By Eitan Dangot
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is implementing a highly efficient strategy in multiple arenas and maneuvering an array of challenges with visible success.
Since the election of the Biden administration, Abbas has reached an optimal point in his moves to reposition the PA both within the Palestinian arena and internationally, and it is clear that Abbas has been waiting for years for the Trump administration to pass before implementing his recent maneuvers.
Months before the elections in the United States, Abbas and his inner circle assessed that Biden would likely win, and began signaling their change through a number of ‘softener steps’ designed to move away from Ramallah’s absolutist posture that had rejected cooperation with the U.S. and Israel.
These steps, conducted on the eve of the U.S. elections, included the return of security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces, after many months in which it had been suspended, and a resumption of receipt of tax payments from Israel, which had been frozen for months, creating a significant burden on the PA’s economy and its residents.
Abbas’s goal was to signal to the Biden administration that he is embarking on confidence-building measures vis-à-vis Israel in order to gain Washington’s faith.
As an inseparable part of this policy, Abbas understood that he must also achieve quiet with his hated Islamist rivals, Hamas, whom he will never forgive for the humiliating coup and ejection of Fatah from the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Despite the enmity, Abbas recruited senior PA official Jibril Rajoub to hold contacts with Hamas – thereby decreasing friction within the Fatah leadership as a side product – and made Cairo the scene of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation talks, thereby returning Egypt to the stance of senior regional mediator, a position it is keen to play.
Meanwhile, Abbas significantly decreased public criticism of the Gulf states that signed normalization deals with Israel, and returned the PA’s ambassador to the UAE. In doing so, he placated Saudi anger at Ramallah, since Riyadh was the main regional power backer of the Abraham Accords, and had increasingly come to see the Palestinians as an obstacle in creating a regional bloc against Iran.
Within the Palestinian arena, the 86-year-old Abbas appears to have set a personal objective of completing his term in the coming years by positioning the PA as the central, exclusive, lead representative of the Palestinians, thereby creating a strong legacy that is designed to justify the manner in which he has ruled since being elected president in 2005.
To further this goal, Abbas’s acceptance of tax funds form Israel and his safeguarding of the economic status quo has provided the PA with stability, which, when viewed in comparison with the economic crises of other Arab states, is particularly prominent.
Abbas’s decision to proceed in a phased manner with Palestinian elections to the national parliament and presidency in May and July respectively is a signal to the U.S. and to the international community, designed to indicate this leadership is striving to repair ‘holes’ in Palestinian governance and make it more democratic.
The elections were also designed to reduce resentment felt by Hamas after Abbas renewed security coordination with Israel and cancelled the reconciliation process.
The elections carry with them major risks should Fatah and Abbas lose, while also carrying a promise of quiet since they attract the support of most Palestinian factions. The decision to move in this direction stems from Abbas’s need to have quiet on the Hamas front at this stage – but he still can cancel the process at any time and blame Israel for the abortion of the elections, using Israel’s refusal to allow them to take place in east Jerusalem as an excuse.
Israel, for its part, is addressing the issue cautiously in order to avoid being accused of disrupting the Palestinian democratic process. Yet any new Israeli government that forms after Israel’s own elections will have very little time to formulate responses on whether to allow Hamas to take part in West Bank ballot counts, or for voting to go ahead in east Jerusalem.
Abbas also took advantage of the fact that Hamas is holding its own parallel internal elections, a process that is taking up the terror organization’s focus, leaving Hamas less able to focus on campaigning in the wider elections.
The Hamas elections in Gaza resulted in a win for the incumbent Yahya Sinwar, but only after four rounds of elections – a testament to the fact that Hamas’s current path of seeking truce arrangements faces major opposition by the veteran generation that is radical and extreme. This will complicate the manner in which Sinwar will lead, together with whoever wins the elections for the overseas political bureau, Khaled Mashaal or Ismael Haniyeh.
Hamas, for its part, is playing the long game, and views the elections as an opportunity to dominate the PA and the PLO, in line with its central objective of being the future ruler of the Palestinians.
Within Fatah itself, Abbas is working intensively to neutralize almost every attempt to undermine his power, focusing particularly on his sworn enemy, Mohammed Dahlan, as well as Marwan Barghouti, who is imprisoned in an Israeli jail for deadly terror attacks, and political threats from his rival (and the nephew of the late Yasser Arafat) Nasser Al-Qudwah.
Ultimately, Abbas has been able to achieve recognition of his leadership status, portray himself as a unifying figure in the Palestinian arena, and is able to celebrate his achievement of dragging Israel to the International Criminal Court in Hague – a threat that Israel must formulate a practical and wise response to.
He is regaining traditional international support for the PA from the U.S. and Europe, and there can be no doubt that Abbas forms a serious challenge to Israel.
Abbas will now be able to issue demands to return Israel to negotiations with the PA. Despite past regional forecasts, he has proven his ability to bring the Palestinian issue back as a central issue on the Middle Eastern agenda.
Major-General Eitan Dangot concluded his extensive career as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.) in 2014. Prior to that post he served as the Military Secretary to three Ministers of Defense; Shaul Mofaz, Amir Peretz and Ehud Barak. Read full bio here.