Palestinians vote in first municipal elections since Gaza war amid low turnout expectations

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinians in the West Bank and a central area of Gaza began voting Saturday in municipal elections in a first vote since the Gaza war, marked by a narrow political field and widespread disillusionment. Nearly 1.5 million people are registered to vote in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as 70,000 people in Gaza's Deir El-Balah area, according to the Ramallah-based Central Elections Commission. Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT). AFP footage from Al-Bireh in the West Bank and Deir El-Balah in Gaza showed election officials in polling stations as Palestinians came to cast ballots. Most electoral lists are aligned with president Mahmud Abbas's secular-nationalist Fatah party or running as independents. There are no lists affiliated with Fatah's archrival Hamas, which controls nearly half of the Gaza Strip. In most cities, Fatah-backed tickets will run against independent lists headed by candidates from factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Marxist-Leninist). Mahmud Bader, a businessman from the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, where two adjacent refugee camps have been under Israeli military control for over a year, said he would vote despite having little hope for meaningful change. "Whether candidates are independent or partisan, it has no effect and will have no effect or benefit for the city," he told AFP. "The (Israeli) occupation is the one that rules Tulkarem. It would only be an image shown to the international media — as if we have elections, a state or independence." In many cities, including Nablus and Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, only one list has been submitted, meaning it wins automatically without needing a vote. Polling stations in the West Bank will close at 7 pm, while polls in Deir Al-Balah will close at 5 p.m. to facilitate counting in daylight due to the lack of electricity in the war devastated strip, the elections commission told AFP. UN coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov commended the commission for organizing a "credible process." "Saturday's elections represent an important opportunity for Palestinians to exercise their democratic rights during an exceptionally challenging period," Alakbarov said in a statement ahead of polls. 'Confirmation of existence' Gaza, which has been under Hamas control since 2007, will see its first vote since the legislative elections of 2006 that the Islamist movement won. Abbas's Palestinian Authority is holding elections only in Deir El-Balah "as an experiment (to test its own) success or failure, since there are no post-war opinion polls," Jamal Al-Fadi, a political scientist at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, told AFP. Abbas, who is now 90 and has remained in power for more than 20 years without ever being re-elected, frequently promises legislative and presidential elections that have never taken place. Deir El-Balah was chosen as it was one of the only places in Gaza where "the population has remained largely in place and not been displaced" by more than two years of war between Hamas and Israel, Fadi said. Farah Shaath, 25, was excited to vote for the first time. "Although it is unlike any election in the world, it is a confirmation of our continued existence in the Gaza Strip despite everything," she told AFP. The election commission says it has recruited polling staff from civil society organizations and hired "a private security company to secure polling centers" for the Gaza vote, spokesman Fareed Taamallah told AFP. But a source from the commission in Gaza, who asked to remain anonymous, said that "Hamas police insisted on securing the electoral process in Deir El-Balah." The source added that "this will be done by deploying unarmed security personnel in civilian clothing around polling centers," which number 12 in Deir El-Balah.