Reuters reports: Palestinians in the West Bank go to the polls on Saturday in long-delayed municipal elections that have already highlighted deep divisions in the occupied territory and stoked complaints about a lack of leadership.

The October 20 ballot will hold up a cracked mirror to a political landscape clouded by financial crises, failure to reconcile the major Palestinian factions and stalemate in peacemaking efforts with Israel.

The powerful Islamist group Hamas is boycotting the election and preventing voting from taking place in the Gaza Strip, leaving the field largely clear for the mainstream Fatah party in the race to take charge of 94 West Bank towns and villages.

But, as has happened so often in the past, President Mahmoud Abbas’s nationalist Fatah movement has failed to present a united face, with party rivals presenting their own candidates.