Fatah's 'young guard' hopes to elect a new leadership to pump fresh energy into the movement, which has faced difficult times since it lost parliamentary elections to its arch-rival, the radical Islamist Hamas movement - now in sole control of Gaza - in 2006.

Hamas refused to allow some 300 Fatah delegates from Gaza to leave the coastal enclave and attend the conference, demanding the release of its supporters from West Bank jails as a condition.

Abbas, on arriving in Bethlehem late Monday from the central West Bank city of Ramallah, condemned the Hamas' refusal, saying that 'on the eve of the conference, after 20 years, there is a lump in our souls that delegates from the Gaza Strip will not attend.'