President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree granting the vice-president of the PLO Executive Committee the power to temporarily assume the presidency of the Palestinian Authority in the event of a vacancy (Photo AFP).
By Ricardo Mohrez Muvdi
The recent decree issued by Mahmoud Abbas, granting the Vice-President of the PLO Executive Committee the power to temporarily assume the presidency of the Palestinian Authority in the event of a vacancy, is a political manoeuvre cloaked in legality but devoid of legitimacy. It is the clearest reflection of a leadership that has lost touch with its people and with the very essence of the Palestinian cause.
Abbas, who has clung to power for more than twenty years without calling either presidential or legislative elections, seeks to shield his closest circle in the face of the inevitable political collapse of a structure corroded by corruption and dependence on the occupier. While the Palestinian people endure occupation, blockade, and repression, the Palestinian Authority is devoted to ensuring the continuity of its administration under the guise of institutional stability.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This decree does not seek to guarantee a democratic transition but rather to perpetuate a system based on political and economic subordination to Israel through the infamous “security coordination”, which turns the PA into an instrument of control over its own people.
From Ramallah, Abbas attempts to build a parallel legality that serves the interests of the occupier and the powers that fund his bureaucratic structure. Yet this legality lacks all popular legitimacy. The Palestinian people do not recognise it, for they know that true authority is not imposed from an office, but earned through resistance — from the streets of Nablus and Jenin, from the refugee camps, from the diaspora that has never stopped dreaming of return.
The PLO, hijacked by a complacent elite, must be rescued from its institutional paralysis. It must once again represent all Palestinians, not merely a group that governs under the protection of the occupation. National unity cannot be built on authoritarian decrees or on the exclusion of the forces of resistance, but upon the collective will for liberation.
Mahmoud Abbas may decree successors, but he cannot decree legitimacy. The Palestinian people, both inside and outside their homeland, have already awakened. They will no longer accept constitutional farces or subservient governments. Palestine needs leadership that emerges from the suffering and dignity of its people, not from complacency with the occupier.
History will judge harshly those who, in the name of authority, betrayed their people’s cause. But it will also honour the voices of those who, from wherever they are in the world, raise their words to remind us all that the only legitimate authority is the one born of resistance and hope.
