Why Palestinian self-government is unraveling under President Abbas

Mohammed strolls down the corridor, stopping to gaze at glassed-in panels marking milestones in the life of Yasser Arafat and modern Palestinian history: the first intifada, the Oslo Accords, a Nobel Peace Prize, the second intifada.

The Chilean Palestinian, who asks that his full name not be used, lingers at the final panel on the 2004 death and funeral of Mr. Arafat, the longtime chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and first president of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Mohammed says every time he visits his family in the West Bank village of Turmus Ayya, he comes to the Yasser Arafat Museum and Mausoleum, a pilgrimage to what he considers symbols of Palestinian identity and yearned-for statehood, to “feel connected to my nation and my roots.”

“All of this is our story,” he says, motioning to the display cases. On this weekday afternoon he seems puzzled to be the only visitor.

A few yards away, the Mukataa presidential compound, which buzzed with life under President Arafat, is nearly just as empty.

It’s no coincidence. Mr. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, whose elected mandate ended 14 years ago, has shut off the Mukataa and PA, the institutional embodiments of Palestinian autonomy, to everyone but himself and his inner circle.

And while the succession process triggered by the passing of Mr. Arafat was an orderly affair that followed a nascent constitution and political consensus, plans for succeeding the 87-year-old Mr. Abbas are far from clear.

This vagueness is by design – and aimed at self-preservation.

Over the past 12 years, the president, also known as Abu Mazen, has ousted and exiled potential rivals, detained opposition figures, and quashed dissent, both within his Fatah movement that dominates the PA and across the West Bank.

With the Palestinian parliament dissolved, judiciary sidelined, and his party hollowed out, Mr. Abbas and a handful of allies now rule the West Bank alone.

The result, observers and Palestinians say, is a self-inflicted leadership crisis: The PA commands little popular support, its control over territory is diminishing rapidly, and the one man holding together the PA – a legacy of the 1993 Oslo Accords with Israel – may soon be responsible for unraveling it.

For Palestinians, uncertainty over the succession process comes amid a whirl of public apathy, rising settler violence under a far-right Israeli government, spiraling crime, and the emergence of militias targeting Israelis and clashing with PA security services.

With the United States and the West preoccupied with Ukraine, Israel consumed with internal divisions, and the Palestinian cause a lower priority for many Arab states, the brewing crisis is one that many countries and Palestinians themselves see coming, but are unable – or unwilling – to avert.

“All my family tell me that this isn’t the Palestine that I knew, that they knew,” Mohammed says of the uncertainty swirling in Ramallah. “Everyone is anxious and has no idea where we are going, who will lead us.” 

Stability vs. democracy

Who will take over from Mr. Abbas has become a guessing game among the few Palestinians still invested in a leadership that many say “does not represent us.”

Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah rival to Mr. Abbas jailed in Israel, consistently polls as Palestinians’ preferred successor – double that of Hamas’ Ismael Haniya. In a June poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Mr. Barghouti beats Mr. Haniya in a head-to-head matchup 57% to 38%.

Leading contenders among Mr. Abbas’ inner circle and the Fatah old guard include PLO Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh, the PA’s key liaison with Israel; Majed Farraj, head of Palestinian intelligence; Mohammed Shtayyeh, the technocrat prime minister; Fatah veteran Mahmoud al-Aloul; and Fatah Secretary-General Jibril Rajoub.

One scenario discussed in Ramallah, Jordan, and Egypt is a triumvirate of three senior PA officials, each managing a separate portfolio: administrative affairs, security, and diplomacy. Israeli officials consider the rule-by-committee scenario likely.

Members of Mr. Abbas’ inner circle say continuity in leadership is “crucial” for Palestinians to keep the PA alive, maintain critical health and education services, cooperate with the international community, and safeguard against encroaching settlers and annexation attempts by Israel.

Those goals, they argue, supersede the need for elections.

“Continuity and the process will be respected,” says Social Development Minister Ahmad Majdalani, a PLO Executive Committee member and Abbas ally. He dismisses succession worries: “Right now, policy is more important.”

Yet few Palestinians believe the PA can survive a transfer of power without elections or transparency.

“Post-Abu Mazen, there will be chaos. There will be a collapse of Fatah and the PA. But instead of offering solutions to prevent the chaos, we are forced to be spectators,” says Jassir Ghafri, one of hundreds of young Palestinians who have been driven from Fatah in recent years.

“We have a crisis in leadership and a crisis of ideas. There are no visions on where to go from here or how to improve our lives,” he says. Thanks to Mr. Abbas’ crackdowns, “we have no national project, no vision, no direction. Only arms.”

The disillusioned 27-year-old runs an upscale Ramallah cafe and now avoids politics.

“You can plan two months ahead, but planning for a year is impossible,” says Abdullah Rafidi, a 23-year-old baker in Al Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, who cites rising crime. “I expect a civil war when the president dies.”

Gaith al-Omari, an analyst and former PA official who worked with both Mr. Arafat and Mr. Abbas as a negotiating team adviser, sees the PA as weakened.

“Whoever comes after Abbas needs political support. In times of crisis, you need your public to rally around you, but he has pushed them away,” he says.

“Today Palestinians are checking out; they feel they have no voice and that a small clique controls everything,” he says. “There is a widespread sense of, ‘This is not ours; why should we bother?’”

Stateless, institutionless

Indeed, Mr. Abbas’ consolidation of power has come at the expense of Palestinian institutions, hailed as important safeguards that eased the leadership transition in 2005.

One, the Palestinian Legislative Council, or parliament, has been shuttered since 2007, after fighting erupted between Fatah and its main rival, Hamas, which then held a majority.  

Today, pigeons have taken roost in the council’s domed entrance. Exposed wires poke out from the ceiling, and bits of broken drywall and concrete litter the floor as if a bomb had gone off 16 years ago.

In an adjacent building, Ibrahim Khreisheh, secretary-general of the council, watches over the shuttered parliament from his smoke-filled, third-floor office.

Like many, he believes democracy is the only path out of Palestinians’ current crisis.

“The four of us in this room are Fatah,” he says, pointing to himself and three colleagues. “Not even two of us can agree on the same [successor]. That is why you need general elections.”

Yet they do agree that a prolonged interim period without elections would be “chaos.”

“The Palestinian Authority would lose all legitimacy,” says Mr. Khreisheh. “These institutions will be no more. We will be in a post-Oslo era and a post-Authority era. We are afraid that this will only lead to a vacuum and violence.”

Political opportunities?

Watching and waiting is the Islamist militant Hamas, the target of protests in Gaza even as it enjoys a resurgence of support among West Bank residents who have never experienced its rule.

Reconciling Fatah and Hamas is a priority for many Palestinians, who blame the schism in part for their leadership woes. The latest efforts at reconciliation – by Turkey and Egypt in late July – made no headway.

Hamas is urging officials to follow the Palestinian Constitution’s rules for succession, in which the speaker of parliament serves as interim president for 60 days during which presidential elections “shall take place.” The last speaker was Hamas member Aziz Dweik.

“We are worried about the day after,” says Ayman Daraghmeh, a former Hamas member of parliament in Ramallah. “Clashes within Fatah may happen.”

A unilateral declaration of a Fatah president will prompt Hamas to name its own, he warns, leading to competing figures assuming the mantle of leader.

“I am afraid we are heading in this direction, because Abu Mazen refuses to even discuss succession.”

Mustafa Barghouti, a physician and MP – and the last person to challenge Mr. Abbas for the presidency in the 2005 election – says the crisis offers a rare opportunity for Palestinians to reset their priorities and reorient their national movement.

“The question that should be asked is not who will be there, but what will be there” after Mr. Abbas departs, Dr. Barghouti says. 

“The whole Authority is based on the peace process and was established to implement the peace process,” he says. “This was the product of a project, but that project is not there anymore.”

Dr. Barghouti, who leads the Palestine National Initiative, a centrist political party, says political factions can ask the Palestinian people to choose the way forward.

“Hamas thinks they have the best line. Islamic Jihad, Fatah, us, we all think we have the best line. The only way is to go back to the people and say to them, ‘Please elect your leadership.’”

He calls for elections in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem for president, parliament, and the PLO.

Such elections, he says, could enable Palestinians to “shrink the security apparatus,” boost spending on health care and education, and allow Palestinians to update their strategy on statehood, which has been unchanged since Oslo.

“We should have elections now,” not wait for Mr. Abbas to die, he warns.

Infighting, violence

As uncertainty clouds the PA’s future, it is rapidly losing influence in the present. According to polls, 80% of Palestinians want Mr. Abbas to resign, and 50% say the PA’s dissolution is in their interest.

In protests against the PA, demonstrators now ignore Mr. Abbas and chant against potential successors instead – such as the PLO’s Mr. Sheikh.

PA security services attempting to regain control of the Jenin refugee camp, a militia stronghold, were met this month with armed resistance.

Even in Ramallah – a gentrified suburbia of shopping malls and chic cafes and the PA seat of power since Oslo – its grip is rapidly loosening.

The PA has been unable to pay full salaries to its 130,000 state employees for 20 months. With just 70% to 80% of their salaries, many disgruntled employees are sinking into debt or are abandoning their posts to work in Israel.

Economic recovery from the pandemic has been sluggish, with strikes affecting even schools and hospitals.

And now crime and vendetta killings are on the rise in the West Bank, which is awash with guns, many smuggled from Israel and Jordan. Criminal gangs are reaching Ramallah as Mr. Abbas trains his security services on political opponents.

Expressing a common concern, Ghaidah, a Ramallah fitness instructor, says, “We are afraid of infighting that will not be among Palestinian people but officials who will fight over who will get to rule over us.” 

An anxious region

A flurry of summits among Arab leaders and Mr. Abbas – the most recent on Monday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah – is seen to indicate rising anxiety over Palestinian succession in the region.

Particularly in Israel, where Palestinian succession has been a topic of concern ever since Mr. Abbas was elected president at the spry age of 70.

Succession is “a heavy issue with strategic implications,” explains retired Col. Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military adviser on Palestinian affairs and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University. “Israel prepares for it all the time.”

Israel prefers continuity in the PA and figures who will carry on Mr. Abbas’ policies: opposing armed resistance, upholding security coordination with Israel, and maintaining the PA as a governing entity. Israel views Mr. Sheikh and Mr. Farraj as most likely to continue this posture.

While the Israeli security establishment views a Fatah-Hamas unity government as less ideal, the worst-case scenario would be the post-Abbas fragmentation or outright collapse of the PA, prompting clashes between militias loyal to political rivals.

According to Dr. Milshtein, a hard-learned Israeli lesson that “we don’t get involved in crowning kings in the Arab world” is offset by concerns about chaos spilling over into Israeli territory, which could spur military actions.

Even the current government, the most far-right in Israel’s history, has expressed concern over the PA and the financial and political crises gripping the West Bank. The Cabinet decided in July to “work to avoid the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.”

Yet so far, no proposal has materialized.

Israeli extremists

Some Israeli officials and analysts fear that extremists in key government posts are undermining efforts to bolster the PA and seeking to use the leadership crisis to accelerate its collapse.

One particular figure is Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister also entrusted with administering the West Bank, who has openly called for Israel to annex the territory and favors the PA’s demise.

“The PA’s existence is not worth the diplomatic damage it causes us,” he said in 2019. “It is better for Israel to work towards its collapse.”

Warns Dr. Milshtein: “A right-wing government may see an opportunity” to use chaos over succession to undermine the PA.

The outside actor with potentially the most leverage in the West Bank is Jordan. King Abdullah regularly hosts Mr. Abbas, and Jordanian intelligence maintains ties with West Bank communities.  

Yet Amman’s desire to prevent instability in the West Bank is tempered by its unwillingness to allow the Israeli government to “absolve itself from its responsibility in aiding the Authority’s collapse,” an official source says.

Distrust toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is high, and Jordan fears its direct involvement in the Palestinian leadership transition will aid “far-right Israeli government attempts to make Jordan the de facto homeland and sovereign state for Palestinians,” a source close to the palace says.

“It is almost like we see this train wreck coming and we wring our hands,” says Mr. Omari, the analyst, “but no one is doing the necessary political and diplomatic heavy lifting to deal with it.”