Still Waiting for Palestinian Leadership

President Abbas seems more interested in cutting down rivals than running the Palestinian Authority.

Already burdened by the ongoing conflict with Israel, the Palestinians are hobbled in their efforts to find peace, progress, and prosperity by the embarrassing omnishambles that is their own government.

President Mahmoud Abbas, now 80 years old and with troubling rumors about his health regularly making the rounds, sits atop the decrepit and dysfunctional Palestinian Authority (PA) and shows no signs of making room for a successor. On the contrary, he and his supporters have been on the offensive for the past month in the latest series of political maneuvers aimed at hobbling his rivals.

At least 148 Hamas members were arrested across the West Bank and imprisoned by Abbas’ security forces over the July 4th weekend, with pro-Abbas sources accusing Hamas of trying to undermine his authority and instigate violence with Israel. “We will not allow Hamas or others to drag Palestine into bloodshed,” warned the Palestinian Security Forces spokesman. This comes on the heels of the arrest of 40 Hamas members in Nablus during the previous week by Israeli forces.

As they often do, relations between Hamas and Abbas are deteriorating, and the reconciliation agreement signed by Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah faction continues to unravel. Money is part of the issue, as Hamas claims that the Palestinian Authority has completely neglected its responsibilities towards Gaza and is creating a financial crisis in an area still yet to recover from the previous summer’s war with Israel.

With the Egyptian’s severe blockade on their border with Gaza, a drop in support from Iran, and challenges from ISIS-inspired groups in their midst, Hamas is facing serious challenges to its authority. President Abbas seems to be trying to take advantage of this, hoping to re-establish some control of his own in the Strip, which was seized by Hamas as part of the 2007 civil war. The reshuffling of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s cabinet at the end of June was another blow to the group’s standing.

Hamas is not the only target of Abbas’, though. Salam Fayyad, the once promising prime minister and Hamdallah’s predecessor, found the bank accounts of his development NGO, Future for Palestine, frozen over accusations of money laundering. Abbas and his allies have never been fans of Future for Palestine, which is seen as a political ploy by Fayyad to build a political base. Fayyad, who was always more popular with Western governments than with the Palestinian people, and his organization have been the targets of a campaign of harassment by Abbas’ government and security forces for months, with one plan to send bottles of water to Gaza being foiled by the Palestinian Authority itself.

Fayyad has never been able to recover from his falling out with Abbas that lead to his own resignation, but he is now joined by Yasser Abed Rabbo as those cut down by their President. Rabbo, a long-time leading Palestinian politician and Secretary-General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was fired at the beginning of the month and replaced by Saeb Erekat, who has been the chief negotiator in talks with Israel for over two decades. For years Rabbo was seen as a potential heir to Abbas should the President ever step down (or, as was more likely, pass away), but now he finds himself sitting awkwardly on the sidelines.

The stories on the recent problems for Rabbo and Fayyad share one common character: Mohammad Dahlan. Once the young shining star of Palestinian politics Dahlan, who was a close aid for years to both Yasser Arafat and Abbas himself, was chased away to Dubai in 2011 after an acrimonious end to his relationship with the President over (among other things) allegations that he had murdered his mentor, Arafat.

Dahlan was blamed for just about every failure of the preceding years, from Hamas’ electoral victory to their seizure of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Having built himself a reputation as the strong-man of Fatah as head of the thousands-strong Preventive Security Force, he was plagued by accusations of corruption and mistrusted by his colleagues due to his close connections to Western intelligence agencies.

Rabbo and Fayyad stand accused of one of the greatest crimes anyone can commit according to President Abbas: consorting with Dahlan. Charged with forming a Palestinian triumvirate, Abbas’ suspicions have only been further aroused by a recent appeals court case that upheld Dahlan’s parliamentary immunity, which Abbad stripped in 2012.

Whether or not Dahlan will make his long-anticipated return to the West Bank remains to be seen, but his role as Abbas’ bogeyman and the supposed eminence grise of internal Fatah opposition the President are unlikely to change. Dahlan is usually cast as a serious challenge to Abbas should elections be called, but that is a scenario unlikely to play out considering it has been a decade since the last Palestinian presidential election.

No presidential election since 2005, and no parliamentary elections since 2006, when Hamas won its sweeping victory. The Palestinian Legislative Council, the parliament of the Palestinian Authority, hasn’t met in seven years. While the most serious hindrance to Palestinian progress remains the conflict with Israel, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are not helping the situation. The Palestinian Authority is a decaying and corrupt institution, and as President Mahmoud Abbas bears responsibility for this.

Far from taking responsibility, or exercising any sort of effective leadership, Abbas continues to fortify his position against all real and perceived threats. With a decade in power under his belt, he shows no signs of giving up the reins. By showing not even the slightest sign of grooming a successor, though, Abbas is sowing the seeds of a leadership crisis, and even internal Palestinian conflict, should he be incapacitated in any way.

At a time when the Palestinians desperately need bold and responsible leadership, the political machinations of their President are depriving them of those needs. Just like the United States and its allies had to lean on Yasser Arafat in his later years to yield some of his power to a Prime Minister (at that time to none other than Mahmoud Abbas), it may be time that the United States and its Arab allies try to convince Abbas to do something similar.

Who knows, maybe he can even be persuaded to hold the elections that are always being promised.