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Prof. Kobi Michael: Hamas would use Abbas’s failures as a way to demonstrate to voters that Fatah’s political struggle has been ineffectual compared to Hamas’s armed “resistance.”
The Fatah Reform Democratic bloc and Hamas will use it to claim that [Abbas] is history and must leave and only they will be able to make the changes [needed] to recruit international support.
Despite viewing the restrictions for Abbas as a potential avenue for Hamas to market itself as a more powerful and effective alternative, I doubted the PA president would allow the elections to go ahead in November as planned.
Published in the Jerusalem Post on September 17, 2026.
*The opinions expressed in Misgav publications are the authors’ alone.