Earlier this month, the Fatah Central Committee announced that the movement’s seventh General Conference would be held in Ramallah on November 29. In addition to fulfilling a longstanding demand among Fatah activists, convening the event is an essential prerequisite for other badly needed steps by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, given the circumstances surrounding the announcement, the conference will have implications not only for Fatah, but also for the future of the PA.

According to Fatah’s statutes, the General Conference should be convened every five years, mainly to approve “political and military programs” and elect members of the Central Committee and Revolutionary Council, the movement’s two highest decision-making bodies. In reality, the conference has been only held six times over the past five decades: in 1964 just before the formal launching of Fatah; in 1968 after the Six Day War and just before Fatah’s takeover of the PLO; in 1971 amid the Black September confrontations in Jordan; in 1980 during the PLO’s turbulent last years in Lebanon; in 1988, one year after the first intifada and just before the PLO accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242; and most recently in 2009, to cement President Mahmoud Abbas’s leadership of the movement, which he inherited from founder Yasser Arafat.

The seventh conference will take place in a similarly fraught moment marked by multiple challenges. First, faith in the Oslo process on which Fatah staked its lot has reached a new low point among the group’s members and the general Palestinian populace. Attempts to create an alternative diplomatic strategy via recognition of Palestinian statehood and membership in the UN have not resonated widely. Instead, the West Bank has been undergoing an extended period of violence characterized by attacks on Israelis, in many cases by Fatah members.

Read the full article at the Washington Institute.