Abbas to address first Fatah congress since 2009

Ramallah : President Mahmud Abbas addresses his Fatah party's first congress since 2009 on Wednesday as he contends with internal dissent and grim prospects for advancing his decades-long goal of achieving a Palestinian state.

The 81-year-old leader was re-elected head of Fatah as the congress opened on Tuesday, but speculation has mounted over who will eventually succeed him as Palestinian president. He has not publicly supported a successor.

His speech is expected at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) before some 1,400 delegates in Ramallah.

It comes with Palestinians facing continued Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank and an incoming Donald Trump administration in the United States seen as far more friendly to Israel.

More than 600,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as their future capital.

The United States, European Union and others have warned that continued settlement building is eating away at prospects for a two-state solution to the conflict, the basis of years of negotiations.

A controversial Israeli bill to legalise some 4,000 settler homes in the West Bank had been due to come up for a first reading in parliament on Wednesday, but there were suggestions it was being delayed as further discussions occurred.

The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the West Bank to be illegal, whether they are authorised by the government or not.

The Israeli government differentiates between those it has approved and those it has not.

The progress of the bill, approved earlier by a committee of ministers on behalf of the government, has demonstrated the power of the settler movement in Israel.