Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas, also known by the kunya Abu Mazen, is a Palestinian politician who has led the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since the mid-2000s. Born in Safed in 1935, his family fled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and settled in Syria, where he later studied law before completing a doctorate in Moscow.

Abbas was a founding member of Fatah alongside Yasser Arafat and rose through the PLO ranks, becoming known as an early advocate of negotiations with Israel. He was a principal Palestinian architect of the Oslo Accords, signing the 1993 Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn. In March 2003 he became the PA's first prime minister under Arafat, resigning months later amid disputes over authority.

Following Arafat's death, Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005 for a four-year term. No subsequent presidential election has been held; his mandate has been extended by PLO institutions, a fact critics inside and outside Palestine cite when questioning his legitimacy. After Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections and seized Gaza in 2007, Abbas's effective authority has been confined largely to parts of the West Bank.

Under Abbas, the Palestinians secured UN non-member observer State status via General Assembly Resolution 67/19 in November 2012, and Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 2015. He has pursued recognition through multilateral bodies while maintaining security coordination with Israel, a policy he has periodically threatened to suspend.

Abbas also chairs the PLO Executive Committee and leads Fatah. His tenure has been marked by the stalled two-state framework, internal Palestinian division with Hamas, repeated failed reconciliation efforts (Cairo 2011, Beach Camp 2014, Algiers 2022), and declining domestic approval reflected consistently in Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research polling.