RAMALLAH(RAHNUMA): The son of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Monday said Fatah would prioritize Gaza and return it “to the fold of Palestinian legitimacy,” the day after being elected to the movement’s top decision-making body.
Fatah’s first congress in a decade came as the Palestinian movement faces existential challenges in the wake of the devastating Gaza war.
Veteran Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, 90, was re-elected as head of the movement, with his 64-year-old son Yasser Abbas securing a place on its central committee.
In his first remarks since his election, Yasser Abbas said he would focus on “Gaza first, prisoners and the families of martyrs, and the refugee camps.”
“We will work to return Gaza to the fold of Palestinian legitimacy,” he told journalists in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
Fatah has historically been the dominant force within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole representative of the Palestinian people in international forums.
It groups most Palestinian factions but excludes Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“Achieving full national unity requires agreement to all the conditions for joining the Palestine Liberation Organization in all its provisions: one law, one state, one legitimate weapon, and recognition that the organization is the sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people, Yasser Abbas said.
“Whoever accepts that is welcome.”
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 won the last legislative elections held in 2006, before going on to expel Fatah from the Gaza Strip after a bout of factional fighting.
Under US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, Hamas is to play no role in the future governance of the territory.
It also demands sweeping reforms of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority as a condition for it to play any meaningful role in post-war Gaza.
On Monday, the Fatah congress announced the official preliminary results of the elections for its central committee and the revolutionary council, the party’s parliament.
A closing statement read out on Monday said that: “there is no state without Gaza, and no state in Gaza.”
“Any international administrative arrangement must preserve the ceasefire, end the occupation, ensure the flow of aid, and begin recovery and reconstruction, all clearly linked to the Palestinian government, which must be enabled to exercise all its responsibilities in Gaza,” it added.
It also said it was moving toward elections for the Palestinian National Council, the PLO parliament, on November 1, followed by general elections.
Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are under mounting international pressure to implement reforms and hold elections, amid widespread accusations of corruption and political stagnation.
