Members of Fatah, the Palestinian political movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas, gather at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City for a three-day party conference to elect a new central committee, its highest leadership body, for the first time in 10 years.

The conference brings together around 2,580 Fatah members, most of them in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, with several hundred others participating from Gaza, Cairo and Beirut.

"Gaza is an integral part of the homeland, no different from Jerusalem and the West Bank," says Sami Abu Salem, a member of the conference media committee.