Fatah's second coming

Khaled Amayreh

Having succeeded in holding its first general conference on Palestinian land, Fatah's ultimate success hedges on the extent to which it can extricate Palestinian rights from Israel's parsimonious hands, writes Khaled Amayreh in Bethlehem

August 15, 2009

The week-long Fatah sixth general conference in Bethlehem was wrapped up Tuesday with the election of a new 18-member executive committee, fourteen of them new faces. The newly-elected members include several former chiefs of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security agencies, including Muhammed Dahlan, the controversial former Fatah strongman who is widely considered an arch-foe of Hamas.

Many of the movement's veteran leaders, such as Ahmed Qurei' and Al-Tayeb Abdul-Rahim, failed to win a seat on the powerful committee. Receiving the highest vote were veteran Fatah leader Abu Maher Ghunim, who received 1338 votes, followed by imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi with 1063 votes.

Fifteen of the 18 elected or re-elected members are based in the occupied Palestinian territories, something that means that the estimated 4.5 million Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora will have the lowest representation ever in the movement's most powerful body.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas who was selected as Fatah chief for a second term will appoint three other members to the committee, including a woman, a Christian and a third person. There are speculations that Abbas might appoint his arch-rival Farouk Kaddumi as a member. However, it is uncertain whether Kaddumi will accept such an offer.

A few weeks ago, Kaddumi accused Abbas and his former aid Muhammed Dahlan of having connived with Israel to poison the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Abbas called the charges a "cheap attempt" to derail the convening of Fatah's conference.

However, during the conference, Abbas sought to extend a hand of reconciliation to Kaddumi: "And to our brother Abu Lutf (Kaddumi's nom de guere) we say we are human beings, we sin and mistake, but the best of sinners are those who repent. In any case, you remain our brother, and we all belong to the warm bosom of this great movement."

The controversy over Kaddumi's charges and Hamas's adamant refusal to allow Fatah delegates from Gaza to travel to the West Bank initially created not a small amount of perplexity within the Fatah leadership.

However, Abbas's determination to hold the conference on time, come what may, eventually proved to be a right decision if only because he succeeded in bringing in more than 2200 Fatah delegates representing the movement's grass-root supporters at home and in the diaspora.

Most observers in Palestine believe that Abbas is likely to enhance his standing, both within Fatah and the larger Palestinian community after the conference. Fatah, too, stands to gain, at least in terms of popularity, as it manages to rebuild and renew itself, guided by a new executive committee and revolutionary council the majority of whose members come from the movement's younger generations.

However, it is also true that much of the optimistic talk about Fatah's "new birth" is based on the assumption that the movement has learned the right lessons from its past blunders. But this assumption is not necessarily accurate, since the Bethlehem conference has left most files having to do with corruption, especially financial corruption, nearly completely untouched.

In fact, some of the most notoriously corrupt Fatah officials have been elected to the executive committee as well as the less important revolutionary council.

Corruption notwithstanding, the post- Bethlehem euphoria might well prove to be completely unjustified if the enduring deadlock with Israel continued as is widely anticipated.

The conference concluded with Fatah adopting a political program that sought to satisfy everyone. The 30-page document reasserted the traditional "Palestinian constants", including a total Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and a just solution to the plight of the refugees, in accordance with UN resolution 149.

Furthermore, Fatah's platform reaffirmed commitment to the two-state solution based on the borders of the 4th of June, 1967, and warned that the Palestinians wouldn't resume negotiations with Israel unless the latter froze all settlement expansion activities. It also stressed the right to use all forms of resistance to end the occupation, including armed struggle, which Israel considers "acts of terrorism."

However, it is widely believed that the reference to armed struggle in the final document is mostly rhetorical given the fact that Fatah can't really wage armed struggle and enjoy Israel's benediction at the same time.

Indeed, Fatah leaders are well aware that it was Israel that allowed the Bethlehem conference to take place, and that had it not been for the Israeli consent to hold it, the conference would have never seen the light of the day.

As to the rift with Hamas, it is possible that a more confident Fatah could show more flexibility in reconciliation talks with the Islamic movement. Hani Al-Masri, a Palestinian columnist argues that the composition of Fatah's new executive committee is going to be advantageous to the cause of national unity. "It is true that Abbas has become stronger, but the new executive committee is also strong and is not going to be a mere rubber stamp in his hand as the previous one was," Al-Masri says.

Hamas elaborated tersely on the outcome of Fatah's convention, calling the conference "an internal Fatah affair." The organization's spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said "the new Fatah leadership will be judged by the extent to which it commits itself to the national cause and interests."

There is no doubt that the Fatah conference in Bethlehem was an important step towards the rebuilding and renewal of a movement plagued by internal feuding, corruption and cronyism. However, it is also true that one should not exaggerate what a single conference can do in terms of resolving the numerous, insurmountable problems facing the Palestinian people and their enduring cause.

Fatah's ultimate success -- as indeed is the case with other Palestinian groups -- hedges on the extent to which it can do in terms of extricating Palestinian rights from Israel's parsimonious hands.

Hence, the more logical question to be asked is not what Fatah, and other Palestinian factions for that matter, will do, but rather what can they do, given the harsh political reality.

The proceedings of Fatah's general conference took place in a Bethlehem building overlooking the Israeli settlement of Har Homa. This fact alone must have demonstrated to the 2200 Fatah delegates that the road to true freedom is still very long.