Palestinian president pledges elections, reforms at Fatah conference
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was later unanimously re-elected as Fatah leader.
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RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas pledged to press ahead with reforms to the Palestinian Authority at a gathering of his Fatah party on Thursday (May 14), saying he was also prepared to hold long-delayed presidential and parliamentary elections.
Fatah kicked off a three-day conference to elect a new central committee, its highest leadership body, for the first time in 10 years as it faces existential challenges in the wake of the Gaza war.
"We renew our full commitment to continuing work on implementing all the reform measures we pledged," Abbas said in an address, also vowing fresh elections, without providing a timeline.
Noting the decades-long Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the 90-year-old veteran leader said holding the gathering "on our homeland's soil confirms our determination to continue on the democratic path".
Late on Thursday, Abbas was unanimously re-elected as the leader of the Fatah movement, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
His re-election also ensures that he will continue serving as the head of the party's central committee.
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 and political stagnation, as well as the body's declining legitimacy among Palestinians.
"SERIOUS CHALLENGES"
Fatah's central committee is expected to play a key role in the post-Abbas era.
Key figures competing to replace Abbas include Jibril Rajoub, the current secretary general of the committee, and PA deputy Hussein al-Sheikh.
The conference comes as the Palestinian national movement faces some of its "most serious challenges in our struggle", Rajoub told AFP ahead of the congress.
He expressed hope that the conference, repeatedly delayed, would contribute to "ensuring and protecting the establishment of a Palestinian state on the world's agenda and protecting the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people".
Fatah has historically been the main component of the PLO, which includes most Palestinian factions but excludes Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In recent decades, Fatah's popularity and influence have dwindled amid internal divisions and growing public frustration over the stagnation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The sense of disappointment led to a surge in support for rival Hamas, which made huge political gains in the occupied West Bank in 2006 elections that it won handily, before going on to expel Fatah from the Gaza Strip almost entirely after a bout of factional fighting.
Hani al-Masri, director of the Palestinian Centre for Policy Research and Strategic Studies (Masarat), told AFP that Fatah now merely uses the PLO to provide itself with legitimacy, "a legitimacy that is eroding in the absence of a unified national project, elections and national consensus".
Rajoub maintained that the conference was a first step towards "putting the Palestinian house in order, to build a partner for establishing a (Palestinian) state".
SUCCESSION
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause, called for a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a video message addressing the conference.
"This congress takes place at a time of profound difficulty for the Palestinian people and for the region, a moment that calls for responsibility, unity and political leadership," Sanchez said.
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 central committee and 80 to the movement's parliament, known as the revolutionary council.
Fatah is the main party within the Palestinian Authority, which has been touted abroad as a natural partner in rebuilding and running the Gaza Strip after Israel's devastating war with Hamas there - though Israel strongly objects to the idea.
Despite repeated declarations from the movement that it is working as a "united front", major figures are absent from Thursday's conference, notably Nasser al-Qudwa, a key Palestinian leader who is boycotting the gathering.
"This conference is illegitimate, and this leadership that has usurped power is illegitimate and its time is up," said Qudwa, a nephew of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Meanwhile, the president's eldest son, Yasser Abbas, is on the ballot to join the central committee, having risen in prominence over recent years after he was named the president's special representative despite largely residing in Canada.
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