Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition. Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.

Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over 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 secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.

In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant. "If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily," it said.

The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a "force majeure", it said. The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.

Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed. The decree refers to the "delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause" as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter's unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year. There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.

The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas's ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers' calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.