RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas pledged to press ahead with reforms to the Palestinian Authority at a gathering of his Fatah party on Thursday, saying he was also prepared to hold long-delayed presidential and parliamentary elections.

Fatah kicked off a three-day conference to elect a new central committee, its highest leadership body, for the first time in 10 years as it faces existential challenges in the wake of the Gaza conflict.

The conference is being attended by approximately 2,580 Fatah members, the majority of them in Ramallah, though several hundred are also spread across Gaza, Cairo and Beirut. They are expected to elect 18 representatives to the central committee and 80 to the movement’s parliament, known as the revolutionary council.

“We renew our full commitment to continuing work on implementing all the reform measures we pledged,” Abbas said in an address, also vowing fresh elections, without providing a timeline.

A new central committee will be elected at the three-day event

Noting the decades-long Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the 90-year-old veteran leader said holding the gathering “on our homeland’s soil confirms our determination to continue on the democratic path”.

Late on Thursday, Abbas was unanimously re-elected as leader of the Fatah movement, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA. His re-election also ensures that he will continue serving as the head of the party’s central committee.

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are under mounting pressure from the United States, the European Union and Arab states to implement reforms and hold elections, amid widespread accusations of corruption and political stagnation, as well as the body’s declining legitimacy among Palestinians.

‘Serious challenges’

Fatah’s central committee is expected to play a key role in the post-Abbas era. Key figures competing to replace Abbas include Jibril Rajoub, the current secretary general of the committee, and PA deputy Hussein al-Sheikh.

The conference comes as the Palestinian national movement faces some of its “most serious challenges in our struggle”, Rajoub said ahead of the congress. He expressed hope that the conference, repeatedly delayed, would contribute to “ensuring and protecting the establishment of a Palestinian state on the world’s agenda and protecting the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.

Fatah has historically been the main component of the PLO, which includes 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 Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The sense of disappointment led to a surge in support for rival Hamas, which made huge political gains in the occupied West Bank in 2006 elections that it won handily, before going on to expel Fatah from the Gaza Strip almost entirely after a bout of factional fighting.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2026