The most obvious places to assess the implications of these elections are Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, where the results would directly shape political authority, government, and institutions. But viewed from Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, the elections reveal another, perhaps more complex, dimension.
It is important to distinguish between two separate but interconnected electoral processes: elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), scheduled for November 28, 2026, although they may still not take place; and elections for the Palestinian National Council (PNC), scheduled for November 1, wherever possible.
The PLC is the legislative and oversight body within the Palestinian Authority (PA), and its elections are therefore directly linked to governance inside the Palestinian territories. The PNC, by contrast, is the representative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and is intended to represent Palestinians inside Palestine and across the diaspora. The two institutions overlap because elected PLC members also sit on the PNC, but their functions and mandates remain distinct.
From Lebanon’s perspective, this distinction is particularly important. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are not electing a government that governs the territory in which they live, nor an authority that exercises sovereignty over them. Sovereignty remains with the Lebanese state. But they are being asked to participate, directly or indirectly depending on the mechanism adopted, in reshaping the PNC – the institution that is supposed to represent them politically.
The elections are therefore viewed in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps as more than a voting process. They raise broader questions of representation, legitimacy, and responsibility, particularly as the Lebanese government discusses a new framework for camp governance that requires a legitimate and capable Palestinian counterpart. This comes as the PA itself faces a crisis that threatens its ability to function, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) faces growing pressure over its role and future.
What is happening in Palestine today is therefore not simply a search for a new government. It may be the most significant attempt in two decades to rebuild a Palestinian political system fragmented between rival authorities, territories, and sources of legitimacy. Its consequences will also extend to Palestinians in the diaspora.
The outcome of these two electoral processes will therefore not remain confined to the Palestinian territories. It will also help determine the nature of the Palestinian authority that represents refugees and engages with the Lebanese state over the governance of the camps.
Rebuilding Political Legitimacy
Palestinians face two electoral processes this fall, but the stakes go well beyond elections. This is a critical moment for renewing the institutions of the PA and the PLO, and rebuilding sources of political legitimacy. The larger question is whether, after two decades of division and a devastating war, Palestinians can produce a political institution capable of speaking on behalf of all Palestinian people.
The elections come after a war that destroyed Gaza and altered its balance of power, amid a deep crisis within the PA and significant shifts among Palestinian factions. It would therefore be a mistake to treat the 2026 elections as the same scenario of 2006.
Hamas, which has governed Gaza alone since 2007 after winning the 2006 elections, enters the 2026 process under fundamentally different circumstances. Its model of exclusive rule in Gaza has ended. But leaving exclusive government does not mean leaving politics. Indeed, current developments may point in the opposite direction.
Discussions are underway to form a broad electoral coalition that could include Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Mohammed Dahlan’s Democratic Reform Current, and other political forces. Reports about the final shape of such an alliance remain inconsistent, however, and it is more accurate to view it as an ongoing negotiation rather than a finalized electoral list. Fatah, meanwhile, has reached out to forces with which it had previously been at odds, particularly Dahlan’s movement, while also seeking to reopen dialogue with other groups.
The 2026 elections may therefore be less a new confrontation between Fatah and Hamas than a broader reshaping of the Palestinian political landscape. The challenge is no longer simply how to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza, but how to overcome Palestinian division without excluding a significant segment of Palestinians from the political system. Another challenge is how to ensure that weapons are gradually removed from the struggle for political authority, allowing political competition to shift toward elections and institutions without creating new divisions.
The effects of this political realignment would not stop at the PA. They would also shape the composition of the PNC and alter the balance of power among Palestinian representative bodies in Lebanon.
The Search for a Viable Palestinian Political Center
In this context, Cairo has become more than a venue for meetings among Palestinian factions. Egypt’s broader objective appears to be preventing the war from producing two permanent Palestinian political systems: one in Gaza and another in the West Bank.
These efforts complement wider Arab and regional initiatives. Qatar and Türkiye, through their diplomatic channels with Hamas, are seeking to facilitate its transition from an exclusive governing authority into one component of a broader Palestinian political arrangement. Abu Dhabi has pursued its efforts through its relationship with Dahlan, though this does not mean one state is shaping the emerging alliances. Jordan’s involvement is centered primarily on the West Bank and Jerusalem, while Saudi Arabia continues to emphasize maintaining a political horizon toward Palestinian statehood.
These Arab capitals do not constitute a single bloc. But to varying degrees, they share the view that the pre-war order in Gaza cannot simply be restored: neither exclusive Hamas rule, nor the permanent separation of Gaza, nor a weakened PA attempting to rebuild the Palestinian political system on its own, offers a sustainable way forward.
What is ultimately needed is a viable Palestinian political center. This is where the elections acquire their broader significance, both inside Palestine and beyond it. In Lebanon in particular, the effectiveness of such a political center will be measured by its ability to produce a representative Palestinian authority capable of assuming political and organizational responsibilities toward refugees and the camps.
Reunification Amid Fragmentation
Despite these domestic and regional efforts to rebuild a viable Palestinian political center, developments on the ground continue to push toward greater fragmentation.
The convergence between US and Israeli strategic objectives has again become evident. It was already visible during Donald Trump’s first presidential term in policies toward Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and has expanded with direct US involvement in post-war arrangements for Gaza. This does not mean Washington and Tel Aviv agree on everything. Rather, they share many broad objectives while sometimes differing over methods, timing, and the limits of the use of force.
At the same time, the foundations on which a functioning Palestinian political system would have to rest are coming under growing pressure. In the West Bank, the United Nations has warned about expanding settlements, settler violence, displacement, and the PA’s deteriorating condition. In East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities forcibly entered UNRWA’s Qalandiya Training Centre, prompting the United Nations to call for an end to attempts to seize or take control of the agency’s facilities.
These are not separate issues. Despite its crisis and weaknesses, the PA remains one potential institutional foundation for a Palestinian state. Territorial continuity is a necessary condition for statehood, Jerusalem remains central to Palestinian political and symbolic life, and UNRWA-beyond the services it provides-helps preserve the international framework surrounding the refugee question. Elections, meanwhile, remain a key source of popular legitimacy.
This reveals the central paradox: just as Palestinians are attempting to reunify their political system, the geography and institutions which that system would depend on are facing further fragmentation.
A significant part of the Palestinian population, however, lives outside this geography, including Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Their representation is therefore not a marginal issue in rebuilding the Palestinian political system. It is a test of whether Palestinians inside Palestine and across the diaspora can be brought together under a common political legitimacy.
Governing the Camps
The PNC, which represents Palestinians in the diaspora, is expected to have 350 members: 200 representing the Palestinian territories and 150 representing Palestinians abroad. Eighteen seats are allocated to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. PNC rules provide for direct voting and proportional representation wherever possible, with an electoral college or consensus arrangements used when direct elections cannot be held.
In Lebanon, a follow-up committee concluded that political and logistical obstacles make free and direct elections difficult. It therefore opted for an electoral college to select Palestinian representatives from Lebanon, with the process scheduled for October 2026. This places Palestinians in Lebanon at the center of the debate over legitimacy, particularly because the electoral college itself was formed without broad consensus.
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon also depend on three institutions, none of which can replace the others: the Lebanese state, which holds sovereignty, upholds the law, and bears responsibility for rights; UNRWA, which provides essential education, healthcare, and relief services while preserving the international framework surrounding the refugee issue; and a Palestinian political authority that represents refugees and assumes political, organizational, and financial responsibilities.
From this perspective, Lebanon’s proposed framework for camp governance extends well beyond security. The plan would make the PLO’s Department of Refugee Affairs the official reference point for the popular committees in the camps, including their operating budgets and project financing. The Lebanese state would oversee the camps within the framework of its sovereignty, in cooperation with the Palestinian political authority and the popular committees. . Official Palestinian bodies would cover salaries and allowances for committee personnel. The proposal also calls for replacing the current practice of appointing committee heads and members through dominant political factions with elections among camp residents.
This is where elections and camp governance intersect. Effective governance requires a legitimate Palestinian partner. But what gives that partner its legitimacy? How can representation at the local level be renewed through elections for popular committees while the institution responsible for representation at the national level remains unchanged? And if Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other factions enter a reconstituted PNC and PLO, would the existing map of Palestinian political representation in Lebanon remain the same?
Rights Without Trade-Offs
The legitimacy of a Palestinian political authority cannot be measured only by how it is selected. It must also be judged by its ability to protect refugees’ rights and prevent their cause from being reduced to the security or administrative management of the camps.
This is why there is a legitimate Palestinian objection to approaching the issue primarily through camp governance: the camp is not the refugee, and the refugee is not the camp. Palestinians in Lebanon live in camps, informal gatherings, cities, and towns. Reducing their situation to the management of a particular geographic space risks turning a political and rights-based question into an administrative and security issue.
Rights should also not become a bargaining chip in exchange for disarmament. The Lebanese state’s right to exercise sovereignty and maintain a monopoly over security does not turn Palestinians’ rights to work, education, healthcare, and human dignity into a reward for security concessions. At the same time, the particular nature of the Palestinian refugee issue cannot justify the existence of a separate security authority outside the Lebanese state. This is at the heart of recent Palestinian objections to Lebanon’s proposed governance approach.
The difficult equation is therefore clear: full Lebanese sovereignty that does not erase the particular nature of the Palestinian refugee question, and Palestinian rights that do not undermine the sovereignty of the state.
Interestingly, the Lebanese state and Palestinian critics of the governance plan arrive at the same underlying problem from different directions. The Lebanese state needs a legitimate and unified Palestinian counterpart. Palestinian critics are themselves calling for a unified national Palestinian authority, democratic representation, and broader participation.
Three Interdependent Pillars
UNRWA remains the third pillar of this equation. Lebanon’s proposed framework assumes that the agency will continue to play its social, humanitarian, and relief role alongside the Lebanese state and Palestinian institutions. The Lebanese state would exercise sovereignty and uphold the law, while the Palestinian political authority would provide political representation and assume part of the organizational and financial responsibility.
This is what makes Lebanon an important test of what the Palestinian elections actually mean.
The real danger is not only the continuation of the Fatah-Hamas divide, or its reproduction through new alliances involving Dahlan’s movement and other factions. The greater risk is that Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the diaspora gradually become separate political questions, each with its own administration, funding, mediator, and proposed solution.
If the elections can reconnect the legitimacy of governance with the legitimacy of representation, they will amount to more than a return to the ballot box after two decades. They could mark the beginning of an effort to reunite what war, political division, and geography have pulled apart: the Palestinian political system and the people it is meant to represent.
