Power Vacuum

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claimed yesterday that he won't run for reelection to the presidency in January. He said Israel's detrimental settlement policy in the occupied territories—and U.S. refusal to press Netanyahu's government on the matter—prompted his decision. He also attacked Hamas for thwarting efforts to reconcile the two Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas; the Hamas spokesman replied that Abbas "should turn to the Palestinian people and admit that the process has failed and that an emphasis should be given to the resistance, while undertaking genuine steps to achieve Palestinian reconciliation."

With the president's decision to step down, who will succeed him? Most likely, Abbas's successor will come from inside his own party, Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)—recognized internationally as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," according to the Oslo agreement. Fatah also enjoys broad support among West Bank Palestinians, who comprise the majority of Palestinian voters—and are not likely to elevate a member of the rival Hamas government in Gaza to the presidency. Herein, we survey the competition. (Full disclosure: a family member works for the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.)

Candidate: Ahmad (Abu Ala) Qurei
Age: 72 years old
Chances: low
The veteran Palestinian leader from Jerusalem joined Fatah in 1968 and has helped manage Palestinian financial and economic operations since the 1970s. As a member of Fatah's Central Committee, he played a key role in negotiating the Oslo Accords, which restored the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to the occupied territories in 1993. Qurei also served as Prime Minister from 2003 until 2006, when Hamas defeated his Fatah party in legislative elections. A Qurei presidency would be welcomed by officials in the U.S. and Israel because of his long involvement in the peace process. But he does not have a strong popular constituency. He has also been linked to corruption charges and is known to have close ties with Israeli businesses. Even his popularity inside Fatah has been on the decline: he lost his spot in the movement's Central Committee following internal elections in August.

Candidate: Ismail Haniyeh
Age: 46 years old
Chances: low
The political leader of Hamas became prime minister after his party's 2006 electoral victory over Fatah. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed him in June 2007 as a result of international refusal to work with a Hamas-led Palestinian government, but Haniyeh rejected the decree and set up his own rival government, which he claims is the legitimate Palestinian Authority, in the Gaza Strip. Long considered one of Hamas's more moderate leaders, Haniyah has indicated willingness to accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and to offer Israel a long-term hudna, or truce, if Israel recognized Palestinian national rights (including a right of return for Palestinian refugees that Israel says is a dealbreaker). A Haniyah presidential bid would likely enjoy widespread support in Gaza, but it would face resistance in the West Bank. Israel and the West would most likely refuse to work with any Hamas president—regardless of whether he was democratically elected or not—because they consider Hamas a terrorist group that continues publicly to doubt Israel's right to exist.

Candidate: Hanan Ashrawi
Age: 63 years old
Chances: moderate
The Palestinian legislator and scholar has captivated international audiences with her activism since the first intifada in 1987. She served as the official Palestinian spokesperson during the peace process between 1991 and 1993. In the Palestinian Authority's first elections in 1996, Ashrawi was elected to the Jerusalem District of the Palestinian Legislative Council and was appointed to run the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. Soon, though, she resigned to protest the culture of corruption in government and Yasir Arafat's handling of the peace process. Today, she is a member of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's Third Way party. Ashrawi is a devout Christian and a feminist, which has drawn occasional criticism from Islamist groups like Hamas in the past. But she remains popular in the West Bank—and a favorite among Palestinian academics and civil-society groups. Her presidency would be welcomed by the international community because of her commitment to diplomacy, but Israelis would not take much comfort because of her strong negotiating positions and emphasis on the right of return to Israel for millions of Palestinian refugees.

Candidate: Mustafa Barghouti
Age: 55 years old
Chances: moderate
The Palestinian democracy activist ran for president in the 2005 elections and came in second to Abbas, with close to 20 percent of the vote. In 2002, Barghouti, along with other Palestinian academics and activists, established the Palestinian National Initiative, which they intended it to be a political alternative to the PLO and Islamist groups like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Barghouti is an advocate of nonviolent resistance to Israel's occupation, and supports a diplomatic, two-state solution. His support base is considerable in the West Bank but still far from sufficient to propel him to the presidency. Israel and the United States would likely welcome his presidency but would also find him to be a formidable negotiator.

Candidate: Mahmoud Dahlan
Age: 48 years old
Chances: moderate
The political career of the Fatah leader in Gaza—where Fatah is in something like a state of siege—has been laden with controversy. He is accused of having established a private army in Gaza in 2003 that later, through a series of kidnappings and assassinations of Hamas activists, played a key role in the Gaza violence that resulted in Hamas's military takeover of the coastal territory in the summer of 2007. He is also accused of corruption and human-rights abuses during his term as chief of the Gaza security forces. He is frequently labeled a traitor by Hamas because he conducted frequent, comfortable negotiations—and even joint-security initiatives—with Israel; but his critics and his allies agree that he is a master conniver. Despite all this, he remains one of the most popular figures within Fatah for taking on Hamas and recently secured a spot on its Central Committee. He has good relations with the United States and Israel.

Candidate: Salam Fayyad
Age: 57 years old
Chances: high
The current Palestinian prime minister is largely viewed as a technocrat with little public support and backing. But respect for Fayyad in the West Bank has grown because of the economic-development projects his government has shepherded in recent years. During that time, he has been touring West Bank villages in what seems like an effort to build a support base for a presidential run. (There are no polls to show whether it worked.) Fayyad, who has received favorable coverage in the Western press, was even called the "Palestinian Ben-Gurion" (a reference to Israel's founding father) by Israeli President Shimon Peres. Still, his economic successes may not be a deciding factor in the election; to improve his chances, he'll need to convince Palestinians that he can be more forceful in disagreements with Israel. Hamas and its supporters view Fayyad with suspicion because of his involvement in security clampdowns against its members in the West Bank.

Candidate: Muhammad (Abu Maher) Ghneim
Age: 72 years old
Chances: high
This Palestinian leader was also born in Jerusalem and was involved in the founding of both Fatah in 1954 and the PLO in 1964. A soldier by profession, he oversaw Fatah's forces in Syria after they were pushed out of Jordan in 1970. He was a strong opponent of the Oslo accords and opted to remain in exile until Palestine was "liberated." Yet he returned anyway this summer to participate in Fatah's internal elections, where he won the Central Committee poll, with a significant majority of the vote. Despite the fact that he is increasingly being spoken of as Abbas's natural successor because of his senior position in both Fatah and the PLO—he is second only to Abbas—some Palestinian officials say he might not be the ideal candidate because of his limited political skills and hard-line positions on Israel.

Candidate: Marwan Barghouti
Age: 50 years old
Chances: high
Currently serving five life sentences in Israel for his involvement in violence against Israel during the second Intifada, Barghouti enjoys huge support in the Palestinian territories. Before his arrest, he led Fatah in the West Bank. And even after he'd been jailed, he won a spot on Fatah's Central Committee this summer. He has frequently expressed his support of peaceful negotiations with Israel, and, like most other Fatah leaders, has long accepted the two-state principle. He speaks fluent Hebrew, which he learned during an earlier prison sentence. Barghouti (a distant cousin of the candidate Mustafa Barghouti) has good relations with Hamas and has constantly advocated Palestinian reconciliation. (Hamas says it will demand Barghouti's release as part of any prisoner-exchange deal with Israel.) But for those reasons his presidency might also meet with resistance and suspicion in both Israel and the United States.