CAIRO — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas turns 90 on Saturday, still holding authoritarian power in tiny pockets of the West Bank, but marginalized, weakened, deeply unpopular among Palestinians, and struggling for a say in a postwar Gaza Strip.

The world’s second-oldest serving president — after Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya — Abbas has been in office for 20 years, and for nearly the entire time has failed to hold elections. His weakness has left Palestinians leaderless, critics say, at a time when they face an existential crisis.

Palestinians say Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza against Hamas amounts to genocide, which Israel vehemently denies. Meanwhile, Israel has tightened its lock on the West Bank, where Jewish settlements are expanding and attacks by settlers on Palestinians have spiked amid the olive harvest season that began early last month.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Palestinian statehood under the PA, which Israel accuses of incitement to terrorism through its school system and payments to families of Palestinian prisoners. Netanyahu’s allies have pressed for outright annexation of the West Bank in a bid to torpedo the prospect of Palestinian statehood.

For now, the US has bent to Israel’s refusal to let the PA govern postwar Gaza. With no effective leader, critics fear Palestinians in the coastal territory will be consigned to live under an international body dominated by Israel’s allies, with little voice and no real path to statehood.

Abbas “has put his head in the sand and has taken no initiative,” said Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, head of the independent Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

“His legitimacy was depleted long ago,” Shikaki told The Associated Press. “He has become a liability to his own party, and for the Palestinians as a whole.”

Within the pockets of the West Bank that it administers, the PA is notorious for corruption.

Abbas rarely leaves his headquarters in the city of Ramallah, except to travel abroad. He limits decision-making to his tight inner circle, including Hussein al-Sheikh, a longtime confidant whom he named as his designated successor in April.

An October poll by Shikaki’s organization found that 80% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza want Abbas to resign.

Only a third want the PA to have full or shared governance of the Gaza Strip. The survey of 1,200 people had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Abbas was a close adviser to longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and helped negotiate the........

© The Times of Israel