Abbas succession dispute may “destroy” the Palestinian Authority: Research tank
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Sulaiman
- . February 1, 2023
- . Update: February 1, 2023 7:58 pm
The International Crisis Group (ICG) warned on Wednesday that the struggle to succeed Mahmud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority might lead to “public protest, repression,” and the complete dissolution of the Palestinian Authority.
The research tank made its prediction a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in the area to call for calm after an uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence, met with the ailing and falling out of favour 87-year-old Abbas in Ramallah.
In the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) is based, speculation regarding Abbas’ succession is frequent due to the latter’s advanced age and ongoing health issues.
In its assessment, the Brussels-based ICG stated that following Abbas’ resignation as president, “elections based on legal procedures” would be “the least likely” result.
Abbas is in charge of the PA, the PLO, and Fatah, the secular political party established by late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
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After Arafat’s passing in 2004, Abbas was chosen to serve as president. Since then, there have been no presidential elections in Palestine.
According to the report, Abbas has “hollowed out or incapacitated the institutions and procedures that would normally decide who will take his place” since he has refused to name a successor.
ICG warned of a potential “descent into the mass protest, repression, violence and perhaps the PA’s collapse” and stated that it is consequently “unclear who would succeed him, and by what procedure.”
Any last-ditch attempt to select a successor to speed up a handover process “would go awry,” the paper claims.
Abbas has often cancelled plans to hold presidential elections, most recently in 2021 when he did so because Israel would not let voting in east Jerusalem which it had occupied and that the Palestinians claimed as their future capital.
Palestinian scholars mainly believed Abbas withdrew from the elections out of concern that Hamas, the Islamist organisation in charge of the Gaza Strip, would thrash Fatah.
Absent a successor, Abbas promoted Hussein Al-Sheikh, the PA’s civil affairs minister, to the PLO’s second-highest position.
Sheikh and PA intelligence chief Majid Faraj are mentioned as potential successors in the ICG study.
Although the two individuals are thought to be able to deal with the international world and possess significant power inside the PA, the report states that “none has been able to earn much support in Palestinian society.”
It names second-tier “would-be successors,” including Mohammed Shtayyeh, the prime minister, Jibril Rajoub, the president of the Palestinian Football Association, and Mohammed Dahlan, a former security head for Gaza who was banished to the United Arab Emirates following a dispute with Abbas. The study claims that although each of these men “had his own network,” none “could stand on his own.”
