RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement is due on Thursday to elect a new central committee for the first time in 10 years, as it faces existential challenges in the wake of the Gaza war.
During the three-day general conference, the movement will vote on the central committee, its highest leadership body, even as analysts warn of Fatah’s diminishing legitimacy in the face of endemic corruption and its lack of progress on Palestinian statehood — especially amid an intensified Israeli settlement drive.
The committee is expected to play a key role in the post-Abbas era, with some wondering whether the 90-year-old leader might finally step down after more than two decades at the helm, despite the lack of a clear heir apparent.
The conference comes as the Palestinian national movement is facing some of “the most serious challenges in our struggle,” said Jibril Rajoub, the current secretary general of the committee.
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 Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”
