RAMALLAH: Facing elections for the first time in 15 years, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is battling a growing rift within his powerful Fatah party that poses a new threat to his dominance over Palestinian politics.
A breakaway bid by one of Abbas’s party allies has intensified speculation he might cancel a presidential vote planned for July, fearing a potential challenge by Marwan Barghouti, a popular Palestinian leader jailed by Israel.
Abbas’s office denies he has plans to delay or scrub the presidential vote.
Barghouti, now 61, was a driving force in Palestinians’ 2000-2005 uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He was sentenced by an Israeli court in 2004 to life imprisonment after being convicted over multiple lethal attacks on Israelis by Palestinian activists. Barghouti has always denied the charges.
Abbas, 85, has ruled the Palestinian Authority (PA) in self-rule areas of the West Bank by decree for over a decade. In January, he announced presidential and legislative ballots - a move largely seen as a response to domestic and Western criticism of his presidency’s democratic legitimacy.
Adding to that criticism is Nasser al Qudwa, a longtime member of Fatah’s top Central Committee who last week announced he was forming a new list that would run separately from Fatah in the legislative election, in May.
“(Palestinians) are fed up with the current situation ... internal behaviour or misbehaviour, things like the absence of the rule of the law, the absence of equality, the absence of fairness,” Qudwa, a nephew of late Fatah founder and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, said.
It is rare for leaders on the 19-member Central Committee members to publicly break with Abbas. — AFP
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