RAMALLAH (Dispatches) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to postpone elections until September 2027 has exposed a bitter truth: the man waiting in the wings, Muhammad Dahlan, is not a democratic alternative but a UAE-Israeli project to deliver the West Bank on a silver platter.
Hamas welcomed the delay, describing it as a step toward comprehensive national dialogue amid the lack of conditions for free and fair elections across the occupied Palestinian territories. 
The movement reaffirmed its commitment to reforming national institutions through democratic elections and expressed readiness for dialogue to agree on a national strategy.
But while Hamas and other resistance factions welcomed the postponement as necessary, anger erupted among Abbas’s rivals. 
Dahlan, exiled since 2010 and now an adviser to the UAE’s ruler in Abu Dhabi, called the delay a “crime against democracy”. “Abbas and the circle of self-serving beneficiaries around him have turned the institutions of the Palestinian Authority into a private fiefdom,” he said in a statement.
The UAE reacted with fury to Abbas’s decision, according to Israeli Channel 12, citing security and political sources. 
Abu Dhabi viewed the postponement as driven by Abbas’s fear of losing influence amid the potential rise of the Dahlan faction—and the report added that the delay disrupted understandings reached in Cairo between Hamas and Dahlan aimed at reshaping Palestinian politics.
Dahlan maintains extensive contacts with U.S. and Israeli officials, making him an unlikely ally for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have fought Israel for decades. The UAE was the driving force behind the 2020 Abraham Accords, and Dahlan himself has met with multiple senior Shin Bet officials in recent years to discuss Gaza’s future.
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Abbas of “fooling the international community by canceling once again promised elections,” calling him a “corrupt dictator” who had not held elections in over twenty years. 
The Israeli anger at the postponement—and the UAE’s reported frustration—reveal a shared agenda: Dahlan is their man, and the West Bank is the prize.
The delay of elections is not about protecting democracy. It is about preventing a vote that could have delivered the West Bank to a man whose patrons in Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv see Palestinian statehood as an obstacle, not a right.