Fatah gathers for first election in decade, as PA’s Abbas pledges to continue reforms |
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party on Thursday began a three-day conference to elect its highest leadership body for the first time in 10 years, as it faces existential challenges in the wake of the Gaza war.
In an address opening the conference in Ramallah, Abbas pledged to press ahead with reforms within the PA, saying he was prepared to hold long-delayed presidential and parliamentary elections.
“We renew our full commitment to continuing work on implementing all the reform measures we pledged… We are ready to hold presidential and legislative elections,” Abbas said in an address to the congress, though he did not provide a timeline for the vote.
“The Palestinian people are the only people in the world living under occupation. Holding our conference today on our homeland’s soil confirms our determination to continue on the democratic path and open the way for youth and women,” the 90-year-old veteran leader said.
Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are under mounting pressure from the United States, the European Union and Arab states to implement reforms and hold elections, amid widespread accusations of corruption, political stagnation, and the body’s declining legitimacy among Palestinians.
The international community also wants the PA to play a key role in eventually running the Gaza Strip again after it was devastated in the war sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Israel, however, bitterly opposes the involvement of the PA.
The conference is being attended by approximately 2,580 Fatah members, the majority of them in Ramallah, though several hundred are also spread across Gaza, Cairo and Beirut.
They are expected to elect 18 representatives to the Fatah Central Committee and 80 to the party’s parliament, known as the Fatah Revolutionary Council.
The Fatah Central Committee is expected to play a key role in the post-Abbas era, with many observers wondering whether he might finally step down after more than two decades at the helm, despite the lack of a clear successor.
The conference comes as the Palestinian national movement faces some of its “most serious challenges in our struggle,” Jibril Rajoub, the current secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee, told AFP ahead of the congress.
He expressed hope that the conference, repeatedly........