PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas turns 90 this weekend, reaching the milestone not as a commanding national figure but as a leader confined to shrinking pockets of the West Bank, sidelined by Israel, rejected by most Palestinians and increasingly irrelevant to negotiations over a postwar Gaza.
Now the world’s second-oldest serving president after Cameroon’s Paul Biya, Abbas remains in office two decades after he was elected as Yasser Arafat’s successor — yet has not held national elections for nearly the entirety of that period.
Critics say that vacuum of democratic legitimacy has left Palestinians leaderless at a moment of existential crisis, with prospects for the independent state Abbas once championed appearing more remote than ever.
AP reported today that Palestinians accuse Israel’s war in Gaza, which has devastated the territory, of amounting to genocide — a view echoed by international legal experts, humanitarian organisations and several governments.
Israel rejects the charge outright and has tightened its grip on the West Bank, where settlements continue to expand and settler attacks on Palestinians are rising.
Right-wing allies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are openly urging annexation, a move that would extinguish any remaining pathway to statehood.
In this climate, the United States has accepted Israel’s refusal to allow Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern Gaza after the war.
Analysts warn that, absent a credible Palestinian leadership, Gaza risks being placed under an international mechanism dominated by Israel’s allies — leaving Palestinians with little agency and no route toward sovereignty.
Khalil Shikaki, head of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, said Abbas’ authority has long evaporated. “His legitimacy was depleted long ago,” he said. “He has become a liability to his own party, and for the Palestinians as a whole.”
Within the West Bank enclaves it nominally administers, the PA is dogged by accusations of corruption and inertia.
Abbas seldom leaves his Ramallah headquarters except for foreign travel, and key decisions are confined to a tight inner circle that includes Hussein al-Sheikh, appointed in April as his designated successor.
An October poll by Shikaki’s organisation found 80 per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza wanted Abbas to resign, and only one-third supported any PA role in governing Gaza. The survey of 1,200 people carried a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Two decades ago, optimism surrounded Abbas’ election, with many believing he could negotiate a sovereign Palestinian state.
But the trajectory shifted dramatically in 2007 when Hamas ousted the PA from Gaza in a violent takeover, entrenching the geographic and political split between the West Bank and the Strip.
Even in the territories he ostensibly governs, Abbas’ authority is sharply limited by Israel’s control over land, resources and movement.
Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister, said Netanyahu, who took office in 2009, “rejects the creation of a Palestinian state” and has followed a “strategy from Day 1” to weaken the PA. Netanyahu’s goal, Olmert argued, is to “prevent any genuine chance to come along with some compromise that could have been implemented into a historical agreement.”
Despite PA–Israel security coordination — a policy strongly supported by the international community — many Palestinians view the arrangement as collaboration with the occupation.
The PA exchanges intelligence with Israel on militant activity and suppresses armed groups, a role that, according to Bir Zeit University academic Abdaljawad Omar, leaves it “hand-in-hand with the Israeli occupation, even as (Israel) acts to make it more fragile and weaker.”
Israel frequently withholds tax revenues it collects on behalf of the PA, citing concerns over stipends paid to families of Palestinians imprisoned or killed by Israel.
Although the stipend system has been restructured, Israel is still withholding around USD3 billion, according to the PA, deepening the West Bank’s economic crisis. Former planning minister Ghassan Khatib said Israel’s measures are “pushing it to the edge of collapse.”
Khatib defended what Abbas’ allies call a policy of “practical realism” — maintaining international credibility, discouraging violence and pursuing recognition of a Palestinian state abroad. Yet these efforts have failed to produce any meaningful pressure on Israel from the United States or Europe to halt settlement expansion or revive negotiations.
Others see Abbas’ approach as catastrophic. Omar said that in an era when the Israeli far right is pushing for “the eradication of the Palestinians,” Abbas’ pragmatism amounts to “a form of national suicide.”
He accused the president of suppressing alternative leadership, civil society mobilisation and even non-violent resistance. “Politics has been removed as a way for young people to engage, to stand against occupation,” he said.
Shikaki added that Abbas’ inaction has bolstered support for Hamas, which framed its 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel as an attempt to end the occupation.
Many Palestinians view the attack as disastrous, but, Shikaki said, “they see Hamas as trying to do something on behalf of the Palestinian people. They see Abbas is doing nothing.”
There have been gestures toward reform. Abbas has promised legislative and presidential elections within a year after the Gaza war ends and, during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron this week, announced a Palestinian–French commission to draft a new constitution. In a rare anti-corruption move, the transport minister was dismissed in October and placed under investigation for alleged bribery.
But the public remains doubtful. Sixty per cent of respondents in the PCPSR poll said they did not believe Abbas would ever hold elections. If a vote were held, the clear favourite would be Marwan Barghouti — a senior Fatah figure imprisoned by Israel since 2002 — with Abbas trailing far behind any Hamas candidate.
Ines Abdel Razak, co-director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, said Washington and Israel have little incentive to facilitate real democratic renewal.
“That would mean all Palestinians would actually have a voice,” she said. “Any effective ruler would confront the Israeli occupation.”
With Israel determined to keep the PA out of postwar Gaza, Khatib warned that reunifying the territory with the West Bank — essential for Palestinian statehood — is likely to remain out of reach. - November 16, 2025
