On November 1, 2026, Palestinians are scheduled to elect a new Palestinian National Council (PNC), the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Before they can choose their leaders, however, they must answer a more fundamental question: Who gets to vote?

The PNC claims to represent Palestinians everywhere, not merely those living in the West Bank and Gaza. Its members help determine the leadership and direction of the Palestinian national movement itself. The question of voter eligibility is therefore inseparable from the question of who is represented.

The new electoral framework approved by President Mahmoud Abbas reserves 200 seats for Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, and 150 seats for the diaspora.

The allocation itself reveals a dilemma.

The Palestinian national movement claims to represent over fourteen million people worldwide. Yet more than nine million live outside the territories. A fully proportional system could allow voters in Jordan, Europe, North America, and elsewhere to dominate institutions that claim to represent Palestinians living in Ramallah, Hebron, Nablus, and Gaza. The 200-150 split appears to give preference to those who live with the consequences of Palestinian political decisions over the larger voices from around the world.

That raises a more difficult question.

Who qualifies as Palestinian?

Should Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin – like Queen Rania – vote? What about Americans, Canadians, or Europeans whose grandparents left the region decades ago? How many generations removed from Palestine remain eligible?

The question may be most consequential in Jordan, where millions of people of Palestinian origin – estimated at 70% of the population – already participate in the political life of another state. Would Jordanian citizens vote in elections for a body that claims to represent Palestinians globally? If so, how many generations removed from Palestine remain eligible?

The question becomes even more complicated inside Israel.

Roughly two million Israeli Arabs vote in Israeli elections and participate in Israeli political life. Many also identify as Palestinian. Will they vote in elections for the Palestinian National Council?

Jerusalem creates an additional complication. Palestinian leaders seek participation from Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem, which they view as part of a future Palestinian state. Israel considers Jerusalem part of Israel, and many Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem hold Israeli citizenship.

If eastern Jerusalem residents vote while Arab citizens of Israel elsewhere do not, Palestinian leaders will be drawing distinctions that many people may find difficult to explain. Why should an Israeli citizen in eastern Jerusalem participate while an Israeli citizen in Haifa, Nazareth, Acre, or Jaffa cannot?

The Jerusalem question raises another issue Palestinian leaders will eventually have to address.

If current residency in eastern Jerusalem or the West Bank is enough to qualify someone to participate in Palestinian national elections, what about the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in those same areas?

Palestinian leaders consider eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank part of the territory of a future Palestinian state. More than 700,000 Israeli Jews live there today. Will any of them be eligible to vote for the Palestinian National Council?

The issue extends beyond contemporary residents. Before 1948, the term Palestinian was often used in a geographic sense. Jews living in Mandatory Palestine carried Palestinian passports and considered themselves Palestinian.

A descendant of an Arab family that left Jaffa, Haifa, or Jerusalem generations ago may be eligible to vote despite never having lived there. A descendant of a Jewish family that lived continuously in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, or Tiberias for centuries almost certainly will not be allowed to participate in PNC elections.

The distinction reveals that eligibility is not based solely on current residence, geography, or even historical presence in the land. The electorate is being defined through a more specific combination of ancestry, identity, and connection to a particular historical community.

For decades, Palestinian leaders have often left the boundaries of Palestinian identity deliberately broad. Political movements can operate with ambiguity. Elections cannot.

The voter rolls will reveal whether Palestinian nationhood is principally based on residence, citizenship, ancestry, ethnicity, geography, national affiliation, or some combination of all six. Ethnicity alone cannot fully explain the answer. Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, and many others share substantial linguistic, cultural, familial, and ethnic ties. The decisive factor appears to be a connection to a particular place and to people who lived there at a particular moment in history.

That is what makes the exercise so unusual. A Palestinian born in Chile, Canada, or the United States may qualify because a grandparent once lived in Jaffa or Jerusalem. A Jordanian or Syrian whose family never lived in Mandatory Palestine may not qualify despite sharing many of the same cultural and ethnic characteristics. A Jew – regardless of where he currently or historically lived – may be excluded.

Every eligibility rule will draw a line. Some people will be included while others will be excluded. Every decision will reveal how Palestinian leaders understand nationality, citizenship, ancestry, and belonging.

In many ways, Palestinians are attempting something few modern national movements have ever attempted: defining a political nation across multiple countries, generations, and citizenships while simultaneously deciding who belongs to it.

Imagine a movement claiming to represent all Black people whose families lived in North Carolina before 1948. Descendants living in California, London, or Johannesburg could vote even if they had never visited the state. Non-Black current residents of North Carolina could not. The electorate would be defined by ancestry tied to a place and a moment in history.

Whether one finds that model compelling or problematic, the Palestinian election will force its architects to explain where they draw those lines.

Whatever rules emerge, millions of people will discover whether they are considered part of the Palestinian political nation, observers of it, or something in between.

Most elections choose leaders. This election may do something far rarer: define the nation itself.

Before Palestinians can elect their leaders, they must first answer a more difficult question:

Who is a Palestinian?