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Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction have held rallies in Gaza to mark the group’s 48th anniversary.

Hamas, which governs Gaza, allowed rival Fatah to hold celebrations there for the first time since Hamas ousted Fatah forces five years ago.

Last month, supporters of Hamas celebrated their movement’s founding with a rare rally in the West Bank.

The moves were aimed at easing tensions between the two sides.

Hamas came to power in Gaza after winning Palestinian elections in 2006 and ousting Fatah from the coastal enclave in clashes the following year.

In a pre-recorded message played on giant screens, President Abbas said: “Victory is near and we will meet you in Gaza in the near future,” AFP news agency reported.

“Gaza was the first Palestinian territory rid of [Israeli] occupation and settlement and we want a lifting of the blockade so that it can be free and linked to the rest of the nation,” he said from his West Bank power-base.
Sea of yellow

Huge crowds, carrying the yellow flags of the Fatah movement and pictures of Mr Abbas, streamed into Gaza City, the climax to a week of smaller celebrations across the strip marking Fatah’s first attack against Israel.

Fatah officials said half a million supporters turned out. Hamas put the figure at 200,000.

Fatah organisers decided to end speeches early due to “the huge number of participants and logistical failures”, Yahiya Rabah, a Fatah official in Gaza, was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.

There were reports of clashes between rival Fatah factions, but none of violence between Hamas and Fatah supporters.

“The message today is that Fatah cannot be wiped out,” Amal Hamad, a member of the group’s ruling body, told Reuters news agency.

“Fatah lives, no-one can exclude it and it seeks to end the division.”

Mr Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal signed a reconciliation deal in Cairo in 2011, but it has not been implemented.

In a speech during a visit to Gaza last month, Mr Meshaal urged “reconciliation and national unity of the Palestinian ranks”.

“Palestine is for all of us, we are partners in this nation. Hamas cannot do without Fatah or Fatah without Hamas, or any movement,” he said.

Hamas, an Islamist movement, and the secular Fatah, fundamentally disagree in their approach towards Israel. Hamas has refused to renounce violence, recognise Israel’s right to exist or accept peace accords between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Israel.

Relations between Fatah and Hamas collapsed in June 2007 when Mr Abbas ordered the dissolution of the Hamas-led unity government amid deadly clashes between the factions in Gaza. Hamas subsequently routed Fatah forces in Gaza and set up a rival government there.

Stephen Mitchell is the deputy director of BBC News, assisting director Helen Boaden, when claims of sexual assault against Jimmy Savile came to light.

He is directly responsible for the BBC’s news programmes, including flagship TV current affairs show Newsnight when it dropped its planned programme on Savile in late 2011.

The challenging job involves providing creative, editorial and managerial leadership for more than 1,000 of the News department’s staff.

Mitchell, 63, was given the role in April 2008, also taking responsibility for news programmes across Radio 4, 5 Live, Asian Network, Radio 1 and English language World Service.

He is also a member of the BBC News Board and leads all employee relations matters for BBC News.

During an interview with Hertfordshire Life, having lived in the county for 20 years, he revealed the hardest aspect of the job was “a matter of fine judgement”.

“We are journalists, not historians, and it is sometimes difficult to make a call when events are unfolding all the time and deadlines are continuous.”

He continued: “You have to make decisions in an imperfect world and against the clock when you haven’t got all the information or evidence, and sometimes that involves fine judgement as to whether we’re confident enough to go or to delay. And that I find really difficult.”

Mitchell had previously been the Head of Multimedia Programmes since October 2007, when the the BBC created a new department to deal with the challenges of the changing ways audiences were consuming the news.

It brought together all of the BBC’s major current affairs brands such as Panorama, Today, Radio 1′s Newsbeat and Newshour.

As Head of BBC Radio News from December 2009, Mitchell had been responsible for journalism on all the BBC’s domestic radio networks, local radio stations and World Service radio in English.

He started his own journalism career at Thomson Regional Newspapers, working as a reporter and sub-editor in both Newcastle and Cardiff, before joining the BBC Radio newsroom in 1974.
Grammar school

He also worked as a reporter on the Today programme before realising that his talents lay behind the microphone and rising through the ranks to the post of senior duty editor in 1986.

“I’m not blessed with a very interesting voice,” he confessed.

“I have to work very hard to put life into my voice on the radio and I cannot for the life of me walk and talk at the same time. So I realised quite early on that I was never going to be a star radio reporter!’

In 2004 he was criticised by the Hutton inquiry over his handling of the Iraq dossier row with the government, which was sparked by a piece from former Today reporter Andrew Gilligan.

However the BBC’s internal enquiry that followed cleared him of any wrongdoing and found the Hutton inquiry’s criticism “unjustified”.

He said of the issue: “It was quite a stretch but we got through that by sticking to the basic principles of our journalism, and there was no way we [the BBC] were cowed by anything that had happened, although of course it gave us pause for thought.”

Mitchell was born in Loughborough, Leicestershire, in 1949, the son of a welder.

He grew up on a council estate but won a place at Loughborough Grammar School thanks to his 11+ results.

He then went to Manchester University where he graduated with a degree in Politics and Modern History.

In March 2011 he became the new chairman of the National Council for the Training of Journalists’ Qualifications Board, a position he held alongside his job at the BBC.

Source: BBC.co.uk