Azzam al-Ahmad (Fatah)
Azzam al-Ahmad, born in 1948, is a member of Fatah's Central Committee (CC) and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). In May 2018, he was elected to the PLO’s Executive Committee (EC).
Al-Ahmad heads Fatah’s National Relations Commission and leads Fatah’s delegation for Palestinian reconciliation. He is considered a close ally of Mahmoud Abbas, but publicly criticised his order to arrest Bassam Zakarneh, the head of the Palestinian Civil Servants Union in November 2015.
Al-Ahmad was the chairman of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) from 1971 to 1974. He was the PLO’s representative to Iraq from 1979 to 1994, and became a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in 1989. Upon returning to the West Bank after the Oslo Accords, al-Ahmad was elected to the PLC and later became chairman of Fatah’s parliamentary bloc. He held various senior government positions, including Minister of Public Works (1996-2002), Minister of Telecommunication and Technology (2003-2005), and Deputy Prime Minister in the short lived 2007 government of national unity led by Hamas.