The Abu Mazen Era Under Scrutiny (2005-2026)

Introduction
Before succeeding Yasser Arafat (“Abu Ammar”) as leader of Fatah and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and before being elected President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005, Mahmoud Abbas (“Abu Mazen”) had demonstrated a degree of political courage in opposing Arafat’s approach, particularly during the Second Intifada and its militarization (2000–2005).
His opposition was reinforced by mounting regional and international pressure, led by the United States, on Arafat to relinquish some of his powers. This pressure eventually resulted in the creation of the position of Prime Minister within the Palestinian Authority and the appointment of “Abu Mazen” to the post.
According to surveys conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), Arafat’s popularity had fallen by more than half during those years, dropping below 40%, compared with approximately 87% when he was elected President of the Palestinian Authority in 1996. In an indication of the intensity of the internal and external pressure on Arafat, and in a move that went beyond ordinary political rivalry, Arafat instructed Fatah to organize demonstrations against “Abu Mazen,” portraying him as the “Karzai of Palestine”—a reference to Hamid Karzai, who came to power in Afghanistan following the US-led intervention after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Abbas’s tenure as Prime Minister lasted no more than six months. He resigned in 2003, citing Arafat’s obstruction and unwillingness to genuinely share power and authority.

An Unfortunate Beginning
To understand the trajectory of “Abu Mazen’s” rule, it is worth briefly revisiting a series of events that worked against his political programme during his early years at the helm of the Palestinian Authority.
Abbas initially presented a clear and explicit political programme based on pragmatism: rejecting the militarization of the Intifada, maintaining a commitment to negotiations, and relying on diplomacy and international law to achieve Palestinian statehood. Palestinians elected him in 2005 on the basis of this programme, giving him 62% of the vote.
Yet barely a year later, Hamas—which opposed Abbas’s approach and political programme—won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the 2006 elections. The situation deteriorated further with the Palestinian division following Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Then, just as a glimmer of hope emerged with Barack Obama’s election as US President in 2008, that hope quickly faded. Obama had not even completed his first 100 days in office before Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power as Israel’s prime minister in 2009.
The period was also marked by the controversy surrounding the Goldstone Report, following the Palestinian leadership’s decision to postpone consideration of the report at the UN Human Rights Council. The report had accused Israel of committing war crimes during its military operation in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.
By then, “Abu Mazen” had reached the end of his legally mandated term as President of the Palestinian Authority.
The “New Palestinian” and the Loss of the 2006 Legislative Elections
Burdened by the legacy of the Second Intifada and the lawlessness that accompanied it—much of it involving armed groups affiliated with the security services and Fatah—“Abu Mazen” began his presidency by focusing heavily on rebuilding the Palestinian security services under the supervision of US Lieutenant General Keith Dayton between 2005 and 2010.
Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative elections and its subsequent takeover of Gaza in 2007 further increased Abbas’s desire—and perceived need—for security forces that were more disciplined and loyal to his leadership. As that need grew, so did Dayton’s influence over the restructuring, training and professionalization of the Palestinian security services, eventually extending to their security doctrine.
Dayton went so far as to describe the outcome of his mission as the creation of what he called the “New Palestinian.”
In my view, Dayton’s role, together with the slow response to the problem of lawlessness and the absence of serious efforts to combat corruption and hold those responsible to account, were—and perhaps remain—among the most important factors contributing to Fatah’s defeat at the ballot box in 2006.

The Confusion of Lost Legitimacy
By 2010, “Abu Mazen” was increasingly trapped by a combination of challenges: the division with Hamas, the emergence of internal Fatah divisions following the expulsion of Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, the expiration of his legal term as President, and the continuing intransigence of Israel under Netanyahu.
As efforts to achieve reconciliation with Hamas gathered pace, Abbas repeatedly threatened to dissolve the Palestinian Authority—to “hand over the keys.” Yet he never accompanied these threats with concrete measures demonstrating that he was serious, such as presenting a political vision´-or-programme for what would follow dissolution.
Instead, he pursued a course that appeared to contradict the “handing over the keys” rhetoric: seeking UN recognition of Palestine as a state in 2012. In practical terms, however, the UN vote did little to change realities on the ground.
Reconciliation efforts also repeatedly collided with Netanyahu’s conditions. Netanyahu effectively presented Abbas with a choice: reconciliation with Hamas´-or-negotiations with Israel. Abbas chose negotiations.
During Obama’s second term, Secretary of State John Kerry led an intensive round of shuttle diplomacy in an attempt to revive -dir-ect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Those efforts ultimately collapsed in 2014.
As the years passed without a return to negotiations, however, it became increasingly clear that Netanyahu’s conditions were not the only obstacle to reconciliation. There appeared to be a prior determination on the part of Abbas and his circle not to achieve genuine reconciliation´-or-end the division.
This conclusion is supported by the testimony of several Palestinian factions and observers who were closely familiar with the negotiations and agreements reached between Fatah, Hamas and other factions, most recently the Beijing Agreement of 2024.

Surrendering Sources of Leverage
The Goldstone Report and the 2012 UN recognition of Palestine raise fundamental questions.
If international law is one of the principal tools through which “Abu Mazen” believes Palestinian rights can be secured, why did he relinquish, without securing anything in return, an important instrument such as the Goldstone Report in 2009?
Likewise, why did UN recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state remain largely unused? Why was there no serious attempt to leverage that recognition to -alter-realities on the ground—for example, by turning it into an opportunity to assert greater Palestinian control and sovereignty over the territory?
And what about another instrument that Abbas has repeatedly endorsed: peaceful popular resistance? What did he actually do over two decades to activate it?
Peaceful popular resistance is, in fact, among the most difficult forms of resistance to sustain. For it to become genuinely effective, it requires broad participation across both society and geography. That, in turn, depends on several conditions, foremost among them public confidence in the leadership.
That condition has been largely absent in the case of Abbas, particularly during the past decade. According to PCPSR surveys, the proportion of Palestinians calling for his resignation has remained around 80% over much of that period, exceeding 90% in the West Bank during the war in Gaza.
Similarly, is boycotting Israel as an occupying power and an apartheid state not another instrument consistent with Abbas’s stated reliance on international law and peaceful popular resistance?
Why, then, did Abbas state during his 2013 visit to South Africa that he opposed boycotting Israel?
Against this background, there is little reason, to dismiss reports that Abbas recently asked South Africa to withdraw its case against Israel before the International Court of Justice over the war in Gaza.

Weakening Institutions
Over the past decade, after the Legislative Council had effectively been inactive since 2007, “Abu Mazen” attempted to compensate for its absence by turning the PLO’s National Council and Central Council into alternative sources of political leverage.
The two bodies did, in fact, adopt significant decisions, including suspending security coordination with Israel and withdrawing recognition of Israel. Yet although these decisions were intended to be implemented, Abbas chose to retain them as bargaining chips. His credibility suffered further when he later described security coordination with Israel as “sacred.”
He subsequently continued to use the two councils, but in a manner that increasingly undermined their credibility, influence and legitimacy. It became difficult even to determine how many members they had, how most members had been appointed,´-or-when those appointments had taken place.
The policy of weakening institutions continued. In 2018, acting on the recommendation of the controversial Constitutional Court, Abbas dissolved the Legislative Council in a move that violated the Basic Law and undermined the constitutional order.
The judiciary provides another revealing example. The controversy surrounding the Constitutional Court and the wider judicial system exposed serious concerns about the separation of powers and judicial independence. In 2016, it was revealed that the head of the Supreme Judicial Council had been pressured into signing his resignation upon the appointment of his successor.
Surveys conducted by the MUSAWA organization have since demonstrated the extent to which public confidence in the judiciary and courts has deteriorated—even among members of the judiciary itself.

The Palestinian Cause Pays the Price
Donald Trump’s election as US President in 2016 marked another turning point.
Trump encountered a Palestinian leadership that, by then, had surrendered—or been stripped of—much of its political leverage. He therefore began imposing realities that had previously been considered taboo, most notably recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2017.
After effectively removing Jerusalem from the negotiating equation, Trump unveiled his highly pro-Israel Middle East peace plan, known as the “Deal of the Century.”
With few meaningful sources of leverage remaining, “Abu Mazen” once again resorted to threatening to “hand over the keys.” This time, however, the threat was met with silence from virtually all sides. By then, it had become widely understood as rhetoric rather than a credible political option.
Abbas’s verbal opposition to the plan and his announcement that he was severing relations with the Trump administration did not prevent several Arab states from normalizing relations with Israel. This occurred despite Palestinian opposition to normalization and despite the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which conditioned normalization with Israel on the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlement expansion continued dramatically. According to the figures cited in the article, the settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem increased from approximately 400,000 in 2005 to nearly 800,000 by 2026. Settlers consequently came to constitute roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of the West Bank population.

Fatah Under “Abu Mazen”
In 2021, Palestinian factions reached a national consensus to hold legislative elections in May of that year. Although Abbas subsequently cancelled the elections unilaterally, the electoral preparations exposed the depth and multiplicity of the divisions that had emerged within Fatah under his leadership.
Three Fatah-affiliated lists registered to compete.
The first was the “official” Fatah list, headed by Abbas. The second was a list supported by prominent Fatah leader and Central Committee member Marwan Barghouti, which was assembled by Central Committee member Nasser al-Qudwa before his expulsion from the movement’s leadership. The third was formed by the Democratic Reform Current led by former Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan.
The cancelled legislative elections—and the elections scheduled for November—raise a fundamental constitutional question.
There should be no justification for anyone who contested the cancelled elections,´-or-for anyone who intends to contest´-or-vote in the upcoming elections, to accept the continued existence of a precedent whereby the executive authority can dissolve the legislature at will.
The decision to dissolve the Legislative Council must therefore be reversed, regardless of the political cost. Even a symbolic reversal would be preferable to allowing the dissolution to stand as a legal precedent.
In 2026, Fatah held its Eighth General Conference inside the Muqata’a presidential compound. Considerable controversy surrounded the organization of the conference, including the process through which delegates were selected and other internal procedures.
The most significant development, however, was the promotion of Abbas’s son, Yasser, who ran for and won a seat on Fatah’s Central Committee.
Rather than resolving internal tensions, the conference and its outcomes appear to have generated new disputes within the Central Committee—disputes that could develop into yet another round of fragmentation within Fatah.

Conclusion
When “Abu Mazen” came to power in 2005, many Palestinians viewed him as a statesman who would bring a different political culture—one grounded in respect for the law, public freedoms, democracy, the peaceful transfer of power and the separation of powers.
His unfortunate beginning undoubtedly shaped much of what followed.
But ultimately, political leadership must be judged by its results.
Abbas has now remained at the top of the Palestinian political system for more than two decades. From suspending the Legislative Council in 2007 and eventually dissolving it in 2018, to obstructing the implementation of reconciliation agreements, consolidating control over the various branches of government, and repeatedly postponing general elections, his rule has progressively concentrated power in the executive.
At the same time, national and popular legitimacy has increasingly been replaced by a form of legitimacy derived from regional and international actors. This has left the Palestinian leadership vulnerable to political and financial pressure in exchange for maintaining that external legitimacy. Among the consequences are the continuing violations of the rights of Palestinian prisoners, wounded Palestinians and the families of those killed.
The condition of the Palestinian Authority’s institutions, the institutions of the PLO, and civil society—including political parties and trade -union-s—must also be considered alongside the condition of Fatah itself.
Taken together, these developments mean that, intentionally´-or-otherwise, the “Abu Mazen era” has strengthened an Israeli argument that Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves. The argument follows that if Palestinians have failed at self-government, the establishment of a Palestinian state would inevitably produce another failed state.
There is little indication that Abbas is likely to fundamentally change his approach to governance.
So I will conclude with a personal proposition: if I were in Abbas’s position and wanted to bring my political career to an end in a manner that might, at least partially, atone for two decades of policies that have weakened the Palestinian political system, I would do the following:
1. Reverse the most serious violation of the Basic Law—the dissolution of the Legislative Council.
2. Establish complete administrative and financial separation between Fatah and public institutions, ending all forms of overlap between the movement and the Palestinian Authority.
3. Implement the 2024 Beijing Agreement reached by the Palestinian factions, including the formation of either a national unity government´-or-a technocratic government in consultation with all factions.
4. Activate the Interim Leadership Framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
5. Establish high-level national committees composed of representatives of the political factions and civil society to make recommendations on immediate, reform-oriented leadership appointments in vital sectors, including the security services, official media, the judiciary and the Central Elections Commission.
6. Remove the newly imposed political conditions on those seeking to run in general elections.
7. Set the earliest possible date for simultaneous presidential and legislative elections—and announce that I would not seek the presidency.

*Translated from Arabic into English by ChatGPT

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