Mahmoud Abbas is the long-serving president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank. He is 89 years old and in his 21st year in power. He dissolved parliament in 2007 and rules by decree, repressing public debate. He has repeatedly failed to hold elections and lacks the legitimacy to speak for Palestinians as a whole. He only recently denounced Hamas's murderous attacks of October 7th 2023 for the first time. He has done nothing to clean up his corrupt administration. He recently announced Palestinian elections, with conditions for Hamas's participation including endorsing a two-state settlement, negotiations with Israel and his demand for a monopoly on Palestinian weapons. Arab leaders still pay lip service to the Palestinian cause, but the Palestinians are losing their centrality in Arab affairs. Joseph Aoun, Lebanon's president, wants to disarm the Palestinian militias in Lebanon's refugee camps, and Syria's new government has pledged to do the same.
The PA was established in 1994. It has depended since its inception on customs revenues that Israel collects on its behalf at its ports. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, has blocked the transfer of those funds and stopped Israeli banks from corresponding with Palestinian ones, making it impossible for firms to pay for goods from Israel. The PA has cut employee salaries in half or more and is behind in paying them. Since the October 7th attacks, Israel has barred Palestinian manual labourers from entering.
In recent elections for doctors' and lawyers' unions, Fatah trounced Hamas in most of the West Bank, though support for Hamas, which rose after its October 2023 attacks, has subsided.
Nasser al-Kidwa, the nephew of the first Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, was expelled from Fatah in 2021 but reconciled with Abbas in October 2025. He has been tipped as a Palestinian representative on Donald Trump's "board of peace" for Gaza.
Abbas insists all money for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the panel of Palestinian technocrats appointed under Donald Trump's peace plan, flows through him.
On September 21st 2025 Australia, Britain and Canada formally recognised Palestinian statehood. On the ground, the would-be state is sinking from view. Smotrich's vision of annexation would leave Israel controlling all but 18% of the West Bank, reducing Palestinian cities to six stranded islands. Settler farming outposts have quadrupled in number since 2018 and now cover 14% of the West Bank, according to Kerem Navot, an Israeli monitor. In September 2025 Israel gave final approval for e1, a settlement bloc of 3,400 homes that would cut the West Bank through its centre.
The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.