Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Mahmoud Abbas To Remain In Hospital, Despite Discharge Announcement

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ doctor said the Palestinian leader will not leave the hospital despite announcing that he would be discharged.

Abbas has been in the hospital since early last week, the third time he was hospitalized since undergoing ear surgery earlier this month.

He reportedly had a high fever when he was admitted to the hospital. Palestinian officials reported last week that Abbas had pneumonia and that he was on a respirator. He also received intravenous antibiotics.

Dr. Yasser Abu Safiyeh, medical director of the Arab Advisory Hospital in Ramallah, told the official WAFA Palestinian news agency that Abbas’ heath is improving rapidly. He did not say when Abbas would be released.

Last week, the PA issued photos of Abbas in the hospital, sitting up and reading a newspaper. The newspaper featured a cartoon showing an Israel soldier feeding poison to a Palestinian baby.

Abbas has been president of the PA since 2005.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.