Fateh's role after its electoral calamity
On my third and last day in Amman I had a number of good, quick meetings... Including one with Mouin Rabbani, a very smart guy who tracks Palestinian developments for the International Crisis Group. He suggested baldly that "some elements in Fateh" might now be preparing to act as Palestinian "Contras"....
Well, I suppose I should be neither surprised nor shocked. Back when I was in Ramallah in late February, the veteran DFLP leader Abu Laila (Qays Abdel-Kareem) told me he thought one reaction of the Fateh leaders to the humiliation of the electoral defeat at the hands of Hamas-- and to the serious factionalizing and backbiting within their own ranks that caused, accompanied, and followed that defeat-- would likely be to try to whip up an anti-Hamas campaign as a way, as much as anything, of trying to mobilize their own followers and distract them from the campaign to do real reform inside Fateh... And yes, there certainly are some big external funders and supporters out there who are poised to support anything that might help to undermine Hamas. (Chiefly, the US government.) So the combination of those two factors could indeed add up to a Contras-type situation. If anyone in Fateh is desperate enough to go that far...
I've just been reading this well-reported article on the post-election developments inside Fateh. It's by Charmaine Seitz, who's a freelance journalist based in Jerusalem. She writes that the series of Fateh leadership meetings held soon after the Hamas victory identified two key goals for the party/movement: " first, to work for early elections that would cut short the government’s usual four-year term, preferably in a matter of months, and second, to ensure that Fatah wins the second time around."
(You'll note that these goals, including the timeline sketched therein, already fit in with the "strategy" outlined by some pro-Israeli Americans soon after the Hamas victory was announced. And indeed, as Seitz noted, they were predicated on an assumption that the Hamas government would be met with an international boycott... A boycott orchestrated from where, I wonder?)
Seitz writes about the PA president and Fateh leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) that:
Those
of Abbas’ advisers who urge a swift blow to Hamas are clearly gaining
the president’s ear. It helps their case that the Fatah rank and file
has been lashing out at their leadership ever since word of the January
election results spread. Party leaders would prefer to see this anger
directed at Hamas.
,She quotes Fateh spokesperson Ahmad Abd al-Rahman as saying that if Fateh wants to win the next PA elections, it needs to get its internal organization into some sort of order. (Duh!)
“We need a drastic
restructuring,”
he says, “and to impose discipline over the movement.” As such, the
leadership is enforcing regulations stipulating that each member hold a
membership card, pay dues and serve on an active committee. This, he
says, will energize members for local Fatah elections.
She writes that Fateh insiders
describe a six-month-long process that would starting with the
registration of party "members" (which is already, I have to tell you,
a very revolutionary concept of Fateh, which has for long considered
itself to be-- sort of like the Church of England, in England-- the
"natural" affiliation for any Palestinian who does not consciously opt
out of it), and would then move through the local party elections to
holding gatherings of the -- by then, hopefully revamped-- national
party leadership organizations, viz., the 40-person Revolutionary
Council and the 10-person Central Committee...Significantly, she then adds this:
what is interesting
about the promised “democratization” of Fatah is
the exclusion of the
mid-level Fatah constituency that once clamored
most loudly for it. The parliamentary contests strengthened
Abbas’
role, as he remains the main focus of international energies. In the
elections’ aftermath, Abbas has virtually ignored the contingent of
Fatah whose most prominent member is Israeli-imprisoned parliamentarian
Marwan Barghouti. When Fatah primaries failed, Fatah nearly split into
two lists -- one headed by Revolutionary Council member Barghouti, and
the other topped by Fatah Central Committee member Ahmad Qurei. The
last-minute compromise to unite the lists put Barghouti at the top but
marginalized his colleagues, who have scant representation in the new
parliament. Now Qaddura Faris, director of the Prisoners’ Club and an
ally of Barghouti, says that relations with the president have deeply
soured.
“The Central Committee, over time, is becoming irrelevant,” he predicts. “After that, we might be able to have a conference. It could be that we will split, that we will split into two, three, four or five movements. We would like for Fatah to stay united, but we don’t believe that in the coming months, the top leadership of Fatah is willing to do anything serious for Fatah.” While he supports the registration and activation of members, Faris says that the Central Committee and Revolutionary Council are trying to shirk responsibility and place it on the local leaderships.
Of the president himself, Faris says that he and his circle reached out repeatedly since the elections, only to be ignored. “[Abbas] has been kidnapped by the old leadership in Fatah,” he says bitterly. “They are trying to use his power against the new generation.”
And then, this:-
The US push for
elections sought to rejuvenate
Fatah by organizing its younger ranks. Instead, the leadership of Fatah
finds itself in a Gordian knot of mutual interest with the United
States and its allies that in the end can only damage the Palestinian
faction [i.e., Fateh] in the eyes of the Palestinian public.
Already
the allies of Marwan Barghouti have effectively split away, investing
in their own publications and waiting for the top leadership to render
itself irrelevant. Fatah members banished to political exile are
organizing to form a new movement. Talal Abu Afifa, who ran as an
independent in Jerusalem and was expelled, says negotiations should be
clinched in a matter of weeks with other disillusioned Fatah members
and key political figures. New monies funneled away from Hamas toward
Fatah-run civil society organizations will create islands of control,
not unlike the process that dismantled the Palestinian left after the
signing of the Oslo accords. (In the course of research for this
article, I encountered four new or just-conceived organizations hoping
to tap “democratization” funds routed away from Hamas.)
Exploring the confluence of (anti-Hamas) interests between the Bush administration and some key Fateh leaders, she writes:
In
the face of its defeat, Fatah and its allies quickly sought to assure
the US and the international community that it was still in the game.
These efforts led to rather bizarre exchanges...
Former national security adviser Jibril Rajoub was said by the Times of London to have told an audience at a February 8-9 follow-up meeting to previous bilateral talks that the elections had been a reversible “political accident.” The implication of the article was that the Palestinian president’s office meant to plot with the US against Hamas, a charge that the president’s office [i.e. Pres. Abbas, I think ~HC] roundly denies.
There is no denying, however, the confluence of Fatah’s aspirations with the interests of the United States, which has boxed itself into a position criminalizing material or other support of any one Hamas member, or the government as a whole. The State Department’s review of the $404 million earmarked for the Palestinian Authority areas cut out not only money for roads that could be construed as support for the government, but also tens of millions of dollars in private-sector projects. Legislation moving through Congress would further tighten the ban on financial support, while allowing exceptions for humanitarian assistance and aid routed through the Palestinian president’s office.We should recall here that the PA president's office has control over at least two of the PA's five "security forces". Continued US funding and support for these-- at the expense of the security forces under control of the PA's Hamas government-- could indeed lead to a Contras-type situation.
Seitz writes:
Hamas
said early on that it would not oppose the funneling of aid through
Abbas, if that measure would help fill Palestinian coffers. But that
was before Abbas’ ulterior motives became more apparent. “Hamas is
amazed at the participation of Palestinian elements in the campaign
being conducted against its people,’ said an April 14 Hamas leaflet
reported in Haaretz, which charged Abbas with gathering power
and funds under his control. Despite Abbas’ public and private
assurances that he has no intention of creating a shadow government,
the dangers of free-flowing aid to Fatah-controlled areas of the
government are becoming eminently clear to Hamas.
One of the few political arguments that the Fateh peole have been making against Hamas that has some possible political traction amongst Palestinians has been their criticism of Hamas's failure to sign onto all the international agreements previously entered into by the PLO-- which has been the Palestinians' longstanding political umbrella organization, and has been dominated by Fateh since 1969. This has been described by some Fateh people as Hamas's "failure to recognize the PLO."
(Personally, I would not describe the Hamas leaders' attitude toward the PLO in those terms. The Hamas leaders I interviewed seemed quite comfortable with, for example, the idea that all members of the PA's legislature are also de facto members of the PLO's "legislating" body, known as the PNC.)
Seitz writes, indeed, that some non-Fateh and non-Hamas politicians have started talking about trying to use the PLO as a forum in which the Palestinian peoples' different parties can actually unify their energies and strategies:
“We
are in need of a national unity government, including a small cabinet
representing all factions,” Mustafa Barghouthi, head of the
[independent leftist] National
Initiative, which garnered two chairs in the parliament, told Voice of
Palestine Radio. “Furthermore, we believe in the necessity of
incorporating three active Palestinian movements within the PLO: Hamas,
the National Initiative and Islamic Jihad.” It may seem strange for
this leftist secular party to be allying with the radical Islamist
right, but the joining of all these parties within the PLO could be the
only means of warding off the political dissolution that threatens not
only Fatah, but all of Palestinian political life.
However, it looks as though Mustafa Barghouthi's cousin, the imprisoned Fateh "young" generation leader Marwan Barghouthi, might not agree with Mustafa's recommendation... Seitz quotes Marwan's ally Qaddoura Faris as "railing" to the effect that, “Hamas lied to the Palestinian people... They lied that they succeeded in the resistance. They lied about reform, too. It must be made clear to the Palestinian people that Hamas is a group of liars.”
Seitz writes that, in general, "the confluence of interests between Fatah and the US or Europe will most definitely reap new constituencies for Hamas." I think that judgment is basically correct. She is also correct in noting that if the Fateh people's anti-Hamas campaign ends up destroying what is left of the institutions of the PA government, this would cause huge problems both for Fateh itself (which would end up, even if it won the next election, inheriting the PA's wreckage) and for the international community:
The
collapse of the Palestinian government will not hurt Hamas, which is
not deeply invested in PA institutions, but it will pull the
international community further into administering Israel’s occupation.
The prospect of government dissolution raises the specter of direct
international intervention between armed warring groups: Somalia.
While I think her argument is
basically sound here, I do think it's a little over-stated.
Palestine is not Somalia; and you don't have to draw in the "specter of
Somalia" to make the case that the situation in the OPTs in the event
of a complete PA breakdown would be very bad.But anyway, I think that the Contras scenario-- that is, giving significant military, political, and logistic support to a violent counter-Hamas armed insurrection in the OPTs-- is one that the Bushies might try to implement long before there's a total social and political breakdown there (and also, in an attempt to help bring this about?)
Let's just hope no-one in Fateh is crazy and destructive enough to participate in any such scheme. nWhat a sad, sad fate that would be for what was once a determined Palestinian nationalist organization.
Comments
Comment from...
WarrenW, at
April 22, 2006 07:54 PM:
I get the impression that Israel might prefer to have Hamas in charge of the Palestinians for a while. Hamas in charge weakens the foreign support for the Palestinians and the lack of a peace process leaves more room for the Israeli government to do what it pleases. The more militant and unreasonable the Hamas/PA is the more easily Olmert can just implement his "Convergence" without any pesky partners or co-equals. The only way Hamas can reverse this would be to shut down the Islamic Jihad offensive and change some fundamental policies. Right now Hamas just looks dumb in world opinion and that helps Israel.
Of course, the Iran connection argues the other way, that Israel would want Hamas out as soon as possible.
I have no evidence either way but the inner sanctum of Israel's new government has to be asking the question: Keep Hamas or not?
Comment from...
WmPeele, at
April 23, 2006 08:17 PM:
the irony is that to some extent Israel has only itself to blame for the ascendency of Hamas....it thought that the Gaza chapter of the Egyptian based Muslim Brotherhood would provide a useful counterweight to the PLO...sometimes the Israelis are too smart for their own good.
Comment from...
frank al irlandi, at
April 24, 2006 06:40 AM:
Helena
I thought you might like a little light relief.
It made Leila al Haddad laugh so it can't be all bad.
Comment from...
vadim, at
April 25, 2006 06:34 PM:
http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1114#
oh dear!