Palestinian National Council to discuss ending ties with Israel

For the first time in nine years, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) is scheduled to convene in Ramallah on Monday, in a meeting that has Palestinians split between supporters and opponents of the gathering.

Critics of President Mahmoud Abbas have rejected the PNC meeting as a shrewd political manoeuvre, while others see it as a potential turning point in Palestinian politics.

The PNC is expected to vote in a new 18-member Executive Committee of the PLO, the governing body of the organisation, and discuss transforming the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank, into a state with its own institutions and monetary system.

Dominant Palestinian faction, Fatah decided to push ahead with convening the PNC, despite the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) boycotting the meeting.

Hamas is not invited to the council meeting, even as the topic of Palestinian reconciliation is high on the PNC agenda.

"This meeting is vital to continue the Palestinian efforts to end divisions and fragmentation between Palestinian factions," said Wasel Abu Yousef, a current observer-member of the PLO Executive Committee, and head of one of the smaller Palestinian factions, the Palestine Liberation Front.

"[The PNC will] elect new executive bodies that will push forward, in support of Palestinian national rights," Yousef added.

PLO's Executive Committee member Saeb Erekat told Al Jazeera that "this meeting is a turning point for the Palestinians in this critical junction."

Explaining why the PNC needed to convene after being dormant for years, Erekat told Lebanese media that "successive Israeli governments were never interested in two states - Israel and Palestine living side by side".

"Rather, what they wanted all along was one state - Israel - with two systems; an apartheid state," Erekat told Beirut-based Al Mayadeed TV.

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