine who governs the Palestinian territories.

Those elections cannot be free while Hamas maintains military capability and exercises coercive control over media and civil society. They also cannot be credible if the international community pre-determines which outcomes it will accept regardless of the vote's integrity. The tension between these two realities — that Hamas's armed presence distorts elections, and that Western conditionality also distorts elections — defines the political landscape in Gaza today.

The disarmament deadline under the Board of Peace plan has already slipped. Hamas has offered partial concessions on police weapons while protecting its military arsenal [18][7]. The International Stabilization Force authorized by Resolution 2803 is not yet fully deployed. And the Palestinian Authority, which organized the Deir al-Balah vote, governs the West Bank with diminishing legitimacy and no democratic mandate of its own — President Abbas has not stood for election since 2005.

What Gaza's residents expressed at the polls in Deir al-Balah — their preferences, their turnout, their willingness to engage with a process they have reason to distrust — will be scrutinized by every actor in this conflict. But the structural conditions for a genuinely free and fair election across Gaza do not yet exist. Building them requires progress on disarmament, press freedom, civil society protection, and international oversight that goes beyond the current ad hoc arrangements. Whether any of that happens depends less on what Gazans want than on what the armed and powerful parties — Hamas, Israel, and the international sponsors of the Board of Peace — are willing to concede.