Abbas’s Fatah in rare congress as succession talk builds

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party will hold its first congress since 2009 on Tuesday as the 81-year-old leader seeks to close ranks and fend off a key rival.

While Abbas’s advisers insist the congress is being held because it is overdue, some analysts see it as an opportunity for him to sideline allies of his exiled longtime rival Mohammed Dahlan.

Talk of who will eventually succeed Abbas as PA president has intensified, with the ageing leader not having publicly designated a successor.

The congress, to last up to five days in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is expected to be key for the future of the secular Fatah party and the PA, which it controls.

It is to include elections for Fatah’s 23-member central committee — in which Abbas serves as president — and its 132-member revolutionary council, considered Fatah’s parliament.

The 1,400 Fatah officials invited to attend the congress are to vote for 18 members of the central committee and 80 seats on the revolutionary council, while the rest are to be nominated.

Observers see the reduced number of officials to vote — down from more than 2,000 in 2009 — as part of a move to exclude Dahlan supporters.

Now in exile in the United Arab Emirates, Dahlan was expelled from Fatah in 2011 and has faced a series of legal cases since.

— AFP