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Though Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, emphatically declared last week that his decision not to seek reelection was final, the future of his political career, and what that means for the region, is hardly clear.

Abbas, who is 74 and also known as Abu Mazen, replaced Yasser Arafat five years ago as president of the PA and also serves simultaneously as the chairman of the Fatah political party and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In a speech delivered Nov. 3 from his office in Ramallah, Abbas said, "I have told my brethren in the PLO that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election," citing frustration at the lack of progress on the U.S.-backed peace process.

"I do not want to run for the coming presidential elections," Abbas said in the televised 15-minute speech in which he proclaimed his support for a two-state solution. "This is not some kind of compromise or a maneuver."

Abbas has refused to sit down for negotiations until a full settlement freeze by Israel has been enacted while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that he is willing to negotiate without preconditions.

Speaking at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington on Nov. 9, Netanyahu called on Abbas to return to the negotiating table.

"I say today to the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas: let us seize the moment to reach an historic agreement. Let us begin talks immediately," Netanyahu told the gathering.

Regardless of his announcement that he would not seek reelection, Abbas may nevertheless remain in his position, as some observers doubt that the elections that he himself had called for January will take place, since there is no clear successor and because of the fractured political landscape, Hamas, which controls Gaza, will not participate.

Shoshana Bryen, the senior director for security policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), said that Abbas' decision not to run again was a way for him to retain power even though he lacks popular support among Palestinians.

"This is the normal thing that happens when the Palestinians face a political problem they cannot solve -- they put it off," Bryen said, who cited the fact that this is not the first time that Abbas has threatened to resign.

Bryen said that Abbas' announcement was as if then-Sen. Obama withdrew from the 2008 Presidential election around the time of Labor Day.

"There is nothing there that resembles an active democracy. Don't confuse elections with democracy," she said.

However, according to Kenneth Stein, the William E. Schatten Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern History and Israeli Studies at Emory University, the fate of the election is still up in the air at this point.

"There is nothing for certain in a political environment with constitutional processes that are so young and not formed yet," said Stein, who added that unlike in the United States, postponements of elections in the region are not uncommon and could happen for any number of reasons.

The major issue, Stein said, is not whether or why elections are postponed, but rather if the Palestinians are "willing to relinquish their dream of a Palestinian state in all of Israel west of the Jordan River."

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that he thinks that there will eventually be an election and that Abbas' speech was a way to express his frustration and put pressure on the negotiating parties.

The announcement was a way for Abbas to express disappointment with Israel for not agreeing to a full settlement freeze, the Arab states for focusing so heavily -- and counterproductively -- on the Goldstone Report, and with the Obama administration, which has made the Middle East peace process a central part of its agenda, according to Rubin.

Rubin said that he does not think there is any real prospect for a peace deal in the near future and that American politicians in general do not understand the nature of the conflict.

"U.S. administrations, Democrat and Republican, have thought that the Middle East conflict is a matter of diplomacy. No one seems to recognize that there is an adversary," Rubin said. "The Palestinians haven't been willing to give up terrorism and recognize Israel as the Jewish state."