GAZA CITY: Eleven senior leaders from the Gaza Strip of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party resigned in protest on Wednesday over the election process and results of their movement’s top decision-making body.
The 11 members of Fatah’s highest committee in the Gaza Strip complained that Fatah members from the Gaza Strip were underrepresented in the newly elected, 23-member Central Committee.
Not only are the Gaza members unhappy with the results, which they say leaves Gaza residents out of the party’s upper echelons, but they say they were not fairly represented at the recent conference in the West Bank.
The resignation only affects their membership in the committee. All 11 remain Fatah members.
They charged that voting by some 400 Gaza Fatah delegates during a recent party convention had been unfair, inaccurate and chaotic, with some delegates voting more than once.
The Gaza delegates had to vote in the party election by phone because the Hamas movement, which has de facto control in the Gaza Strip, refused to allow their departure to attend the conference.
Only two Fatah delegates from Gaza definitely made it into the party’s powerful Central Committee. They are Mohammed Dahlan from the central refugee camp of Khan Younis and Nabil Shaath from Gaza City. Gaza delegates had demanded a share of at least six representatives in the committee. Ahmed Nasser announced the resignation of the entire 11-member board as a protest measure. “The decision to go ahead with the conference, despite the absence of Gaza members, has affected the Gaza members’ voting rights,” he told reporters in Gaza.
He charged that “some people” from Fatah’s leadership in the West Bank had “hijacked” the conference.
Nearly all of the 18 of the 23 Central Committee seats which were up for elections had — according to near-final results — gone to Fatah delegates from the West Bank.
In another development, Israeli ministers and lawmakers argued on Wednesday over whether senior Fatah member Marwan Barghouti should be released from jail in Israel, following his strong showing in the elections. Following his success, Fatah members have urged Israel to grant him an amnesty, a call to which at least two members of the Labor Party, the most dovish partner in the otherwise hard-line coalition of Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, responded positively.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian official announced results for the main leadership body of the Fatah movement.
Ahmed Sayad said the results were almost the same as the unofficial tally posted after the Sunday voting, with one exception.
Voting for the 18th position, the last one on the list, produced a tie, so the second candidate was also allowed into the Fatah Central Committee. He is Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a longtime Fatah functionary.
