Rawhi Fattouh, former interim PA President, is a longtime member of Fatah [Photo by Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images]
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas announced a decree on Wednesday delineating how a succession to the presidency would take place.
According to the decree the chair of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) would act as interim president for at least 90 days until a new round of elections for the presidency are held.
The current chair of the PNC is Rawhi Fattouh  — a longtime participant of Palestinian politics, including as a member of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Rawhi Fattouh is a little known figure for many general MENA watchers so The New Arab looks at who he is and why Mahmoud Abbas tipped him as his potential successor?
A Fatah veteran
Fattouh was born in 1949 in a Rafah refugee camp after his family’s expulsion from a village near Asdod during the 1948 Nakba, what is now the Israeli city of Ashdod.
After the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, Fattouh travelled to Jordan the following year and joined Fatah’s armed wing the Al-Asifah forces.
Fattouh spent most of the 1970s and 80s in Syria, being involved in military operations in Syria in 1973 and also taking up a number of Fatah administrative roles in the country.
He has been a member of the PNC since 1983 and in 1996, after returning to Gaza two years prior, was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) representing Fatah for the Rafah district.
He also served as speaker of the PLC between 2004 and 2006. During this period, he spent a brief stint as interim president of the Palestinian Authority following the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, which saw the eventual election of Mahmoud Abbas.
He also served as minister for agriculture in 2003, and in 2006 was appointed as Abbas’ personal representative.
In 2008 he was accused of smuggling 3,000 cell phones from Jordan to the occupied West Bank, although he denied any wrongdoing, blaming his driver.
US pressure and a PA under siege
According to sources speaking to The New Arab’s sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Abbas’s move was to prevent Hussein al-Sheikh, the Secretary-General of the PLO’s Executive Committee, from assuming the role of vice president after speculation he would take the position and hold a direct line of succession.
The report also said that Abbas had asked Fatah’s Central Committee to propose candidates for the position, but the committee feared it would generate internal strife and refused. Abbas also refused to make a selection.
The reported noted that the US and Arab states have been pressuring the PA to reform itself and designate a successor incase the presidency becomes vacant.
Similar dynamics of US pressure and fears of infighting were reported by Haaretz, which said that as well as al-Sheikh, the decision was meant to prevent the Senior Fatah members Jibril Rajoub and Mahmoud al-Aloul from being successors.
However, the report noted that some Fatah members were concerned that Abbas and his circle are attempting to retain their control over the PA for the future.
Likewise, fears that a vacancy would see the external imposition of a leader were also mentioned by sources speaking to the publication.
The PA is currently under severe stress amid Israel’s escalated raids and settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, as well as its war on Gaza.
For its part, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has taken a number of policy decisions aimed at undermining the PA’s ability to govern the West Bank.
This includes withholding tax revenue for the authority and attempting to severe ties between Israeli and Palestinian banks. He also recently announced his intention to annex the West Bank in 2025.
