RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on May 14 pledged to press ahead with reforms within the Palestinian Authority, saying he was prepared to hold long-delayed presidential and parliamentary elections.
Mr Abbas’ Fatah party began 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… We are ready to hold presidential and legislative elections,” Mr 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.
Mr 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.
Fatah’s 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”, Mr Jibril Rajoub, the current secretary general of the committee, 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.
Mr 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”.
Mr Rajoub nonetheless declared that the conference was a first step towards “putting the Palestinian house in order, to build a partner for establishing a (Palestinian) state”.
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.
But Fatah remains marginalised in the territory, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed that it, the PA and Hamas will have no role in post-war governance.
Despite repeated declarations from the movement that it is working as a “united front”, major figures are absent from May 14’s conference, notably Mr 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 Mr Qudwa, a nephew of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Key figures competing to replace Mr Abbas include Mr Rajoub and PA deputy Hussein al-Sheikh.
Meanwhile, the president’s eldest son, Mr 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. AFP