New uncertainty looms over Abbas succession

With more than two decades of trying to secure an independent Palestinian state through negotiations at a hopeless dead end, the ageing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas now hopes to begin scaling down his responsibilities, with a view towards an orderly succession of power.

But after a decade in which Abbas failed to groom a deputy or successor, in keeping with a tradition of one-man rule in the Arab world and in order to cast himself as indispensable, analysts in the West Bank and Gaza do not expect the transition to be smooth. Indeed, the sense in the Palestinian Authority's de facto capital, Ramallah, is that the lack of any one outstanding candidate to succeed Abbas, and infighting within his Fatah movement, promise to make the process tortuous, chaotic, dangerous and perhaps unworkable.

Nabil Shaath, a long-time adviser to Abbas and a former foreign minister who now serves as Fatah's foreign relations commissioner, told The Independent: "He thinks it's about time he reduces his load but he is responsible enough not to leave things behind in a way that disturbs matters.

Shaath stressed that Abbas, 80, was not contemplating, for now, relinquishing his most powerful post, the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, but does want to give up his positions as head of the PLO executive committee and of Fatah, the ruling party, provided this can be done in a smooth way.