In November 2025, France formally recognized the State of Palestine. The move came with a specific and publicly celebrated condition: President Mahmoud Abbas committed to holding a national election by June 2026 as the price of French recognition, a commitment that President Emmanuel Macron secured personally and announced as a diplomatic achievement, along with the drafting of new party legislation to rejuvenate Palestinian governance.
June 2026 is now here. There are no elections.
What there is instead is the Fatah 8th General Conference, held in Ramallah on May 14, at which Abbas was unanimously reelected as leader of the movement. His son Yasser joined Fatah’s leadership, raising immediate questions about nepotism and the group’s commitment to the reform it had announced.
On June 5, Abbas ratified a voting system for Palestinian National Council elections scheduled for November, which would be the first time members of the council, established in 1964, have been chosen by a direct public vote. The announcement contained no timeline for a presidential election. No announcement of a legislative election has been made.
This is the Abbas method, refined over 20 years of practice. An international pressure point appears: a recognition to be extracted, an aid package to be unlocked, a resolution to be leveraged. Abbas offers an election.
The election is announced with enough procedural detail to satisfy the immediate diplomatic requirement and then delayed, restructured, conditioned on Israeli behavior in east Jerusalem, or replaced by a different process that perpetuates the incumbent’s position while consuming the diplomatic reward.
France has now experienced this method in its most efficient form: The commitment was extracted as a condition of recognition, and recognition was granted before the election materialized.
Fatah’s 8th General Conference, the first in 10 years, was called to elect a new Central Committee as the movement faces existential challenges following Israel’s war on Gaza. Abbas pledged to hold long-delayed presidential and parliamentary elections, though he did not provide a timeline, and was unanimously reelected as Fatah leader.
A movement that has not held a contested leadership election in a decade does not hold one for the first time by returning its current leader without a challenger. Sixty candidates competing for 18 Central Committee seats represents internal circulation, not democratic accountability.
Abbas simultaneously serves as leader of the PA, the PLO, and Fatah, which has the greatest representation in the PA of any faction. Now 19 years into what should have been a four-year presidential term, Abbas has concentrated power by dissolving parliament and entrenching his control over the judiciary.
With no functioning legislature, unclear succession rules, and deep factional rivalries, a post-Abbas transition could tip the system into chaos, triggering competing power centers.
Majority of Palestinians oppose Abbas
In a recent poll, just 6% of Palestinians said they would vote for Abbas in a presidential election, while 85% want him to resign. None of this informs the diplomatic framework being used to engage his government.
The problem with the French approach, and with the broader Western strategy of conditioning recognition on reform promises, is structural. Recognition, once granted, cannot be revoked. Aid, once disbursed, cannot be recovered.
Every concession Abbas offers to extract a diplomatic reward is designed to be reversible, deniable, or replaceable by a structurally identical process dressed in new language.
The June 5 voting system ratification for a November PNC election is the latest example. The PNC has never been elected by direct vote in 60 years of existence. Announcing that its next composition will be chosen directly is a genuine departure, assuming it actually occurs. The commitment to a presidential or legislative election, which would test Fatah against a public of which 85% want the incumbent to resign, is absent from the package.
Washington’s 20-point plan for Palestinian governance, announced in September 2025, requires PA reform as a condition for an expanded PA role in Gaza. That is the correct framework.
The problem is that the metrics used to assess compliance have consistently accepted process announcements as evidence of substantive change. Ratifying an election law is not holding an election. Electing a new Fatah Central Committee is not democratizing the PA.
Washington and European partners should condition future assistance tranches on actual electoral outcomes, explicitly communicate that the Yasser Abbas elevation and the absence of any presidential timeline constitute noncompliance with previously stated conditions, and establish a firm deadline after which recognition benefits are suspended pending delivery.
France was conned. The question is whether Washington allows the same performance to repeat on its own diplomatic investments.
The writer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx.