'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Fateh conference results very unclear

The mainstream western "script" on the results of the Fateh conference that is slowly winding up its affairs in Bethlehem this week is that it was a resounding success, that it showed "democracy in action", and that Fateh showed a strong ability to renew itself when the conference elected a large slate of what people like to call "the young guard" to the new Central Committee.

See, for example, Avi Issacharoff in Haaretz or the wire services report in the Israeli news service Ynet.

I, meanwhile, am working my way through some Palestinian sources to try to get a read on how Palestinians think about the conference.

Maan news agency operates out of Bethlehem but tries to do a good job of providing coverage that is as neutral as possible between Fateh, Hamas, and other Palestinian organizations.

In this piece today, an unidentified Maan writer wrote,

Analysts, observers, and former Palestinian ministers labeled the Sixth Fatah Congress a success even before the final ballot count was complete on Tuesday night.

“The Fatah movement was re-born, it became stronger and more united, making the movement capable of dealing with all sorts of challenges both internally and externally,” one [unidentified] analyst said...

The journo went on to report that,

Former Palestinian minister of prisoners' affairs Ashraf Al-Ajrami said the revitalization of the governing bodies meant those responsible for “a large part of the failures of Fatah” are no longer in the party’s leadership.

"Despite the lack of just accountability [within Fatah over the last 20 years], many from the old generation were held accountable today when they failed in elections for the Central Committee," Al-Ajrami said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was described as the “biggest winner” by Al-Ajrami and dozens of [unidentified] observers, who noted he came out of the congress with legitimate support and a strong mandate to lead.

The Maan journo did, however, make a point of noting at one point that,

Most of those announced as Central Council members... have held a government position at some point in their careers. No women were elected to the committee.

This does somewhat-- and imho quite appropriately-- deflate all the gushing talk about the new rise to prominence of "the young guard." (Who, after all, are "young" only relative to the seriously ageing bunch of guys who've been running Fateh up until now... And, who are all male.)

Maan also gives us a list of the results of the first count of votes for the Central Committee:

1 – Muhammad (Abu Maher) Ghneim: 1,338
2 - Mahmoud Al-Aloul: 1,112
3 - Marwan Barghouti: 1,063
4 - Nasser Al-Kidwa: 964
5 - Salim Za’noun: 920
6 - Jibril Rajoub: 908
7 - Tawfiq Tirawi: 903
8 - Saeb Erekat: 863
9 - Othman Abu Gharbiya: 854
10 - Muhammad Dahlan: 853
11 - Muhammad Al-Madani: 841
12 - Jamal Muheisen: 733
13 - Hussein Ash-Sheikh: 726
14 - Azzam Al-Ahmad: 690
15 - Sultan Abu Aynein: 677
16 - Nabil Sha’ath: 645
17 - Abbas Zaki: 641
18 - Muhammad Shtayeh: 638

This is from about 2,500 voting conference participants. Fwiw, Abu Maher-- #1-- is an ageing founder of Fateh who was a big force in helping organize the conference (despite a hissy fit he threw at one point in the lead-up to it.)

How were people designated to attend the conference, again?

One thing we know is that it was not done in the way normal, democratically accountable political organizations elect representatives to take part in leadership conferences. It was done through invitation-- but also with a lot of bargaining and threats (as well as patronage) attached to that.

Having Abu Maher come out such a strong #1-- 265 votes ahead of Marwan Barghouthi!-- does not make this look like the "victory of the new guard!"

I would say that half a dozen others on the list are members of the "old guard."

But what use is this generational distinction that is made between "old guard" and "new guard", anyway?

To think that simply because both Muhammad Dahlan and Marwan Barghouthi emerged as street leaders during the First Intifada, therefore they currently have anything important in common is quite crazy (or, lazy.) These two men espouse widely divergent policies.

In addition to Dahlan, a number of other Fateh military people who are closely associated with US Gen. Keith Dayton's Contras-style project based in the West Bank were also elected.... Including Tawfiq Tirawi, Jibril Rajoub, etc.

Walid Awad, writing in Al-Quds al-Arabi, says that Abu Mazen "expressed amazement" at the failure of his longtime partner/competitor Abu Alaa' (Ahmed Qurei) to get elected.

Amazement.... right... and pigs will fly...

Awad also notes that sources close to Abu Alaa' were accusing Muhammad al-Madani, who worked in Abu Mazen's "office of mobilization and organization", of engineering Abu Alaa's defeat. Amazingly (!), Madani himself came in #11 in the elections.

Awad tells us that the four Central Committee members to be appointed by (I think) the previously elected group will include one woman, one Christian, one from the Gaza Strip, and one from the Palestinian diaspora.

Awad tells us that Nabil Shaath (#16) expects the first priorities of the new Central Committee will be,

rebuilding the movement, the restoration of national unity, attaining the liberation of the homeland, and building the Palestinian state.

Well, it does depend how the new Fateh leadership proposes to restore national unity, doesn't it? Let's hope it is through the negotiations with Hamas that will resume in Cairo next week, rather than through any repeat of the horrendously damaging, Dayton-backed and Dahlan-planned thuggery that they used in Gaza in 2007.

... Well, I have a lot more to read, and indeed, some other work to attend to, too. I'll be back with more thoughts on Fateh in the days ahead.

For now, I just want to recapitulate the five "myths" about Fateh that I identified in this mid-June post:

1. Fateh is a secular, modernizing movement that is in many ways "just like us" and therefore easy to deal with;

2. Fateh's leaders are ready and eager for a diplomatic deal with Israel-- indeed, so ready and eager that they'll be ready to make deep concessions on all or most of the core issues (unlike Hamas);

3. Hamas might still be controlling Gaza, but Fateh remains more popular in the West Bank, which has about twice as many votes as Gaza;

4. Mahmoud Abbas is an able representative of, and leader of, his people; and

5. Fateh actually does exist as a coherent and easily unifiable political movement.

The response that Mouin Rabbani sent in to that post is also worth re-reading.

Looking at my five myths, I'd say the events of the conference have thus far borne out the fact that most of them are indeed myths.

Whether the mere fact of this conference having been held means that that Fateh does now "exist as a coherent and easily unifiable political movement" remains to be seen. There is the still mysterious (to me) Maan story about the Fateh leadership in Gaza having all resigned....

And also this other story about the results of a recount that led to some serious reshuffling of the names that bracketed the cut-off point for success in the CC election-- which led to key Abu Mazen security aide al-Tayyib Abdul-Rahim suddenly getting bumped onto the CC...

So there may still be some serious contestations from within significant organs of Fateh of the result of the recent "elections." So the legitimacy of the new CC within Fateh as a whole is by no means yet established

(Ouch. A strongly contested election result. What does that remind us of?)

But once again: all this only has any relevance at all if there is some real and hard-hitting peacemaking diplomacy from Washington and other international actors.

If there is no successful and hard-hitting peace diplomacy, then "Fateh"-- which at this point is to a large degree the creature of Keith Dayton and all the US-mobilized patronage/peonage funds that have been poured into Ramallah in recent years-- will disappear from the scene fairly rapidly.

Fateh's name, let us remember, both means "victory" and is a reverse acronym for the Harakat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniyya, the Palestinian Liberation Movement. There are still many Fateh members who believe in the goal of national liberation. Whether the newly "re-elected" movement leader Abu Mazen can deliver them even one quarter of what they hope for of course remains to be seen. (The West Bank and Gaza comprise around 23% of the land area of pre-1948 Mandate Palestine.)