The unpopular and politically weak 90-year-old Palestinian chief struggles for a job in Gaza – Every day Information

By LEE KEATH

CAIRO — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas turns 90 on Saturday, nonetheless holding authoritarian energy in tiny pockets of the West Financial institution, however marginalized and weakened by Israel, deeply unpopular amongst Palestinians, and struggling for a say in a postwar Gaza Strip.

The world’s second-oldest serving president — after Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya — Abbas has been in workplace for 20 years, and for practically your complete time has failed to carry elections. His weak point has left Palestinians leaderless, critics say, at a time once they face an existential disaster and hopes for establishing a Palestinian state, the centerpiece of Abbas’ agenda, seem dimmer than ever.

Palestinians say Israel’s marketing campaign in opposition to Hamas that has decimated Gaza quantities to genocide, a view echoed by many worldwide authorized specialists, organizations and different international locations. Israel vehemently denies the accusation and has tightened its lock on the West Financial institution, the place Jewish settlements are increasing and assaults by settlers on Palestinians are rising. Proper-wing allies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are urgent for outright annexation, a step that might doom any remaining chance for statehood.

For now, the U.S. has bent to Israel’s refusal to permit Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to control postwar Gaza. With no efficient chief, critics worry Palestinians within the territory shall be consigned to dwell beneath a world physique dominated by Israel’s allies, with little voice and no actual path to statehood.

Abbas “has put his head within the sand and has taken no initiative,” mentioned Khalil Shikaki, head of the Individuals’s Firm for Polls and Survey Analysis, a Palestinian pollster.

“His legitimacy was depleted way back,” Shikaki instructed The Related Press. “He has grow to be a legal responsibility to his personal social gathering, and for the Palestinians as an entire.”

Inside the pockets of the West Financial institution that it administers, the PA is infamous for corruption. Abbas hardly ever leaves his headquarters within the metropolis of Ramallah, besides to journey overseas. He limits decision-making to his tight interior circle, together with Hussein al-Sheikh, a longtime confidant whom he named as his designated successor in April.

An October ballot by Shikaki’s group discovered that 80% of Palestinians within the West Financial institution and Gaza need Abbas to resign. Solely a 3rd need the PA to have full or shared governance of the Gaza Strip. The survey of 1,200 folks had a margin of error of three.5 share factors.

Arafat’s successor

It’s a good distance from 20 years in the past, when Abbas was elected president after the dying of Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat amid hopes he may negotiate an unbiased state.

The primary blow got here in 2007, when Hamas drove the PA out of the Gaza Strip in a violent takeover. Hamas’ rule entrenched a cut up between Gaza and the West Financial institution, the Israeli-occupied territories that the Palestinians search for a state.

Abbas was left answerable for pockets across the West Financial institution’s fundamental inhabitants facilities. However his energy is crippled as a result of Israel has a chokehold on the economic system, controlling the West Financial institution’s assets, most of its land and its entry to the skin world.

Netanyahu, who took energy in 2009, rejects the creation of a Palestinian state. His “technique from Day 1” has been to weaken the PA, mentioned Ehud Olmert, who preceded Netanyahu as prime minister and maybe got here the closest to reaching a peace cope with Abbas shortly earlier than being compelled from workplace.

Netanyahu’s goal, Olmert mentioned, is to “stop any real likelihood to come back together with some compromise that might have been carried out right into a historic settlement.”

Cooperation with Israel

The marketing campaign of weakening the PA comes although Abbas has abided by a significant position demanded by Israel and the worldwide group: safety cooperation with Israel. The PA trades intelligence with Israel on militants and infrequently cracks down on armed teams.

To many Palestinians, that makes the PA a subcontractor of the occupation, suppressing opponents whereas Israel swallows up an rising quantity of the West Financial institution.

“It has chosen to place itself hand-in-hand with the Israeli occupation, at the same time as (Israel) acts to make it extra fragile and weaker,” mentioned Abdaljawad Omar, an assistant professor of philosophy and cultural research on the West Financial institution’s Bir Zeit College.

Netanyahu regularly accuses Abbas of not genuinely in search of peace and of inciting violence in opposition to Israel. Netanyahu’s authorities has repeatedly withheld transfers of tax cash that Israel collects for the PA, due to stipends paid to households of these imprisoned or killed by Israel.

Regardless of reforms to the stipend system, Israel is withholding some $3 billion, based on the PA. That has worsened an ongoing financial disaster within the West Financial institution.

Israel’s marketing campaign in opposition to the PA is “pushing it to the sting of collapse,” mentioned Ghassan Khatib, who was Palestinian planning minister beneath Abbas in 2005-06.

Khatib defended what Abbas’ supporters name his coverage of “sensible realism.” By working to stop violence, Abbas has stayed credible on the worldwide stage, he mentioned, making an attempt to construct worldwide backing and profitable official recognition of a Palestinian state by a rising checklist of nations.

However that hasn’t introduced any profitable stress from the U.S. or Europe in opposition to Israel to cease settlement growth or attain a peace deal.

Stopping alternate options

At a time when Israel’s far proper is pushing for “the eradication of the Palestinians,” Omar mentioned, Abbas’ pragmatic realism is “a type of nationwide suicide.”

Fearing rivals, Abbas has prevented wide-scale participation in authorities, various management or common actions even for important non-violent resistance or civil disobedience in opposition to Israel, he mentioned.

“Politics has been eliminated as a approach for younger folks to interact, to face in opposition to occupation,” mentioned Omar, who was 17 when Abbas got here to workplace.

Shikaki mentioned Abbas’ inaction solely fuels help for Hamas, which portrayed its Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel as geared toward ending Israel’s occupation.

Even when some Palestinians imagine the assault was disastrous, “they see Hamas as making an attempt to do one thing on behalf of the Palestinian folks,” he mentioned. “They see Abbas is doing nothing.”

Reform makes an attempt

U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan requires a world council to run the Gaza Strip after Hamas is eliminated, with a Palestinian administration finishing up day-to-day providers. It holds out the potential for the PA taking management if it carries out unspecified reforms to the council’s satisfaction.

Abbas has made some gestures towards change.

He has promised legislative and presidential elections inside a yr after the struggle in Gaza ends. This week, assembly with French President Emmanuel Macron, he introduced a Palestinian-French fee to attract up a brand new structure. In a high-profile transfer in opposition to corruption, the transport minister was eliminated in October and put beneath investigation on allegations of bribery, based on native media.

Palestinians are skeptical. Within the PCPSR ballot, 60% of respondents mentioned they doubted Abbas will maintain elections. It discovered that if a vote have been held, the clear winner can be Marwan Barghouti, a senior determine from Abbas’ Fatah faction imprisoned by Israel since 2002. Abbas would come a distant third behind any Hamas candidate.

Ines Abdel Razak, co-director of Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy advocacy group, mentioned the U.S. and Israel don’t have an curiosity in actual democratization..

“That will imply all Palestinians would even have a voice,” she mentioned. “Any efficient ruler would confront the Israeli occupation.”

Khatib mentioned Israel will seemingly have the ability to preserve the PA out of Gaza, since uniting it with the West Financial institution would solely enhance Palestinian calls for for statehood.

“Israel is the social gathering that’s calling the photographs on the bottom,” he mentioned.

Related Press author Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.