Within hours of a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas abruptly cancelled a meeting with Joe Biden in Jordan to rush home and accuse Israeli forces of being behind the carnage.
But when Palestinians rallied in the occupied West Bank that evening to voice their anger at the killings — which Israel insists were the result of a malfunctioning rocket fired by Palestinian militants — it was Abbas who became the focus of their ire, with protesters demanding “the fall of the president”.
As the war between Hamas and Israel has thrust the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back into the spotlight, Abbas has become a key point of contact for western and Arab officials as they seek to prevent the fighting from spreading, and to counter the militant ideology of Hamas.