Mahmoud Abbas has utterly failed to show leadership at a moment of crisis

Middle East Eye

25-04-2025

Eighteen months into the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech before the Palestinian Central Council this week that - at least superficially - warrants serious attention.
His words highlight the depth of the Palestinian tragedy. Israel bears responsibility for the deaths of more than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza and nearly a thousand more in the occupied West Bank; for the total destruction of Gaza, making its population refugees on their own land; and for the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank.
But Abbas once again chose to use his platform not to call for unity or resistance, but to launch a crude verbal assault on Hamas - this time using language reminiscent of street insults.
'Sons of dogs, just release whoever you're holding and be done with it,' Abbas said, referring to the Israeli hostages still remaining in Gaza. 'Shut down [Israel's] excuses and spare us.'
Criticism of Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries, and its actions on 7 October 2023 is valid and necessary. There must be a critical and open intra-Palestinian discourse.
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But it is unacceptable that, in the face of the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza, Abbas's primary message is to condemn Hamas, without offering a vision or a plan for Palestinian unity - especially given the existential threats looming over the Palestinian people.
Worse still is his manipulation of historical facts to erase his own responsibility for the fragmentation of the Palestinian national movement. It was Abbas who undermined the results of the 2006 elections, supervised by international observers, after Hamas won a majority. The ensuing rift between Fatah and Hamas eventually led to Hamas's takeover of Gaza and the territory's geographic and political division from the West Bank.
Deepening alienation
Abbas shares equal blame for this split. Whether through agreeing to elections he had no intention of honouring, or by refusing to accept their outcome, his role in the crisis is undeniable.
Other Palestinian factions, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian National Initiative, boycotted the session in which Abbas spoke - a testament to the deepening alienation between the president and the broader Palestinian political spectrum.
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Public opinion echoes this sentiment. A September 2024 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that in a hypothetical election between three candidates, only six percent of Palestinians would vote for Abbas, compared with 32 percent for Fatah's Marwan Barghouti and 31 percent for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces weeks after the poll was conducted.
Even if one were to accept Abbas's narrative blaming Hamas for the Gaza schism, nearly 20 years have passed since the last election. During that time, successive Israeli governments - especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's - have strategically used the Palestinian split to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Abbas's narrative that Hamas is to blame for our current predicament absolves both Israel and himself from their shared responsibility in this national catastrophe
Why has Abbas not proposed a political plan for reconciliation? If the Palestinian Authority (PA) is meant to represent all Palestinians, then his failure to restore unity is a monumental dereliction of duty. Today, Palestinians are no longer split only into 1948 and 1967 groups; we now face a triple fragmentation of 1948 territories, the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Abbas's speech reflects both an acknowledgment of the real and growing dangers facing Palestinians, and a deliberate denial of the realities on the ground, particularly in the occupied West Bank, before 7 October. This denial helps him avoid accountability for the failure of his political path, as Israel openly declared its intentions to annex and ethnically cleanse parts of the West Bank well before the Gaza war.
In 2022 alone, under the so-called 'unity government' of Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, more than 1,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were displaced and around 150 were killed, including dozens of minors. Settlement expansion continued unabated. Palestinian prisoners suffered worsening conditions. Al-Aqsa Mosque remained under threat.
Regardless of the Palestinian political situation, Israel has veered sharply rightwards over the past decade. Despite close security coordination between the PA and Israel - with Palestinian security forces even raiding refugee camps - and Abbas offering no serious plan to counter settler violence, Israel has steadily moved to render the Palestinian issue obsolete through de facto annexation.
'No future in Palestine'
To understand Israel's strategy, one needs only to revisit a 2017 policy document by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which called to dismantle refugee camps, weaken the PA, encourage 'voluntary emigration' (a euphemism for expulsion), and break any chance of territorial contiguity for a Palestinian state.
The despair now visible across the occupied West Bank - with billboards and graffiti funded by Israeli campaigns declaring: 'You have no future in Palestine' - was envisioned long before 7 October.
Framing Israeli policies as mere reactions to 7 October flattens the discourse and allows Israel to justify its ongoing atrocities on the global stage. Even when a deal was within reach - including a Gaza ceasefire, a phased return of all hostages and an Israeli withdrawal of troops - Israel violated the terms. Hostage families themselves have accused Netanyahu of sabotaging the deal and endangering their loved ones.
Mahmoud Abbas is in his final act as betrayer of the Palestinian cause Read More »
Israel then uses these justifications to expel tens of thousands of people from the occupied West Bank, shut down Unrwa schools, and withhold the PA's tax funds. Abbas's narrative that Hamas is to blame for our current predicament absolves both Israel and himself from their shared responsibility in this national catastrophe.
What was even more puzzling about Abbas's speech was his call for Hamas to lay down its arms and hand over control of Gaza to the PA. In other words, the only legitimate arms would be those held by Palestinian security forces, and the PA would work with Egypt to rebuild Gaza.
It's not the proposal itself that is puzzling - on the contrary, it makes sense - but rather the expectation that Israel would allow Fatah or the PA to return to Gaza, given that Netanyahu himself declared as recently as February: 'On the day after the war in Gaza, there will be no Hamas and no Palestinian Authority.' He added that he was 'committed' to US President Donald Trump's plan 'to create a different Gaza'.
The Abbas speech was tragic, especially since he leads the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the historic body officially recognised as the representative of the Palestinian people. Once a unifying force, the PLO now presides over a fractured movement. The boycott of Abbas's council meeting by key factions reflects this unprecedented crisis.
In the face of real and imminent threats of mass expulsion, especially in Gaza but also in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians need their leaders to be unifiers, not dividers. Abbas had a platform to call for unity and resistance in the face of Israeli war crimes. Instead, he chose vilification and denial.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.