Yasser Abbas Wins Seat on Fatah Central Committee as Congress Opens in Ramallah, Gaza, Cairo, Beirut

The son of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abbas, won a seat on Fatah’s central committee as initial results emerged from the movement’s first congress in a decade, with the three-day Eighth General Conference held across Ramallah, Gaza, Cairo and Beirut.

“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”

Al Jazeera

Roya News said the congress came as Fatah faces existential challenges in the wake of the Gaza war, and it reported that Marwan Barghouti topped preliminary results while Jibril Rajoub was re-elected as secretary-general and Hussein Al-Sheikh was also re-elected.

Al Jazeera

The Times of Israel reported that preliminary results from elections for Fatah’s Central Committee showed Mahmoud Abbas elected to the panel, while Yasser Abbas, 64, was seen as a possible successor and had been appointed around five years ago as his father’s “special representative”.

Al Jazeera said the congress finished on Sunday and that Mahmoud Abbas, 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.

Al Jazeera also reported that the Congress had 2,507 voters with a turnout of 94.6 percent, and that 59 candidates competed for 18 seats on the central committee while 450 vied for 80 seats on the revolutionary council.

As the outcome drew criticism, The Times of Israel quoted Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Birzeit University, saying, "There is a failure to present a political, economic, and cultural vision for the problems we are suffering" in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Times of Israel added that Jarbawi said, "It looks as if it was all about merely replacing some individuals with others," as the congress’s outcome was already drawing criticism.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi

Al Jazeera framed the political context by saying Abbas and the PA are under mounting international pressure to implement reforms and hold elections amid widespread accusations of corruption and political stagnation.

Roya News reported that among the newcomers was Zakaria Zubeidi, 50, a former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the Jenin refugee camp, who was freed from ‘Israeli’ prison last year under a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.

In the same initial-results period, The Times of Israel said the results were not official and that voting for the broader Fatah Revolutionary Council, which has around 80 members, was still ongoing.

Multiple outlets tied the congress to succession stakes, with Roya News saying the Fatah central committee is expected to play a decisive role in the post-Abbas era and that key figures were already jostling to succeed the 90-year-old veteran leader.

Roya News reported that Rajoub and Sheikh were among the frontrunners, while The Times of Israel described the central committee as the small leadership body of around 20 members that runs the movement currently controlling the Palestinian Authority.

Al Jazeera said US President Donald Trump demanded sweeping reforms as a condition for the PA to play any meaningful role in post-war Gaza, and it linked that pressure to Abbas and the PA’s legitimacy.

The Times of Israel reported that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are under mounting international pressure to implement reforms and hold elections amid widespread accusations of corruption and political stagnation.

Al Jazeera concluded that Yasser Abbas’s election alone does not put him on a clear path to the presidency, quoting Ali Jarbawi saying, "This may be seen as the beginning of a phase – if not of hereditary succession, then of securing a position in the future," while also saying the elder Abbas remained firmly in command.