RAMALLAH, December 5, 2016 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas’ statement at the closing session of Fatah movement’s seventh conference together with the final results of the movement’s internal elections hit the main front page headlines in Palestinian local dailies on Monday.
Highlighting his speech marking the end of the conference, al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida reported Abbas as stating: “The success of Fatah is the success of Palestine, its people and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).”
Al-Ayyam spotlighted Abbas’ remarks that Fatah’s Central Committee and Revolutionary Council would carry out reforms in the near future to encourage broader participation of young and women.
It reported him as stating enabling such youth participation would ensure Fatah’s sustainability, leadership role and victory.
The three dailies reported the Fatah movement underscored the importance of convening the Palestinian National Council within three months and published the list of elected members of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council and Central Committee.
Al-Quds added Fatah movement stressed the need of achieving national reconciliation, while al-Ayyam said the attendees also stressed the need to hold on to the Palestinian national determinants.
Al-Ayyam said imprisoned Marwan Barghouthi got the highest number of votes in the Central Committee and six new members were elected to the movement’s Central Committee.
Furthermore, al-Quds reported outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry as stating Israel has to choose between peace and settlement construction.
It said Jewish settlers forced their way into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and Israeli forces detained several Palestinians in overnight raids across the West Bank.
It said the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement pressured the world’s largest security company, G4S, to sell most of its businesses in Israel.
Highlighting health deterioration of two hunger strikers, al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida said hunger-striking detainees Ahmad Abu Farah and Anas Shadid remained in a very critical condition.
Al-Quds reported Israeli doctors at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Israel as warning that both hunger striker could die at any minute after going without food for over 70 days in protest of being held in administrative detention.
The dailies said the bodies of four Palestinians were recovered after they went missing when a borderline tunnel between Gaza and Egypt collapsed. The tunnel reportedly collapsed after Egyptian authorities flooded it with seawater.
They added a Palestinian man was also killed when a tunnel collapsed in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis. Al-Ayyam explained the man, identified as 24-year-old Abdul-Rahman Arafat, was a member of Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement.
K.F./M.K.
