Deeply unpopular: Palestinian leader Abbas turns 90
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is turning 90, still wielding authoritarian power in small swaths of the West Bank but marginalized and weakened by Israel, deeply unpopular among Palestinians and struggling to gain influence in the post-war Gaza Strip.
Abbas, the world’s second-oldest president after Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya, has been in office for 20 years and has failed to hold elections for nearly all that time.
Critics say his weakness has left the Palestinians leaderless at a time when Palestinians face an existential crisis and hopes of establishing a Palestinian state, which is at the center of Abbas’ agenda, appear dimmer than ever.
Palestinians say Israel’s campaign against Hamas, which is destroying Gaza, amounts to genocide.
Israel denies the accusation and has tightened its blockade of the West Bank, where Jewish settlements have expanded and settler attacks on Palestinians have increased.
Right-wing allies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are pushing for outright annexation; This is a step that will destroy any remaining possibility of statehood.
For now, the US has agreed that Israel will not allow Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to rule post-war Gaza. Without an effective leader, critics fear that the region’s Palestinians will be condemned to live under an international structure ruled by Israel’s allies, with little voice and no real path to statehood.
Khalil Shikaki, head of the Palestinian pollster People’s Survey and Survey Research Company, said Abbas “put his head in the sand and took no initiative.”
“Its legitimacy had run out a long time ago,” Shikaki said. “He has become a liability to his own party and to the Palestinians as a whole.”
The Palestinian Authority is notorious for corruption in pockets of the West Bank it governs. Abbas rarely leaves his headquarters in the city of Ramallah, except for short trips abroad. He limits decision-making to his inner circle, which includes his longtime confidant Hussein al-Sheikh, whom he named as his successor in April.
An October poll by Shikaki’s organization found that 80 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza wanted Abbas to resign. Only a third want the Palestinian Authority to have full or joint administration of the Gaza Strip.
The margin of error in the survey, in which 1200 people participated, was 3.5 percent.
This was a long time ago, 20 years ago, when Abbas was elected president following the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the hope that he could negotiate for an independent state.
The first blow came in 2007, when Hamas violently seized the Palestinian Authority and forced it out of the Gaza Strip. Hamas rule has solidified the separation between Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank, where Palestinians seek a state.
Abbas was left in charge of pockets around the West Bank’s main population centers. But its power has been crippled by Israel’s control of the economy, the West Bank’s resources, most of its territory, and access to the outside world.
Netanyahu, who came to power in 2009, rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state. Ehud Olmert, who succeeded Netanyahu as prime minister and perhaps came closest to reaching a peace deal with Abbas shortly before his ouster, said his “strategy from day one” was to weaken the Palestinian Authority.
Olmert said Netanyahu’s aim was to “block the chance of coming up with a compromise that could be turned into a historic agreement.”
The campaign to weaken the Palestinian Authority comes even as Abbas fulfills an important role demanded by Israel and the international community: security cooperation with Israel. The Palestinian Authority exchanges intelligence on militants with Israel and often cracks down on armed groups.
To many Palestinians, this makes the Palestinian Authority a subcontractor of the occupation; Israel is suppressing dissent as it absorbs more and more of the West Bank.
“Israel chose to join hands with the Israeli occupation even though it tried to make itself more fragile and weak,” said Abdaljawad Omar, an assistant professor of philosophy and cultural studies at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank.
Netanyahu often accuses Abbas of not truly seeking peace and of inciting violence against Israel. Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly halted transfers of tax money collected by Israel for the Palestinian Authority over salaries paid to families of people imprisoned or killed by Israel.
Despite reforms to the salary system, Israel withholds approximately US$3 billion ($4.6 billion), according to the Palestinian Authority. This situation worsened the ongoing economic crisis in the West Bank.
Ghassan Khatib, who was Palestinian Planning Minister under Abbas in 2005-06, said Israel’s campaign against the Palestinian Authority had brought it “to the brink of collapse”.
Khatib advocated what Abbas’ supporters called a policy of “practical realism”. He said Abbas had maintained his credibility on the international stage by working to prevent violence, sought to build international support and achieved official recognition of the Palestinian state by a growing number of countries.
However, this did not bring successful pressure from the United States or Europe on Israel to halt settlement expansion or reach a peace agreement.
Omar said Abbas’s pragmatic realism was “a form of national suicide” at a time when Israel’s far right was pushing for the “destruction of the Palestinians.”
He said that Abbas, fearful of his rivals, prevented broad participation in government, alternative leadership or popular movements, even for serious non-violent resistance or civil disobedience against Israel.
Omar, who was 17 when Abbas took office, said: “Politics was abolished so that young people could get busy and stand against the occupation.”
Shikaki said Abbas’ inaction only increased support for Hamas, which portrayed the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel as aimed at ending the Israeli occupation.
Although some Palestinians believe the attack was a disaster, “they think Hamas is trying to do something on behalf of the Palestinian people,” he said.
“They see that Abbas did nothing.”
US President Donald Trump’s plan calls for the establishment of an international council that would govern the Gaza Strip after the overthrow of Hamas and carry out day-to-day services for the Palestinian administration. He raises the possibility of the Palestinian Authority gaining control if it carries out unspecified reforms to the council’s satisfaction.
Abbas made some gestures towards change.
He promised that parliamentary and presidential elections would be held within a year of the end of the war in Gaza. In a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron this week, he announced the establishment of a Palestinian-French commission that will draft a new constitution for the Palestinian people.
In a high-profile move against corruption, the transport minister was sacked in October and put under investigation over allegations of bribery, local media reported.
Palestinians are skeptical. 60 percent of respondents to the PCPSR survey said they doubted Abbas would hold an election. The report stated that the clear winner in the event of a vote would be Marwan Barghouti, a senior figure from Abbas’ Fatah group who has been imprisoned by Israel since 2002.
Abbas will come in third behind any Hamas candidate.
Ines Abdel Razak, co-director of the advocacy group Palestine Public Diplomacy Institute, said the United States and Israel are not interested in true democratization.
“This essentially means that all Palestinians will have a say,” he said. “Every effective ruler will oppose the Israeli occupation.”
Khatib said Israel could likely keep the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza because its unification with the West Bank would only increase Palestinian demands for statehood.
“Israel is the party that makes the decisions on the field,” he said.
