Early results in Fatah leadership vote show Abbas’s son, intelligence chief elected

Preliminary results from the elections for Fatah’s Central Committee, the small leadership body of around 20 members that runs the movement currently controlling the Palestinian Authority, showed that PA President Mahmoud Abbas was elected to the panel, Palestinian media outlets reported Sunday.

Fatah, like the PA, is headed by the elder Abbas, whose son Yasser Abbas is seen as his possible successor.

The younger Abbas, 64, a millionaire businessman who spends most of his time in Canada, secured a place on the central committee after being appointed around five years ago as his father’s “special representative” — a role that marked his emergence on the political scene.

Marwan Barghouti, seen by many Palestinians as a potential successor to Abbas, topped the preliminary results, retaining his seat on the committee with the highest number of votes, according to figures seen by AFP. Barghouti has since 2002 been serving five cumulative life terms plus 40 years in prison for helping plan terror attacks during the Second Intifada that killed five civilians.

Jibril Rajoub was reelected as the secretary-general of the committee, keeping the seat he has held since 2017, while Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh was also reelected.

Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, one of the PA’s security bodies, who is also considered close to Abbas, was also reelected, as was Mahmoud al-Aloul, Abbas’s deputy in Fatah.

According to the reports, Leila Ghannam, the governor of the Ramallah district, who is also considered close to Abbas, was elected as a new member of the Central Committee.

Among the newcomers was Zakaria Zubeidi, 50, a former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group — Fatah’s armed wing — in the Jenin refugee camp, who was freed from Israeli prison last year under a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas amid the war triggered by the Palestinian terror group’s October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.

Zubeidi organized dozens of terror attacks during the Second Intifada, and was one of six prisoners who briefly escaped from Gilboa prison in 2021, before being recaptured.

The results were not official.

With several existing members retaining their seats, the congress’s outcome was already drawing criticism.

“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, said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Birzeit University.

“It looks as if it was all about merely replacing some individuals with others.”

The three-day congress, held simultaneously across Ramallah, Gaza, Cairo, and Beirut, drew 2,507 voters — a turnout of 94.64 percent, organizers 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.

The elections were being held as part of Fatah’s conference, the eighth since the movement was founded around 60 years ago. Ahead of the gathering, Arab media outlets reported that Abbas had unusually convened the conference in order to bring in new candidates aligned with him into Fatah’s small leadership forum.

According to the Palestinian reports, voting for the broader Fatah Revolutionary Council, which has around 80 members, is still ongoing.

The PA was set up as an interim administration under the 1990s Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group still internationally recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people. The powerful Fatah party dominates both the PA and the PLO.

Abbas retains control

The congress opened Thursday, with Abbas being reelected as head of the movement.

In his opening address, he vowed to pursue reforms and hold long-delayed presidential and parliamentary 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, which have eroded their legitimacy among Palestinians.

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

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 in a bloody coup.

Fatah’s central committee is expected to play a decisive role in the post-Abbas era, and key figures are already jostling to succeed the 90-year-old veteran leader, with Rajoub and Sheikh among the frontrunners.

Yasser Abbas’s foray into politics has fueled speculation that the president may be seeking to position him to succeed him as head of Fatah and the PA.

That has drawn criticism from some Fatah officials, who say Yasser would be unable to unify Palestinians or help them chart a new political future after years without national elections or tangible steps toward statehood.

In the more than two decades since Mahmoud Abbas was elected to succeed Fatah founder Yasser Arafat, Palestinians have come to view the PA as ineffective and corrupt, something denied by Abbas, who has ruled by decree since his mandate expired in 2009.

Yasser Abbas, who has never held an official role within Fatah or the PA, runs tobacco and contracting firms in the parts of the West Bank where the PA exercises limited self-rule. Critics have long alleged that he and his brother Tarek have used public funds to help their businesses, allegations both men reject.

Jarbawi, the political science professor, said that Abbas’s election to the committee alone does not put him on a clear path to the presidency.

“It is not enough to guarantee him advancement to the presidency,” he said. “This may be seen as the beginning of a phase — if not of hereditary succession, then of securing a position in the future.”

Jarbawi said the elder Abbas remained firmly in command, with the congress failing to clarify who would lead the movement after him.

“He is still in control of the reins of power, and his reelection reflects his dominance over Fatah,” he said, while acknowledging that several committee members harbor their own leadership ambitions.