{"id":39942,"date":"2018-06-13T11:00:19","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T01:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39942"},"modified":"2018-06-13T10:56:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T00:56:47","slug":"after-abbas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/after-abbas\/","title":{"rendered":"After Abbas"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Rumours abound about Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas\u2019 ill health following repeated hospital stays. With Abbas in his 80s, the end of his leadership is fast approaching. Key questions are who will replace him and will there be an orderly succession or a violent upheaval?<\/p>\n

Israelis are concerned that Hamas, which currently controls the Gaza Strip, will try to exploit the power vacuum in the West Bank to take over from the Fatah-dominated PA. That would be a disaster for Israelis and Palestinians. Since Hamas took over Gaza, thousands of rockets have been fired towards Israel, and there have been three wars. Rocket and mortar attacks recently restarted, with more than 200 fired towards Israel. The situation could escalate, with Israel responding with airstrikes.<\/p>\n

Hamas remains popular among Palestinians. It won the Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006 and ousted its rival Fatah in a coup in 2007. Abbas won the presidential election in 2005 to serve a four-year term, but there has not been a presidential election since. If a new presidential election were held, Hamas would probably nominate its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, to run. Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem has said that any future presidential contest \u2018must be an affair for all Palestinians, not an internal Fatah issue\u2019.<\/p>\n

According to a March poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey, 68%\u00a0of Palestinians want President Abbas to resign. Furthermore, in a presidential election between Haniyeh and Abbas, Haniyeh would win 52% of the vote, and Abbas would receive only 41%. Given Hamas\u2019 popularity, it\u2019s possible that Fatah will prevent Hamas from participating in a presidential election. The political rivalry could also lead to a bloody battle in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

Until recently the PA had avoided talk of succession. However, given Abbas\u2019 ill health, Fatah appears to be finally making plans. Last year, Mahmoud al\u2011Aloul was appointed as the first-ever vice-chairman of Fatah. If Abbas were unable to carry out his duties, al\u2011Aloul would act as president for three months until elections could be held.<\/p>\n

However, according to the Palestinian Basic Law, if the president dies or is incapacitated, the parliamentary speaker\u2014currently Aziz Dweik of Hamas\u2014would fill in while elections are organised. Fatah would say that the article governing presidential elections no longer applies because the parliament hasn\u2019t met in over a decade.<\/p>\n

Other possible contenders for the Palestinian presidency include the popular Marwan Barghouti, who\u2019s currently serving five life terms in an Israeli jail; Jibril Rajoub, secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee; Majed Faraj, head of intelligence; and Mohammed Dahlan, who previously led the PA\u2019s Preventive Security force in Gaza but fell out with Abbas and is now in exile in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

The tragedy of Abbas\u2019 life and leadership is unfulfilled potential. He could have been the leader to achieve Palestinian statehood and peace with Israel. But sadly Abbas never entered into serious negotiations with Israel. In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Abbas a state on nearly all of the West Bank (with land swaps), the Gaza Strip and in Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, as well as compensation for refugees. Abbas rejected the offer \u2018out of hand\u2019, as Abbas himself told an interviewer in 2015.<\/p>\n

Another lost opportunity came during negotiations with current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2014. According to former US Middle East envoy Martin Indyk, \u2018Netanyahu moved to the zone of possible agreement. I saw him sweating bullets to find a way to reach an agreement\u2019, but Abbas \u2018shut down\u2019. Instead, Abbas stayed away from negotiations and unilaterally pursued diplomatic recognition of \u2018Palestine\u2019. This path led to symbolic wins at international fora but has achieved nothing of substance for his people.<\/p>\n

Abbas appears to know that he\u2019s at the end of his reign and his behaviour has become erratic. He has called Donald Trump\u2019s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a \u2018son of a dog<\/a>\u2019, and was accused of antisemitism<\/a> following his 30 April address to the Palestinian National Council. In that speech Abbas claimed that the Holocaust was not caused by anti-Semitism but by the social behaviour of Jews, and that the 3,000-year-old Jewish connection to Israel is non-existent. Following criticism Abbas offered a weak apology. However, the claims echo those made in his 1982 doctoral dissertation<\/a>, \u2018The other side: the secret relationship between Nazism and Zionism\u2019.<\/p>\n

As Abbas\u2019 leadership comes to an end, so too does the illusion that he was a Palestinian leader ready to make peace. He could have fulfilled the dreams of the Palestinians by offering them a state and hope. Instead, Israelis and Palestinians are now left to contend with a choice of nightmares: Hamas in control of the West Bank, Palestinian civil war or the complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rumours abound about Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas\u2019 ill health following repeated hospital stays. With Abbas in his 80s, the end of his leadership is fast approaching. Key questions are who will replace him …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":815,"featured_media":39943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[926],"class_list":["post-39942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-palestine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAfter Abbas | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/after-abbas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"After Abbas | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rumours abound about Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas\u2019 ill health following repeated hospital stays. 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