Mahmoud Abbas has spent nearly two decades turning the Palestinian Authority into a fortress of one. At 90 years old, the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the PA has outlasted his mandates, his rivals, and several American administrations. He achieves this not through popular acclaim or military brilliance, but through a surgical, deliberate fragmentation of his own inner circle. By ensuring no single figure within the Fatah party gains enough momentum to be viewed as a natural heir, Abbas has made himself the only thing preventing a total collapse of the current order. This strategy of controlled instability keeps the Palestinian leadership in a permanent state of adolescence, unable to mature beyond the shadow of its aging patriarch.
The "Divide and Rule" approach isn't a byproduct of his long tenure; it is the central pillar of his survival. To understand how a leader with single-digit approval ratings remains in power, one must look at the intentional hollowed-out state of Palestinian institutional life.
The Architecture of Isolation
Control in Ramallah is managed through a complex web of security agencies and financial levers. Abbas does not face a unified opposition within Fatah because he has sliced the party into competing fiefdoms. Each potential successor—whether they lead a security wing or a civil department—is kept on a short leash. If one individual grows too prominent, their funding is squeezed or their subordinates are reassigned.
This is a ghost-cabinet of sorts. There are names often whispered in the corridors of the Mukataa, the presidential headquarters, but none carry the weight of a true deputy. By refusing to appoint a Vice President, a position that does not officially exist in the PA's Basic Law but could be created by decree, Abbas ensures that the day after his departure will be defined by chaos rather than a transition. This chaos is his greatest shield. International stakeholders, particularly Israel and the United States, fear the vacuum that would follow him more than they dislike his stagnation.
Security Fiefdoms and Managed Rivalries
The Palestinian security apparatus is not a monolithic force. It is a collection of overlapping agencies, including the General Intelligence Service (GIS) and the Preventative Security Force (PSF). Historically, these branches have been headed by men with their own political ambitions. Abbas keeps these leaders in a state of perpetual friction.
Consider the dynamic between the heads of these services. In a healthy state, intelligence and internal security would cooperate under a clear hierarchy. In the PA, these agencies often operate as private intelligence networks for their directors. Abbas plays the role of the final arbiter. When Majed Faraj, the intelligence chief, gains significant international backing, rumors of a reshuffle or the promotion of a rival suddenly appear in the local press. This keeps Faraj—and others like Hussein al-Sheikh—focused on defending their current standing rather than building a platform for the presidency.
The result is a leadership class that is vertically integrated toward Abbas but horizontally disconnected from each other. They cannot conspire because they do not trust one another. They cannot build a popular base because their power is derived entirely from the President’s signature on a paycheck or a promotion decree.
The Financial Noose
Money remains the most effective tool in the Abbas toolkit. The Palestinian Authority’s budget is opaque, and the President exerts significant personal control over the Palestine National Fund. For a Fatah official, being cast out of the President’s favor isn’t just a political setback; it is an economic death sentence.
We see this pattern repeated with the marginalization of figures like Nasser al-Qidwa or the long-exiled Mohammed Dahlan. When Qidwa, a nephew of Yasser Arafat and a respected diplomat, attempted to form an independent list for the canceled 2021 elections, he was promptly stripped of his positions and expelled from Fatah. It was a clear signal to the rest of the Central Committee: the party is the President, and the President is the party.
The financial strangulation extends to the grassroots. Civil society organizations and local Fatah branches that show too much independence find their "operational expenses" delayed. This creates a culture of sycophancy where the primary goal of any aspiring politician is to prove their loyalty to the current office-holder rather than to the Palestinian public.
The Strategic Cancellation of Democracy
Elections are the greatest threat to a managed succession. In 2021, Abbas issued a decree for legislative and presidential elections, the first in fifteen years. The excitement on the Palestinian street was palpable. Hundreds of thousands of young people, who had never voted in their lives, rushed to register.
Then, the polls showed Fatah was likely to fracture. Multiple "rebel" Fatah lists emerged, threatening to hand a victory to Hamas or a coalition of secular reformers. Abbas used the pretext of Israel's refusal to allow voting in East Jerusalem to indefinitely "postpone" the elections. While the Jerusalem issue is a legitimate and sensitive national concern, most analysts and a majority of Palestinians saw the move for what it was: a self-preservation tactic.
By killing the elections, Abbas also killed the only mechanism that could have produced a legitimate successor. In a democratic system, the "next person in line" is determined by the voters. In the Abbas system, there is no line. There is only a crowded room of contenders waiting for the light to go out so they can scramble for the chair.
The Cost of the Vacuum
The price of this strategy is the total erosion of Palestinian institutional legitimacy. The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), once a site of genuine debate, was dissolved by judicial decree—a move widely seen as legally dubious but politically convenient. Without a parliament, Abbas rules by decree.
This lack of oversight has allowed corruption to become systemic. When there are no checks and balances, the "Divide and Rule" strategy flourishes because everyone in the upper echelons is compromised. If everyone has a hand in the cookie jar, no one can point a finger at the person holding the lid.
The younger generation of Palestinians is the most affected. They see a leadership that is more interested in internal maneuvering than in ending the occupation or fixing a collapsing economy. This has led to a surge in independent armed groups in the West Bank, such as the Lion’s Den, which operate outside the traditional Fatah or Hamas command structures. These groups are a direct response to the PA’s perceived irrelevance. If the official leadership cannot offer a path forward, the youth will find their own, often more violent, alternatives.
The International Complicity
Abbas does not act in a vacuum. His longevity is supported by an international community that is terrified of what comes next. Israel, despite its public rhetoric against Abbas, relies on the PA's security coordination to maintain stability in the West Bank. The US and Europe continue to fund the PA because the alternative—a Hamas takeover or total anarchy—is viewed as a regional catastrophe.
Abbas knows this. He uses the threat of "The Deluge" to silence international criticism of his autocratic tendencies. He essentially tells the world, "It’s me or the fire." As long as he can maintain a baseline of security coordination and prevent the West Bank from exploding, the international community is willing to overlook the fact that he is systematically dismantling the foundations of a future Palestinian state.
The Inevitable Crisis
The tragedy of the "Divide and Rule" strategy is that it only works while the leader is alive. It is a short-term survival tactic with a 100% failure rate in the long run. By ensuring that no one is ready to take over, Abbas has guaranteed that his eventual exit will trigger a power struggle that could turn violent.
Succession in Fatah will not be a polite meeting of the minds. It will be a collision of security chiefs, each with their own militia and their own foreign backers. Because there is no agreed-upon process—no vice president, no functioning parliament, and no recent election results—the only way to claim the chair will be through force or a backroom deal that the public will likely reject.
The Fatah Central Committee consists of several men who believe they are the rightful heirs. Hussein al-Sheikh currently holds the most powerful administrative positions, but he lacks a popular base. Jibril Rajoub controls the sports federations and has deep ties within the party machinery. Marwan Barghouti, the most popular Fatah figure by far, sits in an Israeli prison serving multiple life sentences. Abbas has done nothing to bridge these divides or facilitate a consensus.
He has spent his career building a maze with no exit. The walls are high, the paths are narrow, and he is the only one who knows the way through. But once he is gone, the maze remains, and the people trapped inside will have to tear it down just to see the sun.
The PA is currently operating on borrowed time and borrowed legitimacy. The refusal to cultivate a successor isn't a sign of strength, but a confession of deep-seated insecurity. A leader who truly cared for the national cause would have spent the last decade building institutions that could outlive him. Instead, Abbas has built a monument to himself, constructed from the rubble of Palestinian democracy.
The day the chair becomes empty, the "Divide and Rule" tactic will reach its logical conclusion. The division will remain, but the rule will vanish, leaving a disillusioned population to navigate a crisis that was entirely preventable. The vacuum is not a mistake; it is the design.
