Power Suits 10 April 2025
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, addresses the World Urban Forum in Cairo on 4 November, 2024.
APA imagesTowards the end of March, a “leaked” document about the “day after” in Gaza supposedly from the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service made the rounds of various online chat fora.
The document purports to be a list of measures the security forces would take in Gaza if it assumes responsibility for the devastated coastal strip of land.
These include a commitment to “gather information” on the Hamas leadership and “control rooms” in order to “completely dismantle” the movement; a commitment to establish security arrangements that “meet Israel’s security needs”; and the establishment of a “transitional” Palestinian administration for Gaza under the “supervision” of PA forces and “regional and American” forces.
In return for all this, the PA is – per the document – asking simply for an Israeli commitment to “change course” in the West Bank.
And in order to set the stage, it calls for the activation of “media cells” and activists on social media to launch “funded campaigns” against Hamas rule, focusing on the living conditions and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
So far, so nefarious.
That the document was supposed to have emanated from Palestinian intelligence, led by Majed Faraj, only added to the intrigue: Was it deliberately leaked, and if so, why?
To embarrass the PA? To send a message to the PA’s western and Arab backers?
To weaken Faraj, as candidates position themselves to replace Mahmoud Abbas, the nearly 90-year-old PA leader? To strengthen him?
Was the document even real? The stamp does not look authentic, said one former PA official on condition of anonymity.
“Such agencies don’t write,” said another current official, also anonymously.
What remains
One phrase certainly sticks out, if merely for its unusual candor. In the first paragraph, the unknown author asserts that the listed measures are crucial for the PA to avoid “losing what remains of its legitimacy.”
But if that phrase perhaps fatally undermines any claims of authenticity for the document – why include it? – it also very precisely zeroes in on what’s at stake for the PA itself.
What indeed remains of the PA’s legitimacy?
Legitimacy as what? And legitimacy in whose eyes?
The last public opinion poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research – usually published quarterly – is from September 2024. It is presumably not easy to do serious research in Gaza where 1.9 million people are displaced into tents and temporary shelters with barely any connectivity.
But if legitimacy is based on the popularity of a political leadership, a quick glance over that September poll and the preceding 12 months back to September 2023, paints a very clear picture: In a straight presidential election run-off with then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (Israel had assassinated former leader Ismail Haniyeh, who featured in previous polls), Abbas would struggle to get into double figures, garnering just 13 percent of respondents’ support last September.
Throw imprisoned Fatah rival Marwan Barghouti – who consistently polls as the most popular Palestinian political leader – into the mix, and Abbas is firmly in single digit territory at just 6 percent.
His Fatah faction doesn’t fare much better. Having enjoyed a slim majority in parliamentary voting intentions in September 2023, Hamas polls as the comfortable victor in every poll taken since, most recently enjoying an 11 percentage point lead in September 2024.
But then, neither Abbas, Majed Faraj, Hussein Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Abbas’ heir apparent, or their loyalists in Fatah need worry about elections. The last parliamentary vote was in 2006 (Hamas won) and the last presidential elections were a full 20 years ago, in 2005, when Abbas ran unopposed by any Hamas candidate.
Delusional
Having evaded elections and lost any semblance of popular support, the nearly 18-year-old Palestinian division also undercuts any claim to political consensus behind PA rule.
Division has not only undermined the PA’s legitimacy, it has undermined foreign relations for the PLO, nominally in charge of foreign affairs as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people, but under the same leadership.
As long as the PLO continues to keep Hamas and other factions at arm’s length, the PLO can not present itself as truly representative, fatally weakening its international status.
It is a self-inflicted wound that Israel has aggravated to the fullest over the years to avoid engaging in any kind of negotiations process, further weakening the PA/PLO in the process.
There have been multiple attempts at reconciliation. All have failed.
The most recent attempt resulted in the Beijing Declaration in July last year. But the ink was hardly dry on the paper before Fatah officials began briefing against it, telling the Israeli daily Haaretz, for instance, that the declaration would not result in any concrete measures and that implementation in any case depended on external factors, including the positions of the US, Israel and Arab countries.
This may have irritated Beijing, which for a spell looked like it might make a welcome entry into Middle East peacemaking efforts. And rejecting Chinese mediation would be a gigantic strategic mistake for the PLO, which is almost entirely reliant on the same western actors that have stood solidly behind Israel’s genocide.
It has been obvious to most observers for decades that Palestinians can expect little help from the so-called guarantors of an international order Washington and European countries have been all too happy to set aside for Israel.
Yet this still seems to be the sole, delusional strategy of the PA/PLO leadership.
Irrelevant
Hamas continues to engage US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators over a ceasefire in Gaza.
In Cairo, meanwhile, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s Abdulfattah al-Sisi held a summit Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss Gaza’s future.
In February, the leaders of seven Arab countries met in Riyadh to discuss a viable response to US President Donald Trump’s surreal, reality-shorn “vision” for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Absent in all this? The PA/PLO.
It is a damning indictment of how irrelevant its leadership has become.
The only agency the PA has shown over the past 19 months has been to turn its guns on its own people, notably in Jenin, where it is still acting on Israel’s behalf to deadly effect.
To look away from the ethics of such decision-making is difficult. But even the logic is patently flawed.
There is no appeasing Israel, which has made no secret of its aims to annex the West Bank and depopulate Gaza.
There is also no point in appealing to Israel’s western allies, who long ago granted Israel the favor of sharing the financial burden of its occupation. The EU, broadly, pays for budget support and capacity building; the US pays for security.
Curtains
Abbas has not been idle over the past two months. Security chiefs have “been retired” and new ones appointed.
Rumors swirl that Faraj is next in line for the chop, leaving Hussein Sheikh the most likely candidate for the newly created vice presidency post and the most likely successor to the 89-year-old Abbas.
He has even granted an amnesty for former Fatah members who had been expelled in the past, potentially paving the way for a return of erstwhile Gaza strongman, Muhammad Dahlan, now close to the leadership of the United Arab Emirates.
But this is merely the political equivalent of ironing the curtains while the house is on fire.
What remains of the PA’s legitimacy, to address the leaked/hoax intelligence document, is the same as what remains of the PLO’s relevance: Nothing.
And that will not change unless there is a leadership willing to break with the failed policies of the past and capable of unifying Palestinian efforts – in Palestine and elsewhere – to resist Israel’s attempt to erase the Palestinian people.
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