GAZA/RAMALLAH: President Mahmoud Abbas is acting to shake up Palestinian politics with peace talks with Israel in deep freeze and unity efforts with Hamas Islamists who run the Gaza Strip stalled. In power for more than a decade, and facing a mounting challenge to his stewardship, Abbas, 80, resigned last week as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Executive Committee, its top decision-making body. But few saw the move, in which nine of Abbas’s colleagues on the 18-member committee also stepped down, as little more than a manoeuvre to bolster his own standing and weaken his opponents. Under PLO rules, Abbas’s step forces the 714-member Palestinian National Council, or parliament, into session within 30 days to elect a new committee. That is when, his critics say, he will be re-elected committee chairman and pack it with cronies. If, as widely expected, Israel bars legislators living in Gaza or in exile from attending the Sept. 15 meeting of the legislature in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Abbas loyalists will likely be the ones choosing the committee. Abbas supporters said the president was only trying to pump new blood into the PLO, the former main Palestinian guerrilla group and now its umbrella national independence movement. “(Critics) have been saying the PLO has aged and is paralysed and that it needs to be rejuvenated – and when we try to develop it, they call it a settling of scores,” Ahmed Majdalani, a committee member allied with Abbas, told Voice of Palestine radio. Palestinian political analyst Hani al-Masri, however, said Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term as president in 2005 and has not faced a vote since then, was signalling he did not plan to step down any time soon. “He wants everything to be in his hands,” Masri told Reuters. Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote on its website that the resignations were “likely internal political manoeuvres aimed at consolidating power”. Fuelling such sentiments, Abbas last month unexpectedly dismissed the secretary-general of the PLO, Yasser Abed Rabbo, who had been critical of his decision-making. Abed Rabbo said that some of Abbas’s close aides were behind what he called “silly conspiracies” inside the PLO in the bid to remove rivals like himself. Mohammed Dahlan, a former official in Abbas’s Fatah party who is now one of his main critics, issued a statement accusing him of carrying out a “palace coup”. Hamas, which is not a member of the PLO but slated under a 2012 unity pact to be part of a committee – which has never met – to reform the organization, called Abbas’s move a “retreat from the reconciliation agreement”. Meanwhile, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) will convene on September 15 to elect new members of Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee, Palestinian officials said Thursday. The PNC is the PLO’s legislative body, and elects its Executive Committee (PLO EC), which assumes leadership of the organisation between sessions. The PNC is the highest authority in the PLO, responsible for formulating its policies and programs. It serves as the parliament for all Palestinians in and out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), representing all sectors of the Palestinian community worldwide, including political parties, popular organisations, resistance movements, and independent figures from all sectors of life. The Council formally meets every two years. Resolutions are passed by a simple majority with a quorum of two-thirds. The PNC elects its own chairman. Salim Za’noon, PNC Speaker, the PLO parliament in exile, told Palestinian Radio “Voice of Palestine” that the PNC will hold a regular two-day session in the West Bank city of Ramallah Sept. 15. “In case Israelis prevent PNC members overseas from joining the Ramallah session, we will hold an emergency session with PNC members able to attend,” said Za’noon. The meeting aims to elect a new PLO executive committee after committee chairman, President Mahmoud Abbas and nine other members, resigned during a Ramallah PLO meeting last week. “In case we reach a compromise, the PNC will elect new PLO executive committee members,” said Za’noon, adding “most factions called me, informing me officially they will attend the session.” However, the Islamic Hamas movement opposed the decision of holding regular PNC sessions to elect new executive PLO committee members after its members’ mass resignation. “Holding a PNC session cloaks national deals. It insists on carrying out unilateral steps and reverting to national Palestinian consensus,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, said in a press statement. Abu Zuhri held the leadership of Abbas’s Fatah Party responsible for the session’s consequences, adding “Hamas calls on all factions to beware and not get involved in anything which may threaten our unity.”