**Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction is due to begin a congress - its first in 20 years.**A draft of the movement’s new platform proposes to push to the sidelines a call to “armed struggle” against Israel, without dropping it altogether.
Fatah is widely seen as corrupt and ineffective, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Tim Franks says.
He says there will also be close interest in who is elected to the faction’s internal positions of power.
‘Princes of the Gulf’
Some 2,000 delegates are convening for Fatah’s three-day congress in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
They will be discussing a new platform that seeks to rejuvenate the movement.
However, the draft document proposes to keep the option of “armed struggle” if peace talks with Israel fail.
It also says that an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank is a precondition for any further talks with Israel.
The congress comes as the US is hoping to broker a new round of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Maybe more important is also the issue who the delegates elect to the internal positions of power, our correspondent says.
He adds that - in the words of one reformer - the current leaders are like princes in the Gulf.
Opinion polls still suggest that Fatah is currently more popular than its main rival - the Islamist Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip.
But without a strong infusion of freshness, in the long-term Palestinians say that Fatah will only decline, our correspondent says.