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Amir Tibon on Mahmoud Abbas and the future of the Palestinians

After this summer’s surprise unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas, and Donald Trump’s proposal to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem (as well as U.S. funding cuts for the U.N.’s Relief Works Agency for Palestine), Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is facing a potentially seismic shift in local political realities.

We spoke for this week’s podcast with Amir Tibon — the DC correspondent for Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper — to discuss what’s ahead for Abbas, Fatah, and the Palestinians in the short and medium term and what this means for U.S. policy in the region.

About Amir Tibon

Amir Tibon is an Israeli journalist who covers Washington, D.C. for Haaretz newspaper.

During the years 2013-2016, Amir was the diplomatic correspondent for Walla News, a leading Israeli news website. Prior to that, he was a producer for Uvda, the leading investigative news program on Israeli television.

Amir is the co-author of The Last Palestinian, a biography of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, published in July 2017.

In 2015, he was nominated for a National Magazine Award (in the reporting category) for an article on the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

For the same article, he also received an award from the National Press Club, for excellence in diplomatic reporting.

Before moving to Washington in 2017, Amir lived for two years in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the closest place in Israel to the Gaza Strip.

In 2012, Amir produced an exclusive report from inside the Syrian civil war, which was chosen as the best TV report of that year by the Israeli Documentary Directors’ Forum.

Amir’s writing on Israel, the peace process and the Middle East has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Politico Magazine, The New Yorker, Tablet Magazine, The New Republic, The Huffington Post, The American Interest and The Jerusalem Report. He has been interviewed on CNN, Al-Jazeera and MSNBC.