Palestinians face uncertainties over Abbas succession

Despite his ripe age, past health issues and low popularity ratings, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has consistently ignored calls to name a successor.

One of his advisors dismisses as "rumours of suspicious origin" any ideas that the 81-year-old head of the Fatah faction and Palestinian Authority (PA) might do so now.
Yet his brief medical scare this month was a reminder that Palestinian politics remains in a critical condition.
A deep schism between Fatah and its rival, Hamas, has induced a state of paralysis.
Hamas won a parliamentary poll in 2006 - a year after Mr Abbas became president.
In 2007, it reinforced its power in Gaza when it ousted Fatah's forces after days of clashes, leaving the PA to run parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
No presidential or legislative vote has been organised since. Recently, plans for local elections across the Palestinian territories were postponed.

Factional rift

Increasingly, there are quiet discussions among ordinary Palestinians as well as Israeli officials and foreign diplomats about who could be the next leader.
It is expected that Hamas will nominate Ismail Haniyeh, who is poised to take over as head of the Islamist movement.
A Hamas spokesman, Hazem Qassem, insists that any future presidential contest "must be an affair for all Palestinians, not an internal Fatah issue."
However, without political reconciliation, his group could well be sidelined.

According to Palestinian Basic Law, if the president dies or is incapacitated, the parliamentary speaker should fill in while elections are organised.
As the current speaker is Aziz Dweik of Hamas, some Fatah officials are already arguing this article no longer applies. They point out parliament has not met in nearly a decade.
The Fatah Central Committee - the party's top decision-making body - is likely to make key decisions about who will become president.
For Palestinians, the most popular of the committee's 20 members is Marwan Barghouti, who led Fatah's Tanzim militant group during the last uprising against the occupation, or intifada.
Although he is in jail in Israel, serving five life terms for involvement in murdering Israelis, he remains influential and has led efforts to end divisions with Hamas.
"Support for him is widespread in both Gaza and the West Bank," says Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey, which conducts regular polls.
"[In an election] he can defeat Abbas, he can defeat Haniyeh and looking at all leaders from the other factions, from Fatah, nobody gets even close to him."

Key names

If Mr Abbas does not stand in a future vote, Barghouti has indicated he would run for the presidency from his prison cell.

However, with no sign from Israel that it would release him, his part in any presidential race could be as kingmaker, rather than candidate.
Three other potentially important players have strong backing in the security forces:

• Mohammed Dahlan, led the PA's Preventive Security force in Gaza until 2007. He was expelled from Fatah after falling out with the president and now lives in luxurious exile in Abu Dhabi. He also has close ties to regional leaders

• Jibril Rajoub, is a former militant who used to command Preventive Security in the West Bank. Known for his blunt manner, he maintains his public profile through his role in sports bodies and is deputy secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee

• Current head of intelligence Majed Faraj joined the committee more recently. He was a negotiator in the last round of failed peace talks with Israel and apparently impressed Israelis and Americans

Division of posts?

While these men and others undoubtedly regard themselves as possible future presidents, there is no clear frontrunner and analysts warn against second-guessing the dynamics within Fatah.
"The names you hear about most often are basically former security people because these are whom Israel is most comfortable with and whom Western donors have interacted with and vetted," says Nathan Thrall of International Crisis Group.
"These sometimes correlate with what's realistic in Fatah power structures but oftentimes not."

One potential post-Abbas scenario would see the division of his titles: President, head of Fatah, and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
If different individuals took these jobs it would allow for a more collective political leadership.
This might involve Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator and secretary general of the PLO, and Nasser al-Kidwa, a former foreign minister and representative to the UN who is also nephew of the revered late leader, Yasser Arafat.
Some predict a dramatic power struggle once Mr Abbas is gone.
For now, though, he is trying to give the impression of being firmly in control and the jockeying for position remains mostly behind the scenes.