delayed sixth General Conference, slated for March,
has fallen victim to Fatah's chronic internal contradictions,
reports Khaled Amayreh
According to insiders in the movement's higher
echelons, the conference has been postponed
"until further notice". In Fatah-speak, this
probably means "never".
Many of Fatah's younger leaders and activists had
hoped and probably still hope that the organization
of the conference would provide a rare opportunity
to put Fatah's house in order and introduce badly-needed
democratic reforms to a movement that is increasingly
suffering from a host of ailments, including corruption,
rampant factionalism and demoralisation.
However, Fatah's veteran leaders, especially at the
national level, have been resisting and effectively
opposing internal elections because of the impossible
situation on all fronts; namely, the enduring rift
between Fatah and Hamas, the precariousness
of the "peace process" with Israel, and the widespread
malaise in Palestine and the region as a whole.
Still, Fatah's internal disunity remains the most
serious factor hampering the convening of the
conference at this time.
There are some veteran Fatah leaders in the
West Bank, people like Qaddura Fares and
Jebril Rajoub, who are worried that holding
the conference under existing circumstances
might cause an implosion within the movement.
"We can't convene the sixth conference now
with all these internal differences. Because then
instead of achieving unity, we would be
consolidating disunity and Fatah would come
out of the conference in much worse shape,"
said Fares.
He pointed out that Fatah might be better off
"patching up" its differences by way of
reconciliation rather than elections. But
reconciliation according to whose criteria?
That is the question for which no one seems to
have a satisfactory answer.
None of this talk seems acceptable to the younger
Fatah leaders who accuse the veteran leadership
of wanting to remain in their seats forever.
"They are all liars, in any company, let alone a
political movement or a political party. Managers
don't remain in their seats for 20 years. How can
we compete with Hamas if our leaders remain in
their seats till they are senile or dead?" asked
Jamal Qawasmeh, a local Fatah leader in the
Hebron region. "Authoritarianism has harmed
Fatah so much, and if it persists unchallenged,
it could very well bring about Fatah's demise."
One of the most disquieting and potentially
destructive problems facing Fatah these days
is the so-called "warring camps". This is by no
means a new phenomenon within Fatah,
which is often described as a supermarket of
ideas and political orientations. There are all
kinds of political and ideological trends within
the movement, ranging from far right to far left.
There are also loyalties inside Fatah to regional,
even foreign powers. More to the point, there are
Jordanian, Egyptian, American, and, some say,
even Israeli lobbies.
This cacophony of contradictions, however,
had been kept under control, thanks to Yasser
Arafat's strong personality and unchallenged
dominance in Fatah. Arafat, after all, held all
the reins, took all the decisions and controlled
all the money, and no Fatah leader could have
challenged him.
Now, with no charismatic leader -- no one would
ever compare the current PA leader Mahmoud
Abbas to Arafat -- and in the absence of genuine
democratic traditions which the movement could
rely on to resolve and reconcile internal
differences, Fatah is facing one of the most
difficult crises in its history.
In the past few weeks, recrimination spilled over
into the media, with Hakam Balawi, an aide to
Abbas and Mohamed Dahlan, the former Fatah
strongman in Gaza whose forces Hamas defeated
in June 2006, engaging in a showdown of verbal
abuse and name-calling with Dahlan.
Balawi has been accusing Dahlan of seeking to
topple Abbas, by hook or by crook, and replace
him as PA president, in coordination with unnamed
external powers, a possible allusion to the United
States and probably Israel as well. "Dahlan is an
opportunist who is spreading chaos, illusions and
poison," said Balawi in a statement issued on
behalf of Fatah's central committee. "His actions
and statements have long been based on
intimidations, threats and ultimatums."
Earlier, Balawi lambasted Dahlan "for losing
Gaza to Hamas and fleeing with your tail
between your legs." Fighting back, Dahlan
called the present Fatah leadership "a failed
leadership," saying that Abbas and Fatah's
entire top echelon were responsible for Fatah's
defeat in the Gaza Strip. Dahlan went as far as
accusing Balawi of being a traitor working and
spying for Israel. "It is you who planted Israeli
spies in Abu Mazen's office in Tunis," said Dahlan
in a statement to the media this week, referring
to Adnan Yassin, the Mossad agent who infiltrated
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headquarters
in Tunis in the late 1980s.
A few weeks ago, Abu Ali Shahin, another Gaza Fatah
leader, who fled to the West Bank following Hamas's
countercoup in Gaza, lashed out at Abbas, calling him
a failed leader who was not capable of taking the right
decisions at the right time. Some Fatah leaders are
worried that the acrimonious showdown between
Balawi and Dahlan might eventually evolve into a
kind of Gaza-West Bank split. Balawi hails from the
northern West Bank while Dahlan is from Khan
Yunis in the Gaza Strip.
Peace talks with Israel, as usual, are leading nowhere
because of Israeli intransigence and refusal to give
up the spoils of the 1967 war. At the same time,
Fatah's internal problems are worsening rather than
receding, so the movement's political future and
internal cohesion are very much on the line.
Fatah has to choose the lesser of its two evils: holding
the sixth conference this year, or not holding it at all.
Both are a recipe for disaster. One Fatah leader,
Ikrema Thabet, believes that this is not the season to
reap gains for Fatah but rather to limit losses. "If our
discussions and arguments outside the conference are
like this, then what hope do we really have for
achieving unity inside the conference?" asked Thabet
in an article released by the Maan News Agency this
week. He added, "what we need is a conference to
unify our ranks, not a conference that would make
the situation worse than it already is."
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