Azzam al-Ahmad (Fatah)
Azzam al-Ahmad, born in 1948, is a veteran member of Fatah‘s Central Committee and secretary general of of the PLO since May 2025. He is considered a close ally of Mahmoud Abbas, although he 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 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 served as an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council between 1996-2018, eventually leading Fatah’s parliamentary bloc. In May 2018, he was elected to the PLO’s Executive Committee.
He has 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.