Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a close aide as vice president, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said.
Hussein al-Sheikh was named “deputy (vice president) of the PLO leadership,” Wasel Abu Yousef, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, said on Saturday.
Abbas, 89, created the vice presidency position during the 32nd session of the Palestinian Central Council in Ramallah earlier this week.
During the session, Abbas reaffirmed his commitment to initiating a “comprehensive national dialogue”, which aims to engage “all Palestinian factions to achieve reconciliation and reinforce national unity,” the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Abbas also informed the committee on “upcoming political efforts aimed at halting the ongoing Israeli aggression and war of genocide in the Gaza Strip”.
These include ensuring the rapid entry of humanitarian and medical aid, full Palestinian governance over Gaza and pushing for a total Israeli withdrawal from the enclave as “a step towards launching a political process to end the occupation and realize an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital”, according to WAFA.
The appointment follows years of international pressure to reform the PLO and comes as Arab and Western powers envision an expanded role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip’s post-war governance.
Founded in 1964, the PLO is tasked with negotiating and signing international treaties on the Palestinian people’s behalf, while the PA is responsible for governance in limited parts of the occupied Palestinian territory.
The PLO is an umbrella organisation comprising several Palestinian factions, but not the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups.
Sheikh, 64, is a veteran leader of Abbas’s Fatah movement, which dominates the PA, and is considered close to the president.
Sheikh has been in charge of civilian affairs within the PA since 2007. In other words, says Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, he has been “in charge of security coordination with the Israeli occupation” and has been “groomed for the past 18 years in this relationship between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority and Israel”.
Furthermore, says Bishara, “Israel knows and trusts him more (..) than they know and trust Abbas himself. And Abbas as we all know has been the ultimate pragmatic/moderate leader within the Palestinian Authority, much to the liking of the United States and European Union, even if its not to the liking of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and his elk.”
Israel may even see Sheikh as an improvement over Abbas, says Bishara. “Hussein al-Sheikh has a far more steady hand (..) after 18 years of coordination with Israel, that for them they think he’s the one who could maintain the Abbas legacy, if there is such a thing, and perhaps even improve it forward in so far as the United States and Israel allow it to.”
Analyst Aref Jaffal said the new role was created to pave the way for someone to take the reins from Abbas, “as there are many things the Palestinian situation requires”.
“The Palestinian political system is already miserable, so I believe that all these arrangements are a prelude to creating a successor to Abbas,” Jaffal, director of the Al-Marsad Election Monitoring Center, told AFP.
The PLO Executive Committee is set to hold another meeting next Saturday to appoint a new secretary-general.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/26/palestinian-president-mahmoud-abbas-appoints-aide-as-plo-deputy?traffic_source=rss
