Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday named in an official decree Hussein al-Sheikh, one of the members of his bodyguard, the new secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
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At the end of a rare meeting last February, the PLO's executive committee had appointed relatives of President Abbas to key positions without, however, appointing a new secretary general to succeed Saeb Erakat, who died in 2020 after contracting the coronavirus.
But on Thursday, in a short decree, the 87-year-old Palestinian president appointed his civil affairs minister and potential successor Hussein al-Sheikh as secretary general of the PLO, a grouping of Palestinian factions recognized as representing the people. Palestinian.
In general, Palestinian institutions are increasingly decried.
President Abbas, elected in 2005 and whose mandate was due to end in 2009, is also at rock bottom in the polls and demonstrations multiplied in the West Bank last year to call for his resignation.
In April 2021, he canceled the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for May, the first in 15 years, arguing that the ballot was not guaranteed in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector of the holy city occupied and annexed by Israel, which refuses the holding of these elections.
The cancellation of these elections had been strongly criticized by various Palestinian factions, including the Islamists of Hamas, who control the Gaza Strip and are not part of the PLO, an entity that signed the Israeli-Palestinian agreements in Oslo in the 90's.
