Tonight, the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) appointed Hussein al-Sheikh, the Secretary-General of Fatah, to serve as deputy to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Al-Sheikh, regarded as a close confidant of Abbas, is set to celebrate his 65th birthday this coming December.
Between 1978 and 1988, al-Sheikh spent a decade imprisoned in Israel.
In December 2022, a Hamas-affiliated news outlet published recordings of al-Sheikh, which captured him expressing frustration toward Abbas and criticizing other figures seen as potential successors to the Palestinian Authority leadership. The full circumstances of the recordings were not fully clarified.
According to the Associated Press, throughout the leaked audio, al-Sheikh repeatedly uses vulgar language when referring to Abbas.
At one point during the over three-minute recording, al-Sheikh accuses Abbas of being complicit in perpetuating instability, stating that Abbas “is a partner in the chaos and has an interest for it to remain.”
In June 2023, al-Sheikh urged Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), to speed up the review of cases submitted to the court concerning alleged Israeli offenses against Palestinian Arabs.
{Matzav.com Israel}