Mahmoud Abbas: Palestine’s future president – or yesterday’s man?

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was once seen as the man most likely to become the first leader of an independent Palestine.

And Anthony Albanese’s symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state on Monday, following similar moves by Britain and France, came after a phone call last week to Abbas – tacit recognition that Abbas remains the closest thing the Palestinians have to a head of state, albeit a diminished one.

Abbas was a key player in the peace talks of the 1990s that brought a negotiated settlement with Israel – the so-called two-state solution – tantalisingly close, until it was undone by deadlock, factional infighting and violent pushback from both sides.

But many Palestinians now see him as an irrelevance, a man who has clung to power for decades, presiding over a government beset by allegations of inefficiency and corruption. In June 2021, hundreds protested in the West Bank against the Abbas administration after activist Nizar Banat died in government custody.

In 2024, Abbas’ ratings hit an all-time low of 29 per cent, with 59 per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem disapproving of him, according to research by the UAE think tank Al Habtoor Research Centre.

Abbas has also seen his authority eroded by the rise of Hamas, the Islamist group that won elections to govern the whole authority in 2006 before being ousted from the West Bank, but retaining control of Gaza in 2007.

Abbas back in the spotlight

In his phone call with Albanese, Abbas reportedly committed to demilitarisation, holding elections and recognising Israel’s right to exist, as well as ruling out any role for Hamas in a future state.

Earlier this year, Abbas lashed out at Hamas as “sons of dogs” in a fiery speech in which he demanded that the group release the Israeli hostages, disarm and hand over control of Gaza.

But whether Abbas, who is almost 90 years old, can match that rhetoric with action and re-establish himself as a credible figure seems very uncertain.

Abbas has long been dogged by accusations that he is beholden to the interests of others – including Israel – rather than the Palestinian people. His credibility was dealt a major blow in 2009 when he backtracked after admitting he had agreed to delay a UN vote on a report accusing Israel and Hamas of war crimes after pressure from Israel and the United States.

He has also repeatedly expressed antisemitic sentiments, most recently in 2023 when he said in a speech that Adolf Hitler ordered the mass murder of Jews because of their “social role” as moneylenders, rather than out of animosity to Judaism.

He has previously been denounced by Jewish groups as a Holocaust denier for his doctoral thesis on the Nazis and Zionism.

Out of Arafat’s shadow

Before becoming Palestinian president in 2004, Abbas was something of an understudy to Yasser Arafat, long the uncontested head of the Palestinian cause, but he has never enjoyed the same status.

Born in Safad in Galilee in 1935, Abbas was the first generation of Palestinian exiles who saw colonial powers redraw the Middle East’s borders. As a young teenager, he witnessed the 1948 Arab-Israeli War when half the 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs – including Abbas himself – fled or were driven from their land.

He is one of the few surviving founder members of Fatah, which emerged as the main political grouping within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) after the 1967 Six-Day War.

After Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war, Arafat’s Fatah seized control of the PLO. The PLO’s guerrilla campaign against Israel saw it forced out of Jordan and then Lebanon before ending up in Tunisia.

While the PLO achieved international notoriety with a string of hijackings and attacks – including the 1972 Olympic massacre in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed by militants linked to the organisation – Abbas himself often presented a more moderate face.

In 1977, he was among the first members of Fatah to call for talks with moderate Israelis, recalling to Time magazine in 2012: “Because we took up arms, we were in a position to put them down with credibility”.

In 2016, The New York Times reported newly discovered Russian documents suggesting Abbas may have been recruited as a KGB agent – an accusation rejected by Palestinian officials.

The high point of Abbas’ career came at the 1993 White House ceremony at which he and Israel’s then-foreign minister Shimon Peres signed the Oslo Accords in the presence of US president Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

With hopes rising for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, under the accords, the PLO renounced violence and recognised Israel’s right to exist. The creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) appeared to be another step towards statehood, many Palestinians believed.

When the Palestinian leadership returned from exile to Gaza after Oslo, Abbas was upbeat, promising: “I will live in Palestine.”

Most advocates of the two-state solution envisage a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank linked by a corridor through Israel. Later negotiations centred on the recognition of Jerusalem’s Jewish neighbourhoods as the Israeli capital and recognition of its Arab neighbourhoods as the Palestinian capital.

But the peace talks faltered amid opposition from hardliners on both sides. The cycle of violence resumed and Abbas’ cordial relations with Washington soured. The 1995 assassination of Rabin, who had overseen Oslo, by a religious Zionist, and the hair’s-breadth election victory in 1996 of Benjamin Netanyahu, who had opposed the proposals, were further setbacks.

When Arafat died in 2004, Abbas won a presidential election the following year, but Fatah was then defeated in the 2006 parliamentary elections. A short-lived unity government collapsed, and civil war broke out in Gaza in July 2007, with Hamas routing Fatah, leaving Abbas controlling only the Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank.

There have been no Palestinian elections since.

Hamas and Israel have fought repeated wars, culminating in the attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that ignited the current Gaza conflict.

Seeking to regain the initiative, Abbas has made unilateral moves to seek Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. In 2012, Palestine won “non-member statehood” at the UN General Assembly, but Abbas has held little sway with successive American presidents, whose role is vital in Middle East diplomacy.

Under Abbas’ leadership, US and European money flowed into the West Bank to build up security forces, which he has used to crack down on militant activity and dissent.

But Abbas has previously accused Western governments of undermining him by failing to recognise a Palestinian state and failing to hold Israel to account. He has cut an isolated figure as regional allies the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco have signed diplomatic deals with Israel.

“Having contributed to achievements that place our people at the forefront of history,” he warned as far back as 1994, “I remain deeply concerned that we could get swept away by history, lose control, and suffer an unrecoverable setback.”

Abbas has been seen less and less in recent years, with repeated hospital visits adding to concerns about his ability to lead the Palestinian government through political turbulence.

And despite being back in the spotlight, as one of the world’s oldest leaders, he appears to recognise that time is not on his side.

In April this year, Abbas officially named Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the PLO’s executive committee, as vice president, making him his likely successor as leader. Whether al-Sheikh could ever succeed in the role – and finally deliver Palestinian statehood – is another matter.

With Reuters

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