Fatah Leaders Convene First Major Conference in a Decade

Top leaders of the main Palestinian political faction, Fatah, are electing its highest decision-making body at its first major conference in a decade.

Leading figures are promising unity and a political refresh. Ordinary Palestinians, however, say the meeting, held at a critical time for their nationalist cause, shows the opposite.

There is also unease that President Mahmoud Abbas’s eldest son, a businessman, is on the ballot for a senior party post for the first time.

Addressing the conference on its opening day on Thursday, Abbas promised the first presidential and parliamentary elections in 20 years, without giving a timeline.

“We renew our full commitment to continuing work on implementing all the reform measures we pledged,” he said. He added that holding the gathering “on our homeland’s soil confirms our determination to continue on the democratic path.”

The president and the Palestinian Authority are under growing pressure from the United States, the European Union and Arab countries to carry out reforms and hold elections. They face accusations of corruption and political stagnation, as well as declining legitimacy.

In 2023, the deadly Hamas-led assault on Israel triggered the Gaza war. Palestinians have been “slaughtered, displaced and devastated,” Abbas said, leaving an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”

At the same time, a senior Israeli minister has pledged “to bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem increasingly face being pushed from their homes and land as Jewish settlements expand faster than ever.

Israel is also withholding tax transfers it collects for the PA because of a dispute over Palestinian school texts that Israel says incite violence and over stipends to families of those jailed or killed by Israel, including attackers. The PA says it is now owed some $5 billion, meaning it pays most civil servants only part of their salaries and restricts some public services.

Abbas, an architect of the 1993 Oslo peace agreement with Israel, originally came to power promising to use non-violent means to work toward a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Palestinian opinion polls show deep dissatisfaction with the leader. In a survey late last year, 80 percent wanted him to resign. At the party level, Hamas was more popular than Fatah. Many Palestinians believe Fatah has lost its way.

There is anger over cronyism and corruption and the PA’s continued security coordination with Israel, which involves sharing information about Palestinian armed groups and is seen as benefiting the occupying power.

“When we talk about Fatah, we’re talking about the backbone of the Palestinian national movement, at least since the 1960s,” says political analyst Xavier Abu Eid in Ramallah. “And it’s a movement that’s going through a deep crisis.”

The conference is being attended by more than 2,500 Fatah members, most of them in Ramallah, with a few hundred also joining from Beirut, Cairo and Gaza. They are due to elect 18 representatives to the central committee and 80 to the movement’s parliament, known as the revolutionary council.

Speaking among the ruins of Gaza, Fatah activist Samah al-Rawagh, who is joining the conference via video link, told the BBC that change was possible.

“We are carrying a message that Fatah is united across the entire geographic spectrum,” she said. “Our message is that Fatah is like the phoenix that never dies. From the heart of the ashes, it comes back to life anew. Fatah is united, united, united.”

Many Fatah insiders admit there is internal division over political succession and the central committee’s expected role in the post-Abbas era.

“They serve their own interests, not the people,” one critic said. “What’s the point of this conference? It’s just publicity and it’s costing a fortune.”