Abbas consolidates his power

Even though the West seems obsessed with Mahmoud Abbas' pretense of wanting to quit his job as PA President (saying that he will not run for elections that he knows will not happen anytime soon,) he has been quietly strengthening his own hold on power.

His latest move was to essentially depose Farouk Kaddoumi, who had been acting as the chairman of the political department of the PLO in Tunis. For years, Kaddoumi and his staff have been getting paid salaries for doing, apparently, nothing, and now Abbas has told them to move out of their offices and into the "Palestine" embassy, where Kaddoumi will continue to work as a PA minister but have apparently no role in the PLO.

And if you think that the PA elections are meant to decide who the leaders of "Palestine" are, you are sadly misinformed. The PLO controls the PA, Fatah dominates the PLO, and Abbas now officially leads all three.