Azzam Al Ahmad: Who is the PLO's new secretary-general?

Azzam Al Ahmad has been elected as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's (PLO) new secretary-general.

In a vote on Saturday, the PLO's executive committee chose the veteran Fatah leader to succeed Hussein Al Sheikh, who last month was picked to serve as Mahmoud Abbas' deputy at the Palestinian Liberation Organisation

An ally of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Al Ahmad has been a senior figure in Palestinian politics for more than five decades.

Al Ahmad was born in 1948 in Rummanah, a town north of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

He became active in politics while studying a degree in economics in Baghdad, serving as the head of the Iraqi branch of the General Union of Palestinian Students in the early 1970s before becoming president of the organisation in the latter half of the decade.

The 78-year-old has occupied leadership positions in Fatah – the dominant faction in the PLO – since the late 1980s when he was nominated to join the party's revolutionary council.

A member of the Palestinian legislature since 1996, he currently heads the Fatah parliamentary bloc.

Since the formation of the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s, Al Ahmad has held several ministerial positions. He served as the minister of public works from 1996 to 2003 before becoming communications minister until 2005.

Following Hamas' victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections, he acted as deputy prime minister in the short-lived unity government led by Ismail Haniyeh in 2007.

Since being elected to the Fatah Central Committee in 2009, Al Ahmad had taken a leading role in negotiations with Hamas and Israel. As the head of Fatah's national relations council, he has led the party's reconciliation efforts with Hamas, including during talks last year to form a national unity government.

Though close to Abbas, the two men have been known to have disagreements, including in 2014 when Al Ahmad criticised the president's arrest of prominent union leader and Fatah official Bassam Zakarneh.

He has served on the PLO's executive committee since 2018.