Did Gaza war end or rejuvenate Abbas’ presidency?

After Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made his decision to postpone the legislative elections that he had earlier decreed, it at first appeared that his political career was doomed. Officially, his decision was made because Israel had refused to allow a few thousand Palestinians to use Israeli-run East Jerusalem post offices for absentee ballots. But few Palestinians bought the excuse and they felt he had made the decision as it became clear his own Fatah party would not be able to muster a majority of the 132 seats of the Legislative Council. This, in turn, would have meant he would have to create a coalition with some of his most hated former Fatah leaders, like Mohammed Dahlan and more recently Nasser al-Qudwa.

But as the stock of Abbas was hitting near bottom, a violent escalation took place in Jerusalem when Israeli troops repeatedly stormed into Islam’s third-holiest Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in an attempt to subdue the Palestinians. The rough Israeli efforts to put down the protests eventually were the reason that the Islamic Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip decided to join in by launching a few rockets that hit the outskirts of West Jerusalem. The unprecedented attacks from Gaza to Jerusalem resulted in the 11-day retaliatory airstrikes by Israel, a kind of near hell for both Gazans as well as Israeli communities in the south and in the Tel Aviv area. The main Israeli airports were shut down and most Israelis spent their nights in shelters.