Son of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas elected to top Fatah body

The son of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has secured a seat on Fatah’s highest leadership body, as initial results emerged from the movement’s first Congress in the occupied West Bank in a decade.

The three-day Eighth General Conference in Ramallah, which began on Thursday and finished on Sunday, came as Fatah faces existential challenges following Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Yasser Abbas, 64, a businessman who spends most of his time in Canada, joins the central committee after being appointed around five years ago as his father’s “special representative”.

With several existing members retaining their seats, the Congress’s outcome was already being criticised.

Marwan Barghouti, a popular Palestinian leader held in Israeli prison since 2002, retained his seat on the committee with the highest number of votes, according to figures seen by the AFP news agency.

Jibril Rajoub was re-elected as the committee’s secretary-general, while Palestinian Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh retained his position.

The Congress had 2,507 voters and a turnout of 94.6 percent, organisers said.

Fifty-nine candidates competed for 18 seats on the central committee, while 450 vied for 80 seats on the revolutionary council, the party’s parliament.

Counting for the revolutionary council is continuing.

Mahmoud Abbas, who was re-elected as head of the movement on Thursday, vowed in his opening address to reform the Palestinian Authority (PA), and hold long-delayed presidential and parliamentary elections.

Abbas and the PA are under mounting international pressure to implement reforms and hold elections, amid widespread accusations of corruption and political stagnation, which have eroded their legitimacy among Palestinians.

US President Donald Trump has demanded sweeping reforms as a condition for the PA to play any meaningful role in post-war Gaza.

Fatah was historically the dominant force within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the sole representative of the Palestinian people in international forums. It groups most Palestinian factions, but excludes 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 Israel-Palestine peace process.

This led to a surge in support for rival Hamas, which won the 2006 legislative elections in the occupied West Bank, before expelling Fatah from Gaza almost entirely after factional fighting.