Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose authority is disputed, called this Sunday evening for “reforms» and to the «end of internal divisionsat the opening of a rare meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) aimed at filling key positions.
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The octogenarian president gave a speech in the evening to the 124 members of the central council which must approve the replacements of the former secretary general Saeb Erakat, who died in 2020 after contracting the coronavirus, and the former member of the executive committee Hanane Achraoui , who resigned. “We pay great attention to the reform process (…) and we are ready to take the necessary steps to achieve itsaid President Abbas, calling for theimmediate end to internal quarrelswithin the Palestinian leadership, according to excerpts broadcast by Palestinian television.
“Our contacts with the Israelis are not a substitute for a political solution based on international law.added Mahmoud Abbas, who traveled to Israel at the end of December, with close advisers such as Hussein al-Sheikh and Majed Faraj, to discuss with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. Currently Minister of Civil Affairs and tenor of Fatah, the party of Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein al-Sheikh is tipped for the post of chief negotiator of the PLO and is considered as a potential successor to the Palestinian president, even if he does not enjoy of great popularity.
Boycott
In general, Palestinian institutions are increasingly decried. President Abbas, elected in 2005 and whose mandate was due to end in 2009, is at rock bottom in the polls and demonstrations multiplied in the West Bank last year to call for his resignation. In April, he canceled the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for May, the first in 15 years, arguing that the ballot was not guaranteed in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector of the holy city occupied and annexed by Israel, which refuses to hold it there. of these elections.
“Our goal is to hold the presidential and legislative elections as soon as we can hold these polls in Jerusalem.“Said Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday evening, without providing deadlines or saying how he was going to go about organizing these elections in East Jerusalem, where more than 300,000 Palestinians live. Even before it began, the PLO Central Council meeting was the subject of a boycott by a number of leftist factions and calls for demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza calling for the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas, 86 years old.
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This first meeting in four years of the Central Council of the PLO, a group of Palestinian factions born in 1964, comes at a time when the very legitimacy of the organization is being called into question. Hundreds of people had gathered this Sunday in the center of Gaza on the initiative of the Islamist movement Hamas in power locally. Hamas is not part of the PLO, but would like to join this internationally recognized organization as representative of the Palestinian people.
But the holding of the meeting undermines the reconciliation of the Palestinian factions, and serves only to promote the inner circle of President Abbas and to approve appointments of handpicked people, deplored Hamas. “Hamas, Palestinian factions and the masses express their rejection of this meeting of the Central Council which only divides, and does not express the will of the peoplesaid Mouchir Al-Masri, a senior Hamas figure, in Gaza.