Abbas declares Rawhi Fattouh will be interim PA head if presidency becomes vacant
Speaker of Palestinian National Council briefly served as interim PA president after Yasser Arafat’s death
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared Wednesday that if the presidency were to become vacant, he would be temporarily replaced by Rawhi Fattouh, the former speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who also served as interim PA chief following the death of Yasser Arafat, the administrative body announced.
A statement posted to the PA’s official Wafa news site said that in such an event, Fattouh will serve as interim president for no more than 90 days, during which presidential elections will be held. But if it is not possible to hold elections, the Palestinian Central Council can grant a one-time extension to the interim president’s term.
The 89-year-old Abbas has served as PA president since 2005. Generally unpopular among Palestinians, Abbas has long been criticized for his administration’s corruption and his refusal to hold elections.
Born in southern Gaza’s Rafah in 1950, Fattouh has spent his adult life as part of the Palestinian national movement.
Following the 1967 Six Day War, Fattouh moved to Jordan to join “al-Asifah,” the armed wing of Fatah, the main political party of the Palestinian national movement at the time, and afterward received military training in Iraq, according to a profile by the European Council of Foreign Relations.
Since 1983, he has been a member of the Palestinian National Council, the PA’s legislative body, and was elected as its speaker in 2020. He was appointed to the position of PA agriculture minister in 2003.
In 2008, he was caught trying to smuggle 3,000 cell phones into Israel from Jordan with the help of his Israeli-issued VIP pass.
In January 2023, then-defense minister Yoav Gallant revoked his entry permit along with those of two other PA officials because they visited a former Palestinian prisoner who was released after serving a 40-year sentence for murdering an Israeli soldier.
