Who is Hussein al-Sheikh, and what does his appointment as the PLO’s new Vice President mean?

The announcement of the new Palestinian Vice President has sparked debate in and outside of Palestine. 

Hussein al-Sheikh, 65, has been a prominent figure in Palestinian politics in recent years. He is often described as the most powerful figure in the Palestinian Authority after President Mahmoud Abbas and the strongest candidate to succeed him. With his appointment to the post of Vice President for the Chairman of the PLO’s Executive Committee and, by extension, the VP of the State of Palestine, his place in the line of succession has now become official.   

Al-Sheikh is the first Palestinian from the occupied Palestinian territories to hold a position this high in the Palestinian political system. But his appointment is significant for other reasons as well, stemming from his background, past role in Palestinian politics, and the political line he represents. These elements become particularly significant in the current political moment, when the future of the PA and the Palestinian cause is uncertain.

Rise to political power

Hussein al-Sheikh was born in Ramallah in 1960 to a Palestinian family that had been displaced from the village of Deir Tarif, near Ramleh. He joined the Fatah movement in his youth and began his slow rise in Fatah’s ranks after he was sentenced to 11 years in Israeli prison following his arrest at the age of 18. In prison, al-Sheikh learned to speak Hebrew, which allowed him to become a prominent leader of Palestinian prisoners as he served as an intermediary with the Israeli prison services. He was released in 1989 during the first Palestinian Intifada, and became a member of the intifada’s ‘National Unified Leadership.’

Following the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the PA, al-Sheikh joined the Palestinian National Security Forces and became a high-ranking officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Force. Later, he became secretary of Fatah in 1999, where he began appearing alongside the high-ranking PA officials. However, his real rise to the side of PA leaders came following the Second Intifada due to the absence of higher-ranking leaders, like Marwan Barghouthi, who was arrested by Israeli forces in 2001, and following the election of Mahmoud Abbas as president.

In 2007, Hussein al-Sheikh became the head of the ‘Civil Affairs Commission’, the PA organ in charge of coordinating civil affairs with Israel, according to the Oslo Accords. He managed the civil liaison office, including Palestinians’ petitions for entry permits to Jerusalem from Israeli authorities and family reunion petitions by Palestinian families wanting to reside in Palestine, which have to be approved by Israel. He continued to hold this strategic position until his latest appointment as vice president, which allowed him, for years, to interact with Israeli officials and get to know them at a personal level, adding to his personal leverage.

In 2009, Hussein al-Sheikh was elected as a member of Fatah’s central committee, the highest leadership body in the PA’s ruling party. With that ascension, he became a key figure in the highest decision-making circle around Mahmoud Abbas during the years of the PA reformation following the Second Intifada, including the introduction of neoliberal policies, restructuring of the PA security forces, and managing the political split between the West Bank and Gaza.

In 2017, al-Sheikh was assigned to be part of the group of officials tasked with bridging the gaps between the PA and Hamas, with the stated goal of ending Palestinian political divisions. Around the same time, his name began to surface among the top candidates to succeed Abbas. Since then, al-Sheikh was regarded as the favorite to succeed Abbas. Last week’s appointment of al-Sheikh as vice president all but set this in stone. 

How will al-Sheikh shape the future of Palestinian politics?

This, in part, answers the question on the future of the PA in the midst of the current Israeli assault on both Gaza and the West Bank, and the explicit rhetoric by Israeli leaders that they will now allow a Palestinian state anywhere in Palestine. Within this context, al-Sheikh’s clear political orientation and approach give an indication of what the PA’s future role may look like.

Hussein al-Sheikh has made his political career in civil and security coordination with Israel. He is arguably the top Palestinian expert when it comes to managing relations with Israeli officials, from a day-to-day basis to large political affairs. He is connected to all circles of influence in the Palestinian system, including the West Bank’s financial class and the security branches’ leaders. He has also exercised a diplomatic role, meeting world and regional leaders in recent years. In essence, al-Sheikh comes from the heart of the Palestinian political, economic, security, and diplomatic status quo. He is one of its engineers and its products. And the status quo is the game Hussein Aa-Sheikh has mastered.

Hussein al-Sheikh’s now unofficial status as ‘president-to-be’ confirms, among other things, that the PA is maintaining its current political program of seeking Palestinian statehood through political negotiations, international resolutions, and statements by world leaders in support of a two-state solution. Hussein al-Sheikh also represents the official PA strategies of maintaining stability through security coordination with Israel, which is based on the idea that disturbance to security stability endangers what the PA sees as Palestinian achievements in ‘state building’, and economic investment.

But the PA is already facing a core-shaking, if not collapse of any stability that it enjoyed, with the ramp-up of Israeli assault, not only on Gaza, or Area ‘C’ of the West Bank, but on the very heart of the supposed Palestinian ‘autonomy’ in Area ‘A’, like in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarem. The PA is also suffering a strangling financial crisis due to the withholding by Israel of more than $2 billion of its tax revenues, rendering the PA unable to pay full salaries to its employees. But above all, the prospects of a Palestinian state seem more unrealistic than ever, with the expansion of Israeli settlements cutting through Palestinian demographic continuity in the West Bank, and the explicit plans of Israeli leaders to annex the West Bank or large parts of it.

Here, the difference between Hussein al-Sheikh and Mahmoud Abbas gains importance. Al-Sheikh belongs to a younger generation of Palestinian officials. Not one that led the PLO into the Oslo accords, like Abbas did, but one that rose to prominence under the Oslo framework and as a result of them, and who learned to navigate the relation with Israel in all possible scenarios within the confines of the accords.

A year ago, Hussein al-Sheikh said in a television interview that “the Oslo accords died under the chains of Israeli tanks in Gaza.” But rather than a disengagement from the Oslo project, his statement reveals more of a sense of pragmatism. Hussein al-Sheikh has a younger, more dynamic outlook at the Palestinian situation than Abbas, and starts from a lower ceiling than him in his political mission.

Abbas’s goal behind engineering the Oslo accords was to achieve a full Palestinian statehood as an end result of the accords. Hussein al-Sheikh, although officially holding to the same program, considers that the PA in itself is a Palestinian national achievement, as it represents a Palestinian political entity on Palestinian soil, and that its preservation is a main goal of the Palestinian leadership, regardless of the absence of a negotiations process.

To al-Sheikh, maintaining fluid relations with Israel is essential to preserve the relevance of the PA, and its eligibility to run Gaza and the West Bank together in the future. This, to Hussein al-Sheikh, is the essence of the Palestinian leadership’s action, rather than negotiations that have been dead for years, and where very little remains to be negotiated. In al-Sheikh’s view, presenting a Palestinian leadership option that is palatable to the U.S. and the West, complying with ‘security’ requirements vis-à-vis Israel, and committing to diplomacy and international resolutions, would secure the unblocking of the PA’s money, ensure a period of stability similar to the post-Intifada years, allow more investments flow, and return the control of Gaza to underneath the PA’s umbrella. 

However, this logic has a price; the reformation of the Palestinian political system to include all Palestinian political and social sectors, at a time when Palestinian unity is most needed. In July of last year, in the height of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Palestinian factions met in Beijing, China, and signed an agreement to achieve national unity. The agreement stipulates the formation of a ‘temporary unified national leadership’, formed by the secretary-generals of the factions, the beginning of a national holistic dialogue over a united political program, and the preparation of general elections. Moreover, in December, both Fatah and Hamas agreed on forming an independent, non-partisan committee to run Gaza after the Israeli war.

The appointment of Hussein al-Sheikh as successor to the Palestinian president does not in itself contradict the implementation of the Beijing agreement, the holding of elections, or the formation of an independent committee to run Gaza. However, it sends a strong message that the current leadership at the head of the PA is not prioritizing any of these things as part of its upcoming strategy. On the contrary, it indicates that the current status-quo in the Palestinian political system will continue to be the order of the day, but with a younger, even more pragmatic, and “revitalized” face.

In fact, a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority has been a U.S. demand since before the beginning of the current war on Gaza in October 2023. Several U.S. officials have said that the PA needs to undergo “Reforms”. These unnamed “reforms” possibly began last February, with the PA’s abolishing of the PA’s program of social assistance to the families of Palestinian detainees and fatal victims of the Israeli occupation. That might be an indication of the “reforms” to follow before and after the assumption of the Palestinian presidency by Hussein al-Sheikh.

The naming of Hussein al-Sheikh as VP is, in a sense, “news, but not news” in terms of change in the state of internal Palestinian politics, or in terms of the Palestinian official leadership’s role in the current phase of Israel’s assault on the Palestinian people. However, it is major news concerning the prospects of Palestinian unity and political participation for young Palestinians — things that don’t seem to be happening any time soon.