has visited the headquarters of multiple Palestinian security agencies<\/a> in Ramallah, meeting with top generals and officers.<\/p>\nDuring those visits, the younger Mr. Abbas donned dark green outfits that bore a resemblance to the military fatigues worn by Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader who died in 2004. Yasser Abbas also goes by the same nickname that Mr. Arafat used, Abu Ammar.<\/p>\n
He has also accompanied his father on overseas trips, appearing in photos with presidents and foreign officials.<\/p>\n
His presence in high-level meetings has occasionally irked some foreign officials, including in the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe conveyed through official P.A. channels that it wasn\u2019t seemly for Abbas\u2019s son to be appearing in official delegations,\u201d said Barbara Leaf, a former assistant secretary of state overseeing Middle East policy. She said Yasser Abbas attended a meeting in Ramallah between Mahmoud Abbas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.<\/p>\n
Some senior Fatah officials have privately expressed opposition to Yasser Abbas\u2019s joining the Central Committee, but they have refrained from taking a public stand against him, fearing retribution from the elder Mr. Abbas, two of the Palestinian officials said.<\/p>\n
As long as he maintains his father\u2019s support, Yasser Abbas will easily be elected to the committee at the Fatah General Congress, they said. They also said they believed Mr. Abbas was interested in a powerful role in the Palestinian Authority, though it was unclear whether he was vying to become its president.<\/p>\n
Until now, Hussein al-Sheikh, the deputy of Mahmoud Abbas, has been thought to be best positioned to take over as the authority\u2019s top leader.<\/p>\n
Many Palestinians have expressed concern that Yasser Abbas and Mr. al-Sheikh would represent a continuation of the status quo, which offers them little hope for a revitalized, more democratic Palestinian Authority and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The authority has struggled to respond effectively to escalating violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, but it has worked closely with Israeli security forces to crush Hamas militant activity.<\/p>\n
Alaa, a resident of Hebron in the southern West Bank, in his 30s, said if it was true that Mr. Abbas was elevating his son into a senior position, it would affirm a widespread feeling that he was abandoning the interests of Palestinians.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no justice in this land,\u201d said Alaa, who asked for only his first name to be used, fearing retribution from the authorities. \u201cWe\u2019re living between a corrupt Palestinian government and a harsh Israeli occupation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s little hope with our leaders,\u201d he said. \u201cIt feels like everything leads to a dead end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Analysts said that Mahmoud Abbas, by assisting his son\u2019s rise, would be missing an opportunity to unite a divided Fatah, undermining the main Palestinian political alternative to Hamas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very problematic,\u201d said Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to Mahmoud Abbas and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group. \u201cFatah needs to rebrand itself, but bringing Yasser on the Central Committee achieves the exact opposite of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has held an iron grip on power by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37615,14456,91410,63970,69,51,207834,85,46,31151,207832,43,5243,2200,207833,88097,101389,77],"class_list":["post-444296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-abbas","tag-al","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-fatah","tag-gaza-strip","tag-hamas","tag-hebron-west-bank","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israeli-settlements","tag-mahmoud","tag-news","tag-palestinian-authority","tag-palestinians","tag-ramallah-west-bank","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}