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The Palestinian leader who survived the death of Palestine
What would it mean for Hussein al-Sheikh to lead a people whose dream of
independence is no longer alive?
By ADAM RASGON and AARON BOXERMAN
25 August 2023, 9:01 am
5 Hussein al-Sheikh (C), secretary general of the Executive Committee of
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), attends the funeral of
prime minister Ahmad Qurei in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank on
February 22, 2023. (AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
Hussein al-Sheikh (C), secretary general of the Executive Committee of
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), attends the funeral of
prime minister Ahmad Qurei in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank on
February 22, 2023. (AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)

FP FOREIGN POLICY — Palestinian politician Hussein al-Sheikh strode into
a fortified conference room in the towering Tel Aviv headquarters of
Israel’s Defense Ministry in February 2022. Few Palestinians enter the
inner sanctum of Israel’s military, but, as Sheikh recalled, he was
greeted by the top army brass and the leadership of the secretive Shin
Bet intelligence apparatus.

The tall, affable Sheikh — whose salt-and-pepper hair is slicked back
with gel — serves as the Palestinian Authority’s main go-between with
Israel in the occupied West Bank. He speaks fluent Hebrew, wears finely
tailored suits, and urges cooperating, not clashing, with Israel. Once a
teenage activist jailed by Israel, the Rolex-sporting, globe-trotting
official now works behind the scenes to prevent the collapse of the PA,
led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli power brokers admire Sheikh as a pragmatic partner with an
uncanny ability to find common ground. “He’s our man in Ramallah,” said
one retired senior Israeli security official who requested anonymity
due to an ongoing role in Israeli intelligence as a reservist. Many
Palestinians, however, argue his approach has only reinforced the
conflict’s status quo — a seemingly endless military occupation now in
its sixth decade.

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Sitting with Israel’s generals, Sheikh recounted an emotional visit with
his grandmother to the ruins of their hometown of Deir Tarif in central
Israel. She spotted a cluster of orange trees she had planted before she
was uprooted and her village destroyed in the 1948 war. She embraced
them and wept, he said.

With negotiations to end Israeli rule over the Palestinians long
moribund, Sheikh told the generals that even he had found himself
looking into the mirror, wondering whether he was making a mistake by
continuing to cooperate with Israel. “If there’s no partner on the
Israeli side who believes in peace and two states for two peoples, am I
betraying my grandmother’s tears?” Sheikh told them. “Can you imagine
what an ordinary Palestinian, living in a refugee camp, feels?”

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Three decades after Israeli-Palestinian peace talks created the PA, many
Palestinians no longer believe it will become an independent state. An
increasingly right-wing Israel doesn’t intend to end its occupation
anytime soon. The international community has checked out. And
Palestinians remain divided between Abbas’s secular Fatah party, which
controls the West Bank, and the Islamist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian man argues with an Israeli soldier in the centre of Hebron
in the West Bank on July 4, 2023. (MOSAB SHAWER / AFP)
Palestinians in the West Bank wait at checkpoints during the day and
witness Israeli troops raid their neighborhoods at night. They
increasingly say the PA — which administers Palestinian cities and
arrests militants who plan attacks on Israelis — exists to do the dirty
work of Israel’s occupation.

A member of the Israeli security forces directs Palestinians at an
Israeli checkpoint in Bethlehem in the West Bank on April 14, 2023,
awaiting to be allowed to cross to attend prayers during the Muslim holy
fasting month of Ramadan at al-Asqa mosque compound atop the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem. (HAZEM BADER / AFP)
For many, Sheikh is the man doing that dirty work. He is the face of the
PA’s elite, who experience what one former Palestinian official living
in the West Bank labeled a “VIP occupation.” Senior Palestinian
officials are waved through Israeli roadblocks and rake in hefty
salaries that fund palm tree-lined villas in the desert city of Jericho
and extravagant escapades in Europe. Their children party in Haifa and
Jaffa, Israeli cities most Palestinians are barred from reaching.

“The Palestinian elite are the true beneficiaries of the peace process,”
said Ghandi al-Rabi, a prominent Ramallah-based lawyer.

The battle to succeed the 87-year-old Abbas has many contenders, none of
whom are a shoo-in. But Sheikh stands a chance of becoming the next
leader of the PA, despite his unpopularity, thanks to his close ties to
Israel and the United States.

Over nine months, Foreign Policy interviewed 75 Palestinians, Israelis,
Americans, and Europeans, including officials, diplomats,
businesspeople, and rights advocates, who painted a picture of Sheikh’s
rise to the highest echelons of Palestinian decision-making.

In a rare, two-hour interview in his penthouse office in Ramallah,
Sheikh acknowledged the chasm between the Palestinian leadership and
public. “The Authority isn’t able to deliver a political horizon for the
people. The Authority isn’t able to resolve the people’s financial and
economic problems from the occupation,” he said. “But what’s the
alternative to the PA? Chaos and violence.”

***

US officials contrast Sheikh favorably with other Palestinian
politicians, whom they call long-winded and obstinate. During his last
meeting with US President Joe Biden, Abbas droned on “ad nauseam for 25
minutes before he let Biden utter a word,” said one senior
administration official who was not authorized to speak about the
meeting. PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh often subjects visiting
dignitaries to 40-minute lectures on history and international law, US
and European diplomats said. As for Sheikh, “when you go into a room
with him, you can tell he’s really, truly eager for solutions,” the
administration official said. One European diplomat in the region
described him as “a fixer who wants to solve problems, not theorize
about them.”

But “he is about as popular with the Palestinian people as the Shah was
in January 1979,” the administration official said, referring to the
corrupt and authoritarian leader of Iran before a revolution brought
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power.

Sheikh’s life story traces the Palestinian national movement’s
decades-long march toward the current impasse. He was 7 when Israel
occupied the West Bank in 1967, imprisoned at 17, and released as a
popular uprising swept the West Bank in the late 1980s.

After the PA’s establishment in the 1990s, Sheikh slowly rose through
its ranks. He served in the nascent Palestinian security forces before
assuming his current role — the head of the General Authority of Civil
Affairs — in 2007. His ministry handles ties with Israel, including the
Israeli permits that allow Palestinians to circumvent restrictions on
their movement.

His journey from leather jacket-wearing street activist to detested
official has paralleled an ever-widening gap between the Palestinian
government and its people, who no longer believe their leaders will free
them from occupation, let alone build a democratic state.

Sheikh works closely with Israel to prevent Palestinian attacks on
Israelis. He negotiates with Israeli officials to upgrade outdated
Palestinian infrastructure. The 62-year-old leader says it’s all
necessary to preserve an increasingly distant hope that Palestinians
will one day achieve freedom.

“We need to narrow the wide gap between us,” said Sheikh, comparing his
approach to seizing one apple instead of an unreachable bundle of four.
“So, however small the accomplishment is, it is important.”

Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah (C) and Palestinian
Authorities civil affairs minister Hussein al-Sheikh (R) are surrounded
by security following their arrival at the Erez border crossing in Beit
Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip on October 2, 2017. (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)
The fragile edifice of the PA rests on the shoulders of Abbas, who was
first elected to a four-year term in 2005 and now rules by autocratic
fiat. But Sheikh has hardly concealed his desire to succeed Abbas,
drawing ire from opponents who accuse him of acting as if he has already
become president. He has ramped up his online presence and transformed
himself into the PA’s public face, crisscrossing Ramallah in a
Mercedes-Benz flanked by a large security detail.

But few say he could be viewed as a legitimate leader. Like others in
Abbas’s inner circle, Sheikh “began as part of the people but has become
totally isolated. For large portions of the public, he represents
everything that has gone wrong with the Palestinian Authority: out of
touch, corrupt, and tied to Israel,” said Tamir Hayman, who led Israeli
military intelligence until 2021. “You can’t impose a Karzai” on the
Palestinians, said former Palestinian diplomat Mohammed Odeh, referring
to the US-backed Afghan president from 2002 to 2014.