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Sunday, May 17, 2026
Preliminary results in Fatah leadership elections: Abbas’s son, intelligence chief elected
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleNurit Yohanan is The Times of Israel's Palestinian and Arab world correspondent
Palestinian media outlets report that preliminary results have been received 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. Fatah is headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
According to reports, Abbas’s son, Yasser Abbas, was elected as one of the members of the Central Committee, alongside Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, one of the Palestinian Authority’s security bodies. Faraj is considered close to Abbas.
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.
Other members who retained their seats on the committee include Hussein al-Sheikh, Abbas’s deputy in the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, Jibril Rajoub, and Mahmoud al-Aloul, Abbas’s deputy in Fatah.
The results are not official.
The elections are 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.
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