Bethan McKernan
The Guardian / October 17, 2022
Now in the twilight of a controversial reign as president, what comes next is a vexed question.
In January 2005, Mahmoud Abbas, then 60, had just launched his campaign for Palestinian Authority president. Arriving on a grey, mild day in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, he was lifted on to the shoulders of an ecstatic crowd numbering about 10,000 people. While nowhere near as charismatic as his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, who had died two months before, Abbas was nonetheless welcomed as a reformer and a man of peace.
Abbas, commonly referred to by his kunya, Abu Mazen, won the presidency by a significant majority a few weeks later. A major architect of the Oslo peace process, his win delighted the Israelis and the Americans: unlike Arafat, Abu Mazen had vociferously denounced the violence of what was by then the ebbing Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising [2000-2005].
His future, and that of Palestine in general, held much promise. But just a year later, because of Fatah party infighting over candidate lists, the Islamist movement Hamas won the parliamentary elections, leading to a brief civil war in which the Palestinian Authority lost control of the Gaza Strip. The rest of Abbas’s long tenure has resembled that of a stereotypical regional autocrat, determined to cling on to power.
Nearly two decades later, the Oslo accords no longer address the political reality on the ground; Abu Mazen’s Fatah party and the umbrella Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), riddled with corruption, have little support among younger generations; and the authority he oversees works with Israel to oppress its own people.
Palestinian Authority forces have been sent after union leaders, activists, journalists, and even ordinary citizens who dare to write critical social media posts, while over the years Abbas has steadily consolidated control over institutional bodies and sidelined the defunct Palestinian parliament. Its legislative powers were officially transferred in 2018, making it easier to appoint allies to top PLO positions.
The president is now 87, and in failing health. A lifelong smoker, he was admitted to hospital twice this summer, and every now and then the internet circulates rumours of his death. The last surviving member of the Palestinian national movement’s founding generation, as his biographers put it, Abu Mazen has “lived his people’s history”; his passing will mark a significant moment in the Palestinian story.
What comes next, however, is a vexed question. There has not been a Palestinian election for 16 years, and Abbas has never appointed an official successor. Few have faith in an agreement brokered in Algeria last week to hold legislative and presidential elections within one year, and the president’s office did not respond to several requests for an interview.
Now, in the twilight of a disappointing reign, it is still not clear what will happen in the days and weeks after his death. Several scenarios – some of them violent – could play out, putting the Palestinian statehood he struggled for as a younger man further out of reach than ever.
“The thing about Abu Mazen is, he’s a man of extreme emotion. He loves intensely and he hates intensely. It’s his most important feature, it’s what defines him,” said Nasser al-Qidwa, who was expelled from Fatah’s central committee last year after challenging Abbas in the cancelled 2021 elections.
“He was in Arafat’s shadow for 15, 20 years. When he was gone it was his time to shine, and to take revenge.”
Abu Mazen was born in 1935 in the Galilee, to a lower middle-class family which fled to the Syrian capital of Damascus in 1948, after Israel’s creation. He studied law and worked as a teacher before moving in the 1950s for a civil service job in Qatar, where he met Arafat and became involved with his fledgling secular Fatah party and the PLO.
He later earned a doctorate in Moscow, writing a much-debunked thesis claiming that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Allegedly a KGB agent in the 1980s, his style of leadership today clearly borrows from the Soviet system.
A diplomat rather than a warrior, Abbas lived in Damascus with his wife and three sons for decades, fundraising and fostering the PLO’s international relationships. He was an early advocate for negotiation with the Israelis, as well as a two-state solution to the conflict, but was largely pushed off the political stage after the creation of the authority in 1994.
At the behest of Washington, Arafat begrudgingly made him prime minister in 2003. After the “Old Man’s” death the following year, Abu Mazen was well placed to run for the authority’s leadership.
Today, Abbas’s rule is a mesh of contradictions. He is a master of palace intrigue, playing allies and underlings within his Fatah, PLO and authority circles against each other. He also generally enjoys the respect of international counterparts, who still praise his pivotal role in the peace accords in the 1990s.
In Palestinian society, however, he is now ridiculed as inept and incoherent. In Israel, the PA president is no longer seen as a partner for peace – but since he is a bulwark against the likes of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – he is not viewed as an enemy, either.
“Our regime is not a platonic model, but there are multiple reasons for that,” said Jibril Rajoub, the secretary general of Fatah’s central committee and a close ally of the president. “Abu Mazen is the only Palestinian leader with elected legitimacy and a mandate. He is the only one who can and should lead. His critics are free from the constraints he operates under.”
Simultaneously vigorous and ossified, razor sharp and bluntly ineffective, the president embodies the current chapter of the Palestinian struggle. That does not augur well for the future.
In the event of Abu Mazen’s resignation or death in office, under Palestinian law, the speaker of parliament is supposed to become provisional president and issue an election decree within 60 days. The 2006 Fatah-Hamas split, however, means this is near impossible, and there are no clear institutional mechanisms to otherwise manage the transition.
Instead, it is widely expected that Abbas supporter Hussein al-Sheikh, who in May was appointed secretary general of the Palestinian Authority’s executive committee, will take over as both authority and PLO president. Formerly in charge of coordination with Israel, and accused of corruption and sexual assault – allegations he has denied – the 60-year-old is deeply unpopular.
In interviews, he has said that the next Palestinian leader should be elected, but only if Israel allowed people in occupied East Jerusalem to vote, which is unlikely. He has also emphasized the importance of the authority’s relationship with Israel, and a visit to Washington earlier this month has been interpreted as White House backing for Sheikh as Abu Mazen’s successor.
Several other contenders exist for the top job within the highly factionalized Fatah, including Abbas loyalist Majed al-Faraj, head of the general intelligence service, and Mahmoud Aloul, Fatah’s deputy chair.
Bitter rival Marwan Barghouti, serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison, remains extremely popular on the Palestinian street, and declared he would run for the presidency from his cell in 2021’s cancelled elections. Mohammed Dahlan, another enemy living in self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi, has become an extremely influential regional player, and is believed to maintain links to armed groups in both the West Bank and Gaza.
Power struggles within the party could inflame the current wave of violence engulfing the West Bank, in which newly formed Palestinian militias are taking on both Israeli and authority forces. Another civil war with Hamas, an Arab spring-style uprising against the authority, or a third intifada against Israel, are all possibilities in the event of a major power vacuum.
Israel is prepared for all of the above scenarios, although reportedly no military drills have been held since 2018. According to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) plan codenamed “Sunset” deals with the immediate aftermath following Abbas’s death, including major troop deployment across the West Bank and potential operations for rescuing illegal Israeli settlers.
A second plan, dubbed “Game of Thrones”, is designed for a situation in which rival Palestinian militant groups and political factions attempt to seize control in different areas of the West Bank.
Dr Hanan Ashrawi, who resigned from the PLO executive committee in 2020 on the grounds that the political system needs “renewal and reinvigoration”, argues that focusing on what will happen “the day after Abu Mazen’’ obscures the fact that his political project has already failed.
“The situation is an ongoing, slippery slope. It’s not entirely Abbas’s fault: we live under a deliberately cruel occupation, and everything was done to make the PA fail and present them as subcontractors for Israeli security,” she said.
“The weaker the system, the more it closes in on itself and the more oppressive it becomes. I don’t know what shape the future will take … It could be peaceful. But the longer it takes to see real change, violence becomes more probable. If you don’t allow for peaceful democratic ways of transferring power, people will find other means to express themselves.”
Even if the transition to a post-Abu Mazen era is smooth – even if free and fair elections are held in a timely fashion, in which reform-minded Fatah factions or new political parties triumph – the next administration will still face major problems. Deepening divides in Palestinian politics, and the nature of the authority’s relationship with Israel, are issues which will remain.
Abbas could claim the inheritance of the Palestinian national project when he was elected in 2005; whoever replaces him will be a partisan candidate, who will struggle to reunite the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And as long as Israeli politics continues its march rightwards, resumption of the peace process is a distant dream.
Al-sabr wa al-sumud, patience and steadfastness, has often served as Abu Mazen’s political manta. His squandered legacy is proof enough it is no longer fit for purpose.
Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for The Guardian
