Alwaght- Mahmoud Abbas was reappointed as the head of the Palestinian Fatah Movement during their latest session in West Bank.
Mahmoud Abbas has been leading the movement since the death of its late leader Yasser Arafat in 2004.
He was re-elected by a consensus vote from his fellow movement members on Tuesday for another five-year term, Fatah spokesman Mahmud Abu al-Hija said.
Tuesday’s event was the first Fatah conference in seven years and is planned to run for at least five days. Some 1,411 delegates were expected to attend the congress, but approximately 1,322 took part in the gathering.
Abu al-Hija said Israeli regime had prevented dozens of Fatah members in the besieged Gaza Strip from attending the conference.
Many journalists from Gaza were also denied permission to enter the West Bank to cover the event, with the union of Palestinian journalists in Gaza saying the move was “in line with the occupation's systematic violation of their rights."
The conference comes at a time that Fatah and the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, are deeply divided. Hamas has ruled Gaza while Fatah has set up headquarters in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank over the past few years.
