A New Fatah?

The first Fatah conference in twenty years concluded this week, with many analysts claiming it has bolstered the position of younger Palestinian leaders untainted by corruption, as well as that of President Mahmoud Abbas, the party's chairman.

Over 2,000 delegates attended the closed-door conference that was billed as an opportunity for the "young guard" of Palestinian leaders to replace veteran associates of the late Fatah leader Yasser Arafat.

The "old guard" is widely blamed for Fatah's reputation of corruption, cronyism, and disorganization, which most analysts identify as the root causes of Fatah's poor showing in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006. Hamas triumphed in those elections and later staged a violent overthrow of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip.

In results announced Tuesday, less than half of the "old guard" candidates obtained seats on Fatah's central committee, the party's most powerful body. Of the eighteen seats on the committee up for election, only four incumbent "old-guard" members were re-elected.

Of the "old guard" leaders defeated, none was more surprising than Ahmed Qurei (also known as Abu Ala'). A close associate of the late Yasser Arafat, Qurei was the lead Palestinian negotiator and a former Palestinian Authority prime minister. He served as an organizer of the Bethlehem conference, and reports suggested that he tried to flood the event with his supporters in an effort to be re-elected. He was also Israel's principal interlocutor on the Palestinian side; his negotiations with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni coming relatively close to bridging the gap between the two sides.

It is unclear whether Qurei will be among the four additional members still to be appointed to the central committee by President Abbas.

President Abbas himself was re-elected by consensus. He was unopposed, which infuriated some of the delegates in Bethlehem. His re-election technically makes him the head of Fatah for the next five years--when the next Fatah conference is convened.

Most notable of the newly elected "young guard" leaders is Marwan Barghouti. Currently serving five consecutive life sentences in an Israeli prison for orchestrating terror attacks against Israel, Barghouti remains extremely popular on the Palestinian street. Despite his imprisonment, he is seen as a potential successor to Mahmoud Abbas.

Many Israelis (who came to know him well during the Oslo period) view him as the one Palestinian with the will to actually come to final terms with Israel, along with the "street cred" to put any deal over.

Israel has enabled Barghouti to remain active in Palestinian politics from his prison cell. In 2007, he drafted the so-called "prisoners document" as a basis for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. The document also called for Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution with Israel.

Also elected to the central committee was Mohammed Dahlan, who is despised by Hamas for what they claim were his violent tactics while serving as the Palestinian Authority's Gaza security chief. Hamas staged its violent takeover of Gaza while Dahlan was undergoing a medical procedure abroad.

According to the politically independent Palestinian Ma'an News Agency: "A total of 96 candidates, including six women, stood for election for 18 elected seats on the Central Committee. Another 617 people, including 50 women, ran for 80 open places on the second-highest body, the Revolutionary Council (the remaining 40 seats are appointed)."

Of the 2,000 participants, half were from the West Bank, with several hundred coming from overseas. After preventing Fatah members from leaving the Gaza Strip to attend the conference, Hamas allowed 300 or so Gaza-based members to vote by telephone.

Israel Radio cited "a high-ranking political source in Jerusalem" as saying that Israel had done everything it could to help facilitate the Fatah conference in Bethlehem.

The conference produced several resolutions that drew criticism from some Israeli leaders and commentators. Among them was a call for the suspension of peace talks until all Palestinian prisoners are released from Israeli jails, all settlement-building is frozen, and the Gaza blockade is lifted. The conference also passed a resolution claiming Israel was responsible for the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, and launched an investigation into the matter. A forty-one page re-write of Fatah's platform, which was voted upon during the conference, was viewed as marginalizing the concept of "armed struggle," albeit not abandoning it entirely.

As the Associated Press reports, the option of armed struggle likely remained in the document as a "nod to Fatah's hard-line wing, particularly delegates from Lebanon and Syria. Authors of the draft suggested that the party also needs to remain competitive with the populist appeal of the Islamic militant Hamas, which focuses on armed resistance." Such language in Fatah's constitution is essentially boilerplate and has never precluded Israel-Palestinian security cooperation or peace negotiations.

While avoiding the phrase "armed struggle," Abbas opened the conference with a fiery speech, saying "our determination to choose the path of peace and negotiations does not mean that we have abandoned our noble path of legitimate resistance, which is based on international law."

It appears that the Fatah conference was a critical step toward strengthening the position of President Abbas and Fatah vis-à-vis Hamas. It occurred as the Fatah-controlled West Bank has seen a number of improvements in recent months, including signs of economic growth following Israel's removal of numerous checkpoints and roadblocks, and a strengthened security apparatus developed with the assistance of U.S. Security Coordinator General Keith Dayton.

Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian cabinet minister not affiliated with Fatah, shared his assessment with the Christian Science Monitor: "Abbas is the main winner. He is leaving the conference much, much stronger than when he entered the conference. So far he has been a weak leader. . . . He seems to be coming out of the conference as a leader who is much less in need of using the memory of Yasser Arafat as a tool."

And Defense Minister Ehud Barak said: "The rhetoric we hear from the Fatah Congress and the stances taken there are unacceptable to us, but we need to realize that there is no solution for the Middle East but a settlement. I advise Abu Mazen to enter into serious negotiations with us, and I advise the Americans under the leadership of President Obama to lead a process such as this in the Middle East, including the Palestinians, Syria, and additional countries."

That pretty much says it all.