Last month, the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas turned eighty-five, and in January he will complete the sixteenth year of the four-year term to which he was elected. At this point, he shows no sign of retiring or naming a successor. Michael Milstein sums up his reign:
Abbas . . . became both an asset and a burden for Israel, as well as the Palestinians. He enabled strategic stability in the West Bank despite the profound shockwaves of the past decade; contributed to the Arab Spring bypassing the Palestinians; blocked Hamas advances; and maintained close ties with Israel. At the same time, he adhered to a dogmatic political line, losing political opportunities—most notably the proposals raised in the [2007] Annapolis talks—which led to the ossification of the Palestinian leadership, while he headed a regime plagued by corruption and human-rights abuses.
His tenure will likely go down in history as the best and worst the Palestinian system has known, especially in the West Bank: stability and prosperity hand in hand with a deep and lasting crisis.
When the day after Abbas finally comes, argues Milstein, Israel must do what it can to try to ensure the continuation of this stability, and to prevent a takeover by Hamas or Islamic State—while at the same time resisting the dangerous temptation to play the kingmaker. If Jerusalem can do so, the future need not be grim:
Joe Biden’s tenure may . . . help stabilize the Palestinian system. . . . The upheaval in Washington has already inspired calm and cautious optimism in Ramallah. . . . The future will of course also depend on the decisions that the Palestinians must take. Will the [new] leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah prefer to unite, rather than launch a violent struggle for power? . . . Will they understand that that an agenda of confrontation with Israel likely means a short tenure, and their survival requires a close connection to Israel?
And perhaps a young generation will rise to power—a generation free of the rhetoric of the past that will prioritize the goal of a state “here and now,” even if modest in size and status, over the continued adherence to a fading and receding vision.
Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/the-day-after-abbas/