Palestinian general election, 2014

General elections were scheduled to be held in the State of Palestine between April and October 2014 in accordance with the Fatah–Hamas Gaza Agreement of April 2014. However, the elections have been delayed indefinitely.

Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority on 9 January 2005, for a four-year term ending on 9 January 2009. In September 2008 it was suggested that Abbas' term would be extended one year or that legislative council will be dissolved a year early in order to hold both elections at the same time. Hamas objected to holding simultaneous elections for president and legislative council, arguing that the presidential election should have been held in January 2009 and the parliamentary elections in 2010. Hamas also claimed that the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Aziz al-Dewik, who is a Hamas member, became the Palestinian president after Abbas' term ended on 9 January 2009, until new elections are held.

Fatah argued that elections should have been held in January 2010, since the Palestinian election law calls for presidential and legislative council elections to be held simultaneously 4 years after the date of the later. Since the legislative council elections were held in 2006 (a year after the presidential election), new elections for both should have been held in January 2010. In reconciliation talks held in Egypt in March 2009, Hamas and Fatah agreed to hold the elections by 25 January 2010. In the end, because of the Fatah-Hamas conflict, nothing was done to resolve the issue of new elections.

In February 2010, local government elections were called in the West Bank and Gaza for July 2010. The Palestinian government decided to postpone the elections, arguing that it wanted to safeguard "national unity". In December 2010, the Palestinian High Court of Justice ruled that once cabinet calls elections, it does not have authority to cancel them. After being postponed several times the local government elections took place in October and November 2012 and covered only the West Bank.

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