The son of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was appointed to the top of the Fatah organization | Fatah stories

Businessman Yasser Abbas, 64, won a seat on the executive committee despite spending most of his time in Canada.

The son of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has won the seat of the highest leadership of Fatah, as the first results have emerged from the organization. The first Congress in the occupied West Bank in a decade.

The third day Eighth General Assembly in Ramallah, which began on Thursday and ended on Sunday, came as Fatah is dealing with the aftermath of Israel’s war in Gaza.

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Yasser Abbas, 64, a long-time Canadian businessman, will join the executive committee after being appointed five years ago as his father’s “special representative”.

With several incumbent members retaining their seats, the results of the Congress were already contested.

Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian leader who has been in Israeli prison since 2002, retained his seat in the committee with the largest number of votes, according to figures seen by AFP.

Jibril Rajoub was re-appointed secretary general of the committee, while Palestinian Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh retained his position.

The Congress had 2,507 voters and a voter turnout of 94.6 percent, organizers said.

59 people contested for 18 seats in the central committee while 450 contested for 80 seats in the revolutionary council, the party’s parliament.

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Mahmoud Abbas, who was re-elected as the group’s leader on Thursday, vowed in his inaugural address to replace the Palestinian Authority (PA), and hold long-delayed elections.

Abbas and the PA are under international pressure to implement reforms and hold elections, amid widespread allegations of corruption and political instability, which have undermined their legitimacy among Palestinians.

The US President, Donald Trump, has called for a complete overhaul as a way for the PA to take military action after the Gaza conflict.

Fatah has historically been a force in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole representative of the Palestinian people in international forums. It divides most Palestinian groups, but excludes Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Over the past few decades, Fatah’s popularity and appeal have grown it has decreased amid internal divisions and growing frustration over the stalling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

This led to an increase in support for rival Hamas, which won the 2006 elections in the occupied West Bank, before ousting Fatah from Gaza almost immediately after the sectarian war.

Fatah’s Central Committee is expected to play a key role in Abbas’s tenure, with key figures including Rajoub and Sheikh already in contention to replace the 90-year-old leader.

Yasser Abbas’s appointment to the committee alone does not put him on a clear path to leadership, said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Birzeit University.

“This can be seen as the beginning of a phase – if it is not a legacy, then we will get a role in the future,” he said.

Jarbawi said senior Abbas remained in power, while the Congress failed to specify who would lead the party next.