Fatah movement elected a group of younger leaders to its top council on Tuesday. According to early voting results, Fatah's younger generation won a majority of seats on the Central Committee, polling officials said, according to the AP.
"This election is setting a new future for the movement, a new democratic era," said Mohammed Dahlan, the former security chief in Gaza Strip, and one of the winners. Among the newly elected are Marwan Barghouti, the 50-year-old member now jailed by Israel and seen as a likely future president, and Jibril Rajoub, 56, a former security chief in the West Bank.
According to Rajoub, the outcome represented a break from the movement's previous leaders, many of them in their 70s. "This is a coup against a leadership that had monopolized the movement for a long time without even presenting a report about its work," he stated.
The Fatah congress, the first in 20 years, was originally scheduled to last three days, on Tuesday dragged into its eighth day.
Others elected to the 23-member Central Committee included Azzam al-Ahmed, 62, Fatah's leader in the Palestinian parliament, and Mahmoud Aloul, a Palestinian parliamentarian the former governor of Nablus.
Also elected was Salim Zanoun, 78, a Jordan-based Fatah founder. All in all, 14 of the body's 18 elected seats went to new members, the remaining four going to incumbents from the old guard. President Abbas, also a member, will appoint four others. At least 96 candidates stood in the election to the Central Committee.
Final results for the 80 elected seats of Fatah's 120-seat Revolutionary Council, which together with the Central Committee sets the movement's policies, were expected on Tuesday. Some 617 candidates ran for the 120 seats on this body.
