JERUSALEM (Parliament Politics Magazine) – In a rare street demonstration against the Palestinian Authority’s “rule by decree,” hundreds of Palestinian lawyers in the occupied West Bank denounced President Mahmoud Abbas for running the country without a parliament.
Since 2007, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which was established as a result of the Oslo Accords with Israel, has been dormant. As a result, Abbas has ruled over the country without an operating parliament for almost the entire time.
However, the Palestinian Bar Association’s new leadership has attempted to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority (PA).
At the protest on Monday in the city of Ramallah, the association’s president, Suheil Ashour, told the AFP news agency that his organisation will steadfastly oppose legislation passed by presidential decree that limited Palestinian “rights and freedoms.”
Ashour, who pressed for reforms when he was association president earlier this year, stated that their demand was either to cease their implementation now or to annul a slew of restrictive regulations.
In situations where the PLC cannot act, presidential decrees are permitted under the drafted Palestinian constitution “if necessary,” but attorneys present at the rally claimed Abbas had gone too far.
The Palestinian people as a whole were also impacted by those regulations, not just the Bar Association. Zainab al-Salfity, a lawyer, told Al Jazeera, she was there to inform President Abbas that those orders destroyed the judicial system, destroyed the ruling power, and could spark a civil war.
The protesters, who were dressed in black robes, were prohibited from accessing the building housing the office of PM Mohammad Shtayyeh.
After the passing of famous leader Yasser Arafat, Abbas was chosen to lead the PA in 2005.
In the year 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas, a fierce rival of Abbas’s Fatah movement, won.
As a result of the fallout from that vote, Fatah has retained control of the Israel-occupied West Bank, and Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007.
Experts in Palestinian law believe that Abbas has issued about 400 presidential decrees during his time in office.
In 2018, he formally dissolved the PLC, and attempts to hold fresh elections have run against opposition.
A legislative council was necessary because laws needed to be read several times before being put into effect. Now that only a few people were passing laws, that was an issue, a lawyer named Abed Shabaneh told Al Jazeera.
Last year, Abbas scheduled presidential and legislative elections across the Palestinian territories with Hamas’s participation. However, he called off the elections due to Israel’s refusal of voting in occupied East Jerusalem.
Public protests against Abbas and the PA have become more frequent in the West Bank, especially since Abbas opponent and activist Nizar Banat passed away in Palestinian last year. 14 personnel of the security forces are allegedly responsible for killing Banat by beating him.
