President Mahmoud Abbas seems to be on his way out as the leader of the Palestinian Authority. Who will take his place? 

Palestinian politics today is undergoing a change as President Mahmoud Abbas’ health condition deteriorates. With no clear heir to ensure a landslide victory, the question over who will replace Abbas remains unanswered. The possible successors are a source of argument among the Palestinians and the international community. Currently, speculation centers around four names.

Among them is Mahmoud al-Aloul, the first vice president of Fatah. Abbas himself supports Aloul to be his successor to lead the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, Aloul is not a welcome choice for some Arab countries because he is hawkish and opposes the two-state solution. Sources have stated that Fatah’s General Councildecided in March to change the party’s internal constitution in order to appoint Aloul as the acting leader for three months if Abbas’ health affects his ability to rule. Israel is also concerned about the succession, as a PA power vacuum could lead to further violence.

The second candidate in the race is Jibril Rajoub, a former West Bank security chief and a senior Fatah figure. He served as head of the Preventive Security Force in the West Bank until 2002, after which then-PA President Yasser Arafat appointed Rajoub as his national security adviser in 2003. Rajoub believes he is the most suitable candidate to lead the PA after Abbas.

The third candidate is Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza security mastermind who was forced to flee Ramallah in 2011 following allegations of corruption and an attempted coup against Abbas. It is said that Elliot Abrams, a National Security Council adviser during the George W. Bush administration, nominated Dahlan to lead the PA mission against Hamas in Gaza in 2007, which earned him the warlord moniker. While in exile in the United Arab Emirates, Dahlan was accused of sending money to some Fatah members in Gaza to undermine Abbas’ authority in Ramallah, the headquarters of the PA. Dahlan had always opposed Islamist movements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including Hamas, and is waiting for the right moment to return to the West Bank as president.

The fourth candidate is Nasser al-Kidwa, the nephew of Yasser Arafat and senior Fatah official. Kidwa has served as the Palestinian foreign minister and envoy to the United Nations. He is the most likely candidate to win the presidential race as he is supported by the Arab Quartet that includes Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Possible Scenarios

There are three possible scenarios in the coming months to replace the aging Abbas, as per NPR. The first option, if Abbas is no longer able to uphold his office, is that the speaker of the Palestinian National Council, Aziz Dweik (who is a member of Hamas but is based in the West Bank) would replace Abbas for 60 days until elections are held. The second is for Abbas himself to select a temporary replacement until the elections. The third is to set a date for elections where the four candidates would nominate themselves, unless a tectonic change takes place at the very last moment, such as a new intifada in Gaza and the West Bank.

The first option is unlikely to happen because Dweik is a member of Hamas. Abbas will not cede power to a rival organization due to internal and regional complications and ramifications. Thus, Dweik could not take over the Palestinian leadership unless the US, Israel and other regional powers suddenly back Hamas, which Washington, Tel Aviv and the European Union classify as a terrorist organization.

As for the second alternative, Abbas would select a person close to the PA leadership to rule for a transition period before the election date is set. The selected leader will also have a chance to nominate himself as leader of the PA in the presidential elections. This would be Arafat’s nephew, as he was backed by regional and international powers, including the US and Israel, when he served as foreign minister. This can lead to the third scenario in which the temporary president of the PA could become a candidate and winner in the presidential elections.

Since 2016, Arab leaders have looked for an alternative to Abbas. That same year, they spoke to Abbas personally on his 81st birthday when they congratulated him and wished him good health. At the time, Jordanian King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi were in charge of an Arab initiative to seek out a successor. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, had sent their representatives to Ramallah to discuss the issue directly with Abbas, as the leaders of both nations did not want to see a power vacuum in the political arena of the PA.

Critical Time

In December 2017, after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Kidwa said that any protests by Palestinians should be conducted “in a peaceful and an unarmed, sustainable way, so that would lead to serving the Palestinian national cause in this regard.” His moderate stance toward the American decision is one reason why he is favored by many countries, unlike his rivals who call for escalation.

The move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 14 is deemed critical to the coming Palestinian leadership, whoever the candidate will be. However, the tough rivalry among the candidates, mainly between Rajoub and Dahlan, will only increase in the coming months, preventing both from heading the PA.

With the start of Ramadan, it is expected that Palestinians will try to raise the question of Jerusalem as a core issue not only for them, but for Muslims and Christians as well. Thus, we might witness a kick-off of a new uprising in Gaza and the West Bank, of which the violence against Palestinian protesters on the border with Gaza on May 14 could become a tragic preview. This could lead to either Aloul or Kidwa winning the race for the PA presidency based on their wide national support.

The PA presidential race is critical. The next president will be accountable for establishing an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, while ensuring its peoples’ right to self-determination. The president will be working with Arab and Muslim leaders to secure the status of the holy shrines in East Jerusalem as part of the capital of an independent Palestinian state, without offending Jewish holy sites in the city. That is why the best solution for the issue of Jerusalem is to divide it into West and East capitals, for Israel and Palestine respectively, to avoid any future regional war.

Article published in Fair Observer: https://www.fairobserver.com/politics/palestinian-authority-succession-fatah-mahmoud-abbas-gaza-west-bank-middle-east-news-76251/

Published in Tribune

In response to the savage massacre committed by the Israeli Army against the “ Marches of Return and Seige Lifting” of yesterday in Gaza, the White House in Washington DC released a statement blaming Hamas for using violence, and supporting the “ right of Israel to defend itself”. Also Mr Jason Greenblat the American Envoy to the Middle East “ Peace process” wrote an article in the Israeli newspaper “ Yisrael Hayoum” accusing Hamas of returning Gaza back to the “ Iron Age”

Till Nine PM yesterday evening, the death toll among Gaza Palestinians participating in the Marches reached the number of 55 (increased to 58 by 1:26 am this morning), in addition to 2410 injured. According to the Ministry of health in Gaza, there are 203 children and 78 women among the injured. 40 of these were in a critical conditions and 76 seriously injured. 1204 got injured by live bullet, and 130 by rubber covered metal bullets. Further than that the Ministry of health report includes calculations about the parts of the bodies that were injured, for instance 79 injured in the neck and the head, 76 in thier chests and stomaches, 164 in different places of their bodies, and 1055 in the lower parts of their bodies. As such many of the injured will be left with permanent disabilities life long.

How comes that these killings and injuries just in one day are merely practiced in the framework of “ Israel right to defend itself”?. How comes that later in the day the USA prevented a UN Security Council Statement approved by the other 14 members of the Council condemning the massacre and calling for the formation of an international committee of investigation about them?.

Beyond the shock from these positions, three issues should be emphasized (among others that there are no enough space for all to be discussed in a short column like this one):

The first among these is that United States is not any more just a supporter to Israel politically and militarily, but moreover United States is a partner in the Israeli ongoing settler colonial project in the ground. A latest research had shown that 15 percent of colonial settlers in West Bank (without East Jerusalem) today are Americans. Sara Yael Hirschhorn from Oxford University presented these results showing that there are sixty thousand settlers in West Bank only ( without the inclusion of East Jerusalem), who are originally Americans. Therfore President Abbas was fully right to describe the move of the American Embassy yesterday to Jerusalem as “ an establishment of an American Settler outpost in Palestine”. This is one.

Secondly, the significant point regarding the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem yesterday, is that it is about dictation of the final status results  in the ground in contradiction with Oslo Agreement article five text which stated that Jerusalem as a whole ( East and West) is subject to the final status negotiations. In other words Oslo Agreement included what the late Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini was saying all the time till he passed away in 2001, that the Palestinians property rights in West Jerusalem should be negotiated and agreed upon before any political agreement about the city and on how to share two capitals for two states in it. The Americans violated this article and adopted the Israeli position which again makes the American Embassy in Jerusalem of a colonial type as mentioned above. 

Thirdly: The American Administration becoming a partner of the Israeli settler colonial project, will share as well the Israeli position of finding no place to the Palestinians within this project. Accordingly the Palestinians should hide and show no presence, expressed by keeping fully silent towards what is imposed and dicatated, or they will pay the price by getting to be” removed” forcefully when they oppose. In this sense all kind of Palestinian struggle armed and non- armed become illegal according to this perspective because they make the Palestinian visible while he / she is supposed to be invisible. Adi Ophir wrote once and again that the Palestinian is punished not because he made something wrong, but he/she is punished becsuse he/ She is found in a place where the settler colonial project expect him/ her not to be existing in. Gaza wise this means that the Gazan Palestinians should continued acting in impotent way despite the move of the Embassy, and despite the anniversary of 70 years of the Nakba given also that 66 percent of Gaza residents are refugees according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics new report released yesterday.

It was James Zughby who wrote yesterday that the the Americans consider the Palestinians as” invisible victims” that do not count anything by themselves, but they merely represent a “ problem to Israel” that the latter has to deal with and solve. Accordingly no attention will be made to the plight of the Palestinians since 1948.

Article published in Akhbar el Balad: http://www.akhbarelbalad.net/ar/1/6/3933/

Photo credit: AFP Photo/Mohammed Abed

Published in Tribune

During his 30th of January participation in the opening ceremony of a new bypass road that links Binyamin block settlements in the West Bank with the city of Kfar Saba inside Israel, Mr Netanyahu the Prime Minister of Israel spoke about the “ Jewish return to their homeland” by building and creating roads and routes of transportation” Here in the heart of Israel as he said”. Besides this kind of well known repeated statements about the ongoing process of creating the” Greater Israel” on the expense of the Palestinians, Mr Netanyahu presented a new theme concerning his government aim “ To cancel and simply dissolve the concept of the periphery”. The meaning of that of course is “ dissolving the Palestinian country life”.

In its path towards an Israeli one state solution, today Netanyahu government feels that it succeeded in taking over Area C consisting of two third of the West Bank in addition to East Jerusalem( continuously expanding in the expense of West Bank) and Hebron 2( The Old City of Hebron that is under Israeli full control), and the Jordan valley. That all besides moving the Palestinian Refugees issues out of the table, while also it got earlier a free hand in regard to its policies towards the Palestinians indigenous population inside Israel. 

For that government the next ongoing step is about eliminating the Palestinians villages, by the two means of demographic elimination, and the landscape elimination. Worthy to mention here that these villages already lost their agricultural lands located in area C, or behind the separation wall.

There are different examples regarding the attempts for demographic elimination. One of the last examples is the ongoing voting in the Israeli Knesset for ousting Kufr Aqab, and Shu’afat Refugee Camp from Jerusalem, and the second is about the settlers attacks against the Palestinian villages in order to frighten them and push them to leave. One of the last examples regarding this is the settlers attack against Azzoun village close to Qalqilia leaving 60 people injured last month and the attacks on Hizma village near Jerusalem by the Israeli army including putting gates on its entrance. All this following the continuous evacuations of the Palestinian Bedouins from Area C, and preventing the Gazans to build or even to cultivate their lands that are adjacent to the borders with Israel.

These demographic elimination acts add up to the changing and the elimination of the landscape. Besides them the landscape is changed also by the separation wall, cutting the trees, expanding the settlements, preventing people from cultivating their lands in some areas, creating bypass roads, and other means. Now Mr Netanyahu came to tell openly what was the original aim of all of these steps. The aim was not security of the Israelis, but in the contrary: Security was used as a justification to expand the settlements infrastructure in the path of Israelizng the West Bank and to make it follow East Jerusalem in this regard.

Other charicteristic in Mr Netanyahu speech is that he talked about the periphery as a landscape, forgetting to mention the indegenous people who live in that landscape. For him neither these people, nor their rights count. For him they are just an obstacle that a solution might be found to it by either removing them from one location to other( as happening with the Bedouins), or by secondly evacuating them(Formerly Al Aqaba village close to Jenin and the old cities of Jerusalem and Hebron as examples, and currently Sosia village close to Hebron as one example.Finally and thirdly by simply destroying the villages as happened with the three villages of Yalo, Emuas and Beit Noba in 1967. 

The other charecteristic of Netanyahu statement is related to the racist concept of considering Palestine as a barren land (from the civilized). Therefore it is the responsibility of the civilized to “ modernize” it by “ dissolving the periphery” and getting rid of the non-civilized through this process.

As such, Israel looks to be already crossed the threshold between compromising the fate of the Palestinian occupied Territories through negotiations, and annexing them to Israel.Today Israel acts on the basis that East Jerusalem and West Bank are integral parts of Israel. In this regard the difference between East Jerusalem and West Bank Israeli politics is in that Jerusalem is annexed officially to Israel, and therefore the Palestinians of East Jerusalem carry an Israeli blue identity cards that give them the status of “ Jordanians citizens residing permanently in Israel”, while the West Bank people do not have such ID’s. Besides this difference the rest of the policies are the same towards both West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians.

Confronting these kinds of moves will require another kind of policies that are bottom up rather than top down, and that is by helping the Palestinians to create their facts in the ground, and standing strongly( in the ground, and not by only statements) against the Israeli steps of Israelization. The calls for the sides to go back to negotiations only while Israel is grabbing Palestine in the ground is certainly a very bad policy. Instead of moving forward it gives “ longer time out to Israel” to complete the Israelization process. 

Further than that association agreements with Palestine, more recognitions of it, and more elevation of it in the international arena is badly needed as a complimentary to building Palestine in the ground and not as a contrary to the latter.

Article published in Akhbar Al Balad

Photo credit: Reuters

Published in Tribune