A Palestinian Liberation Organization faction said on Thursday it would not attend a meeting of the most important Palestinian political congress in years because it wants more factions to be included.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said it would boycott the rare Palestinian National Council session, after a requested postponement to allow factions like Hamas and the Islam Jihad to attend was not granted, the group said in a statement issued in Cairo on Thursday.
The PFLP is the second-largest PLO faction after Fatah, the group headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO. The faction's absence would be a blow to Abbas' efforts to win a broad consensus on resolutions.
"The PFLP's decision will lead to weakening the legitimacy of the PNC meeting and the legitimacy of decisions it may take," said Gaza-based political analyst Hani Habeeb.
The 700-member council session is scheduled to convene in Ramallah on April 30 to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December, a shift in U.S. policy that has outraged the Palestinians.
Palestinian leaders said Trump's Dec. 6 declaration meant that Washington could no longer take the lead in mediating Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, which have been frozen since 2014.
In Ramallah, Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi said that PNC session would be held as planned.
"We hope they will revise their position so that we can together face the difficult stage in the face of Trump's 'deal of the century' so that we can cement an internal front," said Qawasmi.
The PNC last met in 2009, in what was termed an emergency session. That meeting was held to replace six of the 18 members of the PLO executive committee, the Palestinians' highest decision-making body.
It last held a regular session in 1996 in the presence of then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, when it voted to amend clauses in the PLO's charter that advocated the destruction of Israel.
Despite repeated promises by Abbas, the Palestinian Authority had not held a general election since 2006, when the Islamist Hamas movement trounced Fatah. A unity government collapsed, and in a brief, bloody civil war in 2007, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Abbas.
