Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Jamal Aruri/AFP via Getty Images
Rawhi Fattouh, the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, attends a meeting in Ramallah on July 20, 2004
(JNS) — Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to appoint a longtime confidante, Rawhi Fattouh, 75, as his successor “provides valuable clarity and strengthens governance,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told JNS on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the P.A.’s Wafa news agency reported that Abbas, 89, signed a declaration that should his position become vacant, Fattouh — currently chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council — will serve as the P.A.’s supreme leader, “pending the holding of presidential elections as per the Palestinian Elections Law.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insisted that an “effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority” should govern the Gaza Strip after the Israel’s war against Hamas there ends.
In January, Blinken pressed Abbas on “administrative reforms, which, if implemented, would benefit the Palestinian people.” Sky News Arabia described the two men’s meeting in Ramallah as “tense” and marked by “arguments.”
The last election for the position of P.A. chief was in 2006, which means Abbas is currently in the 20th year of his four-year term.
Fattouh, one of the few surviving members of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s founding generation, served as the Palestinian Authority’s interim leader for two months after Yasser Arafat’s death in November 2004.
In March 2008, Israeli border guards caught Fattouh at the Allenby border crossing with 3,000 cell phones in his car, which he tried to smuggle from Jordan into Judea and Samaria using his Israeli-issued VIP entry permit. The incident reportedly “enraged” Abbas, and he banned Fattouh from entering his offices.
Last year, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revoked Fattouh’s VIP entry permit after he paid a visit to a released Palestinian terrorist who served decades in jail for killing a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.
Also in 2023, Fattouh said Arabs had lived in Jerusalem for more than 1.5 million years, while the Jewish people had only been in the region for 6,000 years. Therefore, according to him, “Jerusalem belongs exclusively to the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslims.”
Following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border massacre of some 1,200 people in the northwestern Negev, Fattouh praised the terrorist group’s “brave resistance,” Wafa reported.
