The Palestinian electoral commission announced that municipal elections would be held in December in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, on condition that Hamas, in power in that enclave, allows the poll to be held there.
In accordance with the electoral calendar which provides for local elections every four years, the last municipal poll was held in 2017 in the West Bank.
Islamist Hamas then prevented it from being held in Gaza, a micro-territory of two million inhabitants under Israeli blockade for more than 15 years.
Hamas and the secular Fatah of the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, have been at loggerheads since 2007, when the Islamists took control of Gaza after bloody clashes.
Read also Abbas postpones the first Palestinian elections in fifteen years
In April, the armed Islamist movement denounced President Abbas' decision to cancel the legislative and presidential elections scheduled for May and July, which were to be the first of their kind for 15 years. President Abbas, whose term was due to end in 2009, argued that the poll was not "
guaranteed
" in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian portion of the Holy City annexed by Israel.
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