The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), under pressure to appoint a second-in-command to its ageing leader, Mahmoud Abbas, created a vice president position after meeting with senior officials on April 24.
Abbas, who is also president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), promised during an emergency Arab summit in early March that the position would be created. Yet it remains unclear who will eventually fill the post.
The aim is to prevent a power struggle after Abbas vacates his post – a scenario that Israel could exploit to cause the collapse of the PA, fully annexe the occupied West Bank and ethnically cleanse Gaza, experts told media.
Yet Dianna Buttu, a former legal adviser to the PLO, believes creating a vice president post in the PA will not avert a power struggle once Abbas is gone – rather, it could exacerbate conflict.
“The more fragmented the PA becomes, the more it will create a power vacuum … and that vacuum will be filled by external actors and mainly by the Americans and Israelis,” she warned.
Abbas, 89, assumed control of the PLO and PA after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in November 2004 and has ruled without a popular mandate since dissolving parliament in 2007.
His Fatah party dominates the PA and PLO. The long-defunct parliament has faded away, and critics have slammed Abbas for seeming to undermine attempts to hold elections that could revive it.
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