Abbas lays groundwork for succession, names Fattouh as interim leader

Rawhi Fattouh has been named as the temporary replacement for Palestine's President Mahmud Abbas when the post becomes vacant.

Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.

Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.

But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in Gaza in 2007.

In a decree on Wednesday, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, 75, would be his temporary replacement should the position become vacant.

"If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily," it said.

'Delicate stage in the history of the homeland'

The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a "force majeure", it said.

The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.

The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.

The decree refers to the "delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause" as Israel's war rages in Gaza.

Political and ideological rifts have shaped the rift in relations between Hamas and Fatah.

The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Palestinian Authority is in a difficult economic condition, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by calls from Israeli far-right ministers to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank—an ambition increasingly less concealed by Benjamin Netanyahu's regime.