RAMALLAH, West Bank — A senior official in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party has issued a rare critique of the PA leader during an interview with The Times of Israel, describing the continued sidelining of a sub-faction that supports one of Abbas’s rivals as a mistake.

Abbas announced last year that he would grant amnesty to all dismissed members of Fatah, in remarks seen as directed at backers of the PA’s exiled former Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan.

But the PA president’s party then hardened its stance, demanding that each ousted Fatah member submit a letter acknowledging any infractions committed. After members of the Dahlan-linked Reformist Democratic Faction (RDF) overwhelmingly refused, they were kept out of the Fatah conference held last month, during which elections were held for Fatah’s powerful Central Committee and Revolutionary Council.

“I think we made a mistake that we did not settle this issue before the conference,” Fatah Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub said when asked about the issue during a rare interview with an Israeli news outlet at his Ramallah office on Wednesday.

He noted that the party had adopted a resolution allowing the return of dismissed members — including ones in RDF — and Rajoub stressed that the reinstatements were to be done “respectfully and with no humiliation.”

The senior Palestinian official was referring to a requirement quietly added by the Abbas-controlled Fatah party after the PA president’s amnesty announcement. Those interested in having their membership reinstated were told they needed to submit individual requests that included an acknowledgement of infractions.

Negotiations were held with representatives from the pro-Dahlan faction in the lead-up to last month’s Fatah conference, and Egypt quietly urged Abbas to compromise.

But the PA president didn’t budge, with one of his aides telling The Times of Israel last week that RDF was seeking to take over Fatah by entering as a bloc, rather than as individual members.

Rajoub said he would see to it that the issue is resolved in a manner that respects the rights of the dismissed members, even if the Dahlan-backing faction was unable to return in time for the first Fatah conference in a decade.

However, he clarified that those with open court cases against them would need to have those settled before returning to the party. This appeared to be a reference to Dahlan himself, who was tried in absentia by a PA court on corruption charges, which his supporters say are unfounded and politically motivated.

Regardless, Dahlan has not expressed interest in returning to the West Bank, and has also ruled out a leadership position in Gaza.

That hasn’t stopped some Israeli officials from viewing him as a potential solution to Prime Minister........

© The Times of Israel