A Palestinian woman holds a poster of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a Fatah demonstration Sunday supporting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus. The Western-backed Palestinian Fatah movement’s first conference in 20 years has endorsed a state alongside Israel but says it reserves the right to still take up arms against Israeli occupation.

Bethlehem, West Bank ? Fatah has elected a rejuvenated leadership that will likely bring the mainstream Palestinian movement more in line with President Barack Obama’s vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, according to unofficial results released Tuesday.

But a reluctant Israel and militant Islamic Hamas stranglehold on the Gaza Strip pose formidable obstacles on the road toward a peace accord.

The voting for Fatah’s two main decision making bodies, the Central Committee and the larger Revolutionary Council, was the highlight of the first convention held in two decades by the movement founded by the late Yasser Arafat. The meeting was scheduled for three days but has stretched into its eighth because of acrimonious wrangling.

Official results have not yet been released, but the vote appeared to present a new Fatah leadership that removed some of the old-time exiled revolutionaries who urged armed struggle in favor of pragmatic, younger grass-roots activists who grew up in the West Bank and Gaza and support negotiating a peace treaty with Israel.

The fresh faces on the Fatah leadership bodies are not newcomers to the scene. Instead, most are local grass-roots activists who have long clamored for a voice in Palestinian policy making.

Their ascendancy gives a boost to President Obama’s hoped-for Mideast breakthrough, giving the mainstream, secular Fatah more credibility among Palestinians who threw their traditional Fatah leaders out of power in 2006 elections, charging them with corruption, nepotism and inefficiency — especially their failure to win independence despite decades of armed struggle and years of peace talks.

Lurking in the background are Israel and Hamas, sworn enemies of each other and suspicious of Fatah.

Hamas overran the Gaza Strip in 2007, seizing power there after 18 months of frustration over Fatah’s refusal to relinquish control despite the Hamas sweep of the 2006 elections. Reconciliation talks sponsored by Egypt have failed to heal the Fatah-Hamas rift, and it is assumed there can be no peace accord until the West Bank and Gaza are reunited under a single government.

Israel has been watching the Fatah convention with skepticism. Officials have denounced its endorsement of the principle of armed struggle, though the delegates voted to favor measures like boycotts and demonstrations to resist Israeli occupation.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes a hard line toward the Palestinians. Obama wrung from Netanyahu a reluctant endorsement of creation of a Palestinian state, but for decades he has backed Israeli control over the West Bank for security reasons.

Obama’s administration is said to be within weeks of presenting a new Mideast peace plan, and a reinvigorated Palestinian leadership would be a significant boost.

In all, 14 of the Central Committee’s 18 elected seats went to new members.

The final results, along with the results of the vote for the 80 elected seats of Fatah’s 120-seat Revolutionary Council were expected today. Abbas remains Fatah’s chairman.