Fatahs' sixth General Assembly and the first in 20 years, headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has succeeded in electing a new executive council and has witnessed a substantial injection of vernal talent into the party heirarchy.
This conference was deemed as critical in re-establishing Abbas’ dwindling political authority within the Palestinian movement. In a major revamp of the aging executive 18 seats up for grabs were won by 14 'fresh faces'.
Over 2,000 selected Fatah delegates attended the high profile assemblage in Bethlehem which incidentally was the first to be held on Palestinian soil since Tunis in 1989. However, the conference itself had to be extended from the scheduled 3 days as it had been dogged by political in-fighting and recriminations. In fact at one stage it was thought that the conference would have to be suspended due to escalating tensions between delegates with journalists being advised to refrain from attending. In an effort to diffuse the situation Saudi King Abdullah sent a letter urging Fatah factions to resolve their internal differences. He warned members that their internal squabbling was causing more untold damage to their goal of an independent Palestinian state than their mortal ‘enemy’ Israel.
Abbas has failed to capture the imagination of Palestinians since succeeding the irrepressible and charismatic Yasser Arafat. Since then he has been at the centre of attempting to negotiate a two-state solution with Israel and in the process has failed to accomplish anything tangible in the way of a settlement. This has manifested itself at the polling booths with Fatah conceding vital ground to its more militant Islamist rival Hamas. Fatahs’ political dominance was humiliatingly vanquished at the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. Furthermore, if this downward slide was to continue many Fatah supporters fear that Abbas would lose re-election to the presidential office in elections due next year. Many Fatah members believe that the only way they can wrestle the mantle of ‘resistance’ from their militant rivals is to re-dress their affiliation with the United States.
However, despite all the initial obstacles Fatah did succeed in nominating a new panel for their 21 member executive council. One of the most notorious new additions is Marwan Barghouti currently imprisoned in Israel serving five consecutive life sentences. He also tipped by many as a possible future successor to Mahmoud Abbas.
Three former security officers who served under Yasser Arafat, Jibril Rajoub, Tawfiq Tirawi and Muhammad Dahlan were all elected, The latter has the unwanted tag of “the man who lost Gaza” after mounting a failed coup attempt against Hamas in 2007. Also among the host of ‘fresh faces’ elected to the council is the Lebanese Fatah mogul, Sultan Abu al-Aynain.
Whilst the shadow of Hamas hovered over Fatahs’ conference proceedings, there is optimism that the re-structuring within the hierarchy will prove to be the first tentative steps of re-building Fatah credibility within the Palestinian electorate. There has also been the daunting concensus that any negotiations with Israel will have to include Hamas. For this to materialise, western and Arab governments will be turning to Egyptian mediation to broker reconciliation between the two factions. This injection of new blood into the Fatah command is geared to re-energize Palestinian support for the political group ahead of the resumption of imminent peace talks involving the Obama administration.
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