Palestinians know that Abbas is a dictator. Why doesn't the West?

On Monday, hundreds of Palestinian lawyers protested Mahmoud Abbas' sweeping powers:

Hundreds of Palestinian lawyers held a rare street protest Monday against what they described as the Palestinian Authority's "rule by decree", condemning president Mahmud Abbas for governing without a parliament.

The Palestinian Legislative Council -- created under the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel -- has been inactive since 2007, meaning Abbas has led without a functioning parliament for nearly all of his tenure as president.

But a new leadership at the Palestinian Bar Association has sought to pressure the PA.

The draft Palestinian constitution allows for presidential decrees "if necessary", in cases where the PLC cannot act, but lawyers said Abbas has gone too far.

According to estimates by Palestinian legal experts, Abbas has issued some 400 presidential decrees while in office.

He officially dissolved the PLC in 2018.

The article doesn't come close to describing Abbas' control of all the branches of the Palestinian government. 

In order to "legally" dissolve the PLC, he needed the Palestinian Constitutional Court to make that decision. And guess who appointed every member of that group in 2016?

Yes, it was Abbas himself.

So Mahmoud Abbas controls, either directly or by proxy, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Palestinian Authority. 

But his powers don't end there, because the PA is not independent - it reports to the PLO, which is still legally considered the "“Sole Legitimate Representative of the Palestinian People” - and whose chairman is also Mahmoud Abbas. 

This is all documented. It is no secret that Abbas controls everything.

Yet Western media almost completely ignores this basic fact. Abbas is never referred to as a dictator - except by Hamas media.

The reason, as always, is that pointing out the corruption of the Palestinians seems to weaken the overarching narrative of an evil Israeli oppressive presence that controls every aspect of Palestinian life, and that narrative must be protected as much as possible.

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