Jerusalem — Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, long in Yasser Arafat’s shadow as No. 2 in the PLO, is a veteran advocate of peace with Israel and an outspoken critic of the 2½-year-old armed Palestinian uprising.
With his confirmation by parliament on Tuesday, the 68-year-old Mr. Abbas now faces a monumental task that some say is out of sync with his low-key personality.
His balancing act will include cracking down on militants without triggering civil war, easing powers away from Yasser Arafat without being accused of betraying a national symbol and re-establishing trust with Israel after 31 months of fierce violence without abandoning the Palestinians’ bedrock positions.
Mr. Abbas has had a stormy relationship with Mr. Arafat over the years, and there have been long periods in which the two men refused to speak to each other.
A devout Muslim, Mr. Abbas was born in 1935 in Safed, a hilltop town in what is now northern Israel. Along with about 700,000 other Palestinians, he and his family became refugees, fleeing to Syria during the 1948-49 war that created the Jewish state.
After helping found Fatah in 1965, Mr. Abbas managed finances for the movement, which became the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He distanced himself from the group’s terror activities and remained in Syria when the PLO moved its base to Lebanon in the 1970s.
He became one of the first top PLO officials to recognize Israel and led Palestinian negotiators in peace talks in the 1990s. He returned to the Palestinian territories in 1995 after the first Israel-PLO interim peace deals, and was made secretary-general of the PLO’s executive committee in 1996.
In a speech to his parliament on Tuesday, Mr. Abbas said many of the things that Israel and the United States wanted to hear, sounding a decisive condemnation of terrorism, pledging to round up weapons held illegally by extremists and promising a clampdown on corruption.
In a comment that aides said was his own work rather than that of speechwriters and after charges that his doctoral dissertation sought to minimize the Holocaust, he showed sensitivity to Jewish feelings on Israel’s annual memorial day Tuesday for the six million Jews killed by Nazis in the Second World War.
“We do not ignore the sufferings of the Jews throughout history,” he said. “In exchange, we hope that the Israelis will not turn their backs on the sufferings of the Palestinians.”
In a meeting with Fatah officials last year, Mr. Abbas said that the outbreak of the uprising in September, 2000, was understandable but that it should not have been allowed to become an armed conflict. He said the violence was a mistake that destroyed much of what the Palestinians had built.
Over the years, Mr. Abbas has avoided the spotlight, routinely turning down requests for interviews. His critics say he is too removed from ordinary Palestinians, although he has nurtured close ties with political factions, trade unions and other groups.
Although he has long been widely regarding as Mr. Arafat’s likely successor, opinion polls show that he has relatively meagre public support.
Several years ago, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He underwent surgery in the United States, and aides say he is healthy.
He is married and has two sons; one owns an advertising agency and the other a construction company.
