Fatah, the major party governing the Palestinian Authority (PA), has extended the right to vote and stand in its leadership elections to ex-convicts, including those released from serving life sentences in Israeli prisons under recent hostage deals.
On May 14, the party held its first conference in a decade, which saw the election of new members of its governing body, the Central Committee and Revolutionary Council.
Led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah is the most influential faction in the PA, which controls the West Bank.
However, a key difference of this iteration of the conference is the extension of the franchise to more than 380 former prisoners, each of whom had served over 20 years in Israeli jails.
Raed Abu al-Humus, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Authority (PPAA), which operates under the PA, confirmed the change, adding that ex-convicts amounted to 15 per cent of the party’s internal electorate.
He also revealed that around 30 former inmates had run for seats on the Central Committee, including several who had been serving long sentences after being convicted of involvement in terror attacks against Israelis.
Of these, at least two were elected to the committee, according to the Times of Israel. They were Zakaria Zubeydi, a former leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Taysir Bardini, who was sentenced to life for murder in connection with an unspecified incident in 1993.
The vote also saw the re-election of Marwan Barghouti for the third time since 2009, despite the fact that he is currently serving five life terms after being convicted of involvement in three attacks between 2001 and 2002. Barghouti has protested his innocence and claimed that the military court that tried him was illegitimate, as well as saying that he no longer supports violent action against Israel.
Per the PPAA, the decision was taken after it was supported by Abbas and other faction leaders, who wished to recognise the growing number and influence of ex-prisoners within its membership.
To this end voting was conducted not only in the West Bank, but also in Cairo, where many of the prisoners were deported after their release.
"This is the first time the membership of released prisoners has reached such large numbers, and therefore they must appear in a manner worthy of the scale of struggle and sacrifices represented by the hundreds and thousands of years ‘burned’ inside prisons and detention centres,” said al-Humus in a Facebook post.
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