CAIRO (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas turns 90 on Saturday, still holding authoritarian power in tiny pockets of the West Bank, but marginalized and weakened by Israel, deeply unpopular among 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 office for 20 years, and for nearly the entire time has failed to hold elections. His weakness has left Palestinians leaderless, critics say, at a time when they face an existential crisis and hopes for establishing a Palestinian state, the centerpiece of Abbas’ agenda, appear dimmer than ever.
Palestinians say Israel’s campaign against Hamas that has decimated Gaza amounts to genocide, a view echoed by many international legal experts, organizations and other countries. Israel vehemently denies the accusation and has tightened its lock on the West Bank, where Jewish settlements are expanding and attacks by settlers on Palestinians are increasing. Right-wing allies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are pressing for outright annexation, a step that would doom any remaining possibility for statehood.
For now, the U.S. has bent to Israel’s refusal to allow Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to govern postwar Gaza. With no effective leader, critics fear Palestinians in the territory will be consigned to live under an international body dominated by Israel’s allies, with little voice and no real path to statehood.
“His legitimacy was depleted long ago,” Shikaki told The Associated Press. “He has become a liability to his own party, and for the Palestinians as a whole.”
Within the pockets of the West Bank that it administers, the PA is notorious for corruption. Abbas rarely leaves his headquarters in the city of Ramallah, except to travel abroad. He limits decision-making to his tight inner circle, including Hussein al-Sheikh, a longtime confidant whom he named as his designated successor in April.
An October poll by Shikaki’s organization found that 80% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza want Abbas to resign. Only a third want the PA to have full or shared governance of the Gaza Strip. The survey of 1,200 people had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
It’s a long way from 20 years ago, when Abbas was elected president after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat amid hopes he could negotiate an independent state.
The first blow came in 2007, when Hamas drove the PA out of the Gaza Strip in a violent takeover. Hamas’ rule entrenched a split between Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli-occupied territories that the Palestinians seek for a state.
Abbas was left in charge of pockets around the West Bank’s main population centers. But his power is crippled because Israel has a chokehold on the economy, controlling the West Bank’s resources, most of its land and its access to the outside world.
Netanyahu, who took power in 2009, rejects the creation of a Palestinian state. His “strategy from Day 1” has been to weaken the PA, said Ehud Olmert, who preceded Netanyahu as prime minister and perhaps came the closest to reaching a peace deal with Abbas shortly before being forced from office.
Netanyahu’s aim, Olmert said, is to “prevent any genuine chance to come along with some compromise that could have been implemented into a historical agreement.”