RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s call for elections has jeopardized his political future, forcing him to negotiate competing demands to engage with a friendlier US administration, remedy the rift with his militant rivals Hamas to keep the Fatah Movement indiscipline from breaking.
The presidential decree issued last month, which called for what would be the first Palestinian elections in 15 years, resulted from negotiations launched last year with Hamas to strengthen ranks in the face of unprecedented crises.
The Trump administration has cut off all aid and proposed a plan in the Middle East that would overwhelmingly favor Israel and allow it to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. A US-backed normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates last summer put annexation on hold, but left Palestinians increasingly isolated in the region.
So Abbas began talks with Hamas, the Islamic militant group that captured Gaza by force in 2007. The talks culminated in a presidential decree calling for legislative elections on May 22 and presidential elections on July 31.
It is far from clear that the elections will actually take place. To do so will require an agreement between Abbas’s secular Fatah movement and Hamas, which have been bitterly divided for more than a decade, despite multiple attempts at reconciliation. The two sides plan to meet in Cairo this week.
The outcome of the talks will largely depend on Abbas, 85. He spent decades in a nonviolent search for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war. Instead, he came to lead an increasingly autocratic and unpopular Palestinian Authority. limited to parts of the occupied West Bank.
Reconciliation with Hamas and the holding of elections could strengthen its legitimacy and meet Western long-standing demands. But even a limited victory for Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by Israel and Western countries, could lead to international isolation and loss of vital aid – as it did after Hamas won the last parliamentary elections in 2006.
In a briefing with Palestinian journalists, EU representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff welcomed the call for elections, but declined repeated requests to explain how the EU would respond to a Hamas victory.
“Do you put the cart in front of the horse?” he said. “Why don’t we start with the horse?”
President Joe Biden has restored aid to the Palestinians and promised a more equitable approach, but the Middle East conflict is likely to take its place away in more pressing crises such as the coronavirus pandemic, and the US is unlikely to engage the Palestinian government. which includes Hamas. Even an independent Hamas-backed government could cause problems for Western donors.
Elections could also precipitate the collapse of Abbas’s Fatah party. He has not prepared a successor and could face a leadership challenge from Marwan Barghouti, a popular Fatah leader serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role in the 2000 intifada or uprising.
“For Barghouti, the presidential candidate is his only release from prison, or so he thinks,” said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank.
Abbas may also have to fight Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah rival who was convicted of lack of corruption by a Palestinian court after being ousted by Abbas. Dahlan has a support base in his native Gaza and strong allies in the United Arab Emirates, where he lives in exile.
“So far the whole discussion is about having a list (Fatah), but it is not unlikely that there will be two or even three lists,” said Jehad Harb, a Palestinian political analyst. “Or Barghouti could wait for the presidential election.”
Hamas would face its own election challenges, where voters could blame him for the economic devastation in Gaza, which has endured three wars with Israel and an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the militant group took power.
One idea of the tour is to put together a joint list of Fatah and Hamas, but this would largely solve the outcome of the parliamentary elections before the votes are cast, raising questions about its legitimacy.
Yara Hawari, a senior analyst at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian international think tank, says that in any case, if the election continues, there will be a “technical result” that will allow Fatah and Hamas to maintain the status quo.
Both Palestinian authorities have suppressed dissent through torture and arbitrary arrest in areas under their control, and Israel routinely detains Palestinian activists and fights protests and boycott movements.
“He was already faked,” Hawari said. “If you have a society that is completely politically suppressed, it is usually punished for political opposition – that is already falsified.”
The unresolved issues between Fatah and Hamas could also be used as pretexts for canceling or postponing elections.
The two sides have yet to agree on a court to resolve electoral disputes and a mechanism to secure polling stations in Gaza, where Palestinian security forces have not been present since Hamas took power. The Palestinian Authority also demanded that Israel allow Palestinians in the annexed East Jerusalem to take part in the elections.
Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Investigations, said Abbas could cancel or postpone the election and blame Israel or Hamas.
“However, if Israel does not give him that pretext and Hamas does not give him that pretext, then his hand will be forced and he will have to go to the polls,” he said.
Abbas, whose presidential term expired in 2009, is already facing a crisis of legitimacy, and Western donors may rethink their support if the election is canceled. Abbas could also face a backlash from the Palestinian public.
“The process has its own dynamics, and although Abbas controls it, I think his calculation will have to adjust to what options he will have left if he decides to unilaterally cancel the election,” Shikaki said. “There will be significant disagreement within Fatah over this.”