Mahmoud Abbas prepares for post-Abbas era, dismisses Hamas as interim leader

President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree on Wednesday setting out the terms of the interim period that will begin on the day his post becomes “vacant,” and which de facto excludes Hamas from affairs during this transitional period.

Under current Palestinian legislation, it is the President of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC, Parliament) who takes over the reins of the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum. But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his party, Fatah, and Hamas, which had ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in Gaza in 2007.

At the age of 89, Abbas, who has held on to power without ever submitting to an election by universal suffrage since his mandate as head of the Palestinian Authority expired in December 2009, has so far resisted all pressure to nominate a successor or appoint a vice-president.

The decree issued on Wednesday stipulates that “if the post of President of the [Palestinian] National Authority becomes vacant in the absence of the Legislative Council, the President of the Palestinian National Council [PNC] shall temporarily assume” the office. The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), with over 700 members from the Palestinian Territories and abroad. Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, is not represented. NPC deputies are not elected, but appointed, and the head of the council, Rawhi Fattouh, is a close associate of Abbas, also a member of the Fatah, and rather unknown to the public.

Abbas' decree provides for a presidential election to be held within a maximum of 90 days. This deadline can only be extended once in the event of “force majeure,” according to the text.

In its preamble, the decree refers to the current “delicate phase in the history of the Palestinian homeland and cause” against a backdrop of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and continuing fratricidal divisions between Hamas and Fatah. Its publication comes on the very day that a truce comes into effect between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon after more than a year of war.

The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants, and threatened by plans to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, less and less hidden by Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government, one of the most right-wing in Israel's history.