RAMALLAH, (Palestine Foundation Information Center), Informed Palestinian sources familiar with discussions inside the Palestinian presidential headquarters in Ramallah, known as the Muqata’a, said President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to issue a decree in the coming days to reshape the Palestinian Legislative Council, with 132 seats to be elected and 68 appointed in a move aimed at ensuring a loyal majority.
According to the sources, the move would go beyond the decree-law Abbas issued on June 14, which increased the number of PLC members to 200.
The proposed change would introduce major amendments to the mechanism for forming the legislative body and is expected to spark wide political and legal controversy because it is being prepared without national consensus.
Political writer and analyst Wissam Afifa said the problem is not the redistribution of the 200 seats between 132 elected members and 68 appointed ones, but rather who would choose the appointed members and what political purpose they would serve.
He added that if the current leadership retains the right to select the 68 appointed seats, they would not merely complete the council administratively. Instead, they would become a “guarantee bloc” capable of altering what the ballot box decides and preserving a majority for Fatah and President Mahmoud Abbas, even if the election results point in another direction.
Under such a formula, citizens would elect most members of the council, but the final outcome would remain subject to adjustment through appointments, Afifa emphasized.
He argued that this would empty elections of their meaning and turn them from a tool for renewing legitimacy into a means of reproducing the existing balance of power.
Afifa stressed that rebuilding the Palestinian Legislative Council is a national necessity, but said the path to doing so should begin with dialogue to set election rules and guarantees, not with a unilateral decree that could cause the dispute to begin before ballot boxes even open.
