Around half a million Palestinians on Saturday went to cast their vote to elect 93 municipal councils in the West Bank, according to Maan news agency. The final results are due by Oct. 23.

However, voting did not take place in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Hamas. Hamas boycotted Saturday’s election, saying persecution of its members would prevent a fair vote.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party governs the West Bank, cast his vote and said that he hoped elections in the future would take place as well in Gaza and Jerusalem “to complete our joy”.

Hamas, which took full control of Gaza in 2007 after winning parliamentary elections in 2006, is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S. East Jerusalem, which is sought by the Palestinians as the capital of any future state, is governed by Israel.

The continued divide between Hamas and Fatah worries Palestinians who fear that without Gaza’s participation the split between Palestinians will deppen and will undermine their struggle for an independent state.

According to the election commission’s statement, more than 7, 000 observers, including 130 international observers are supervising the elections, Xinhua reported. .

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry, who is visiting polling stations in Ramallah, said the vote is important and will give citizens a role in decisions that affect their lives.

The vote comes amid mounting problems for Abbas. In recent months, PA Prime Minister  Fayyad has had difficulty paying the salaries of civil servants and members of the security forces, a backbone of the small Palestinian economy, according to Maan news agency. In September, thousands of people took to the streets to protest rising food prices and delayed salary payments by the aid dependent country.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has published the names of 91 Palestinians killed since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967, and whose remains arrived on Thursday morning in Ramallah and Gaza. An official funeral ceremony is to be held later in the day, according to Al Jazeera.

According to WAFA news agency, the remains of 79 Palestinians delivered to Ramallah will be laid at the presidential headquarters to receive official funeral ceremonies attended by President Mahmoud Abbas while the remaining 12 were sent to the Gaza Strip, Minister of Civil Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh said.

Seventeen bodies will be buried in a mass grave in Ramallah because their families could not be identified.

The repatriation of the bodies forms part of a deal to end a mass hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The return of the bodies was announced on May 14 by the office of Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, in what it called “a gesture to President Abbas”, Al Jazeera reported. 
”Israel is ready for the immediate resumption of peace talks without any preconditions whatsoever,” he said.

Abbas has demanded a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a condition for returning to peace talks that have been frozen since the settlement issue in 2010.

Activists expect Israel to release more remains in the next weeks.

“Israel and the Palestinian Authority are committed to achieving peace and the sides hope that the exchange of letters between President Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu will further this goal,” the statement said, according to AP.

Netanyahu had an envoy deliver a letter to Abbas on Saturday, in response to one that the Palestinian leader had sent in April stating his complaints against the Israeli government and laying out conditions for the resumption of talks.

Although the contents of Netanyahu’s letter were not released, Israel has previously stated it was ready to restart peace talks, but only if there were no preconditions, according to Al Jazeera.

Palestinians have demanded that Israel accept a two-state solution within the borders prior to the 1967 Mideast war and to stop Israeli settlement building.

The peace process has been frozen since 2010, when Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected Palestinian demands for the temporary halt on settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Approximately 500,000 Israeli settlers and 2.5 million Palestinians currently live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem while around 1,600 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are currently on hunger strike according to Addameer support and human rights association.

Netanyahu stunned the political establishment on May 8 by forming a government unity with the main opposition group, the centrist Kadima party.

The head of Kadima, Shaul Mofaz, has repeatedly accused Netanyahu for the failure of the peace talks and told reporters last week that entering new negotiations “was an iron condition for forming the unity government”.