by Toufic Haddad

Facing declining street popularity and internal leadership feuds, the historic Palestinian nationalist party, Fateh, finally convened its Sixth Conference in the movement’s 45-year history. Beginning on August 4, 2009 - fifteen years after it was initially supposed to take place - the conference finally commenced a fortnight later with the disclosure of voting results to the 128-seat Revolutionary Council. “Better late than never,” said one resident of the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem where the conference was held. “No comment,” said another.

The conference was a spectacle on many levels: 2300 delegates with their accompanying entourages crammed Bethlehem, many in a fleet of fancy cars with flashing lights and hidden sirens. Virtually all the city’s water was directed to various hotels where delegates stayed, resulting in massive water shortages throughout the rest of the city. There was an intriguing gradation between Fateh delegates who got to stay in the five-star suites, versus those for whom the two-star rooms sufficed. 2500 Palestinian Authority robocops were bussed in, quite literally stationed at every 50 meters of Bethlehem’s streets. Only one incident of gunfire between different security services was reported (Intelligence versus Presidential Guard.) Not to be left out, the Israeli Air Force made a point of conducting aerial maneuvers over Bethlehem skies throughout the duration of the conference, reminding everyone of their presence.

Indeed there was much to be cynical about by the time the conference finally ended. That said, what did take place requires assessment because it has broad implications on the trajectory of Fateh and the Palestinian national movement overall, particularly regarding Fateh’s main political rival Hamas, as well as towards Israel and the “peace process” in general.

Nonetheless, fairly assessing the conference is complicated because it is not entirely clear how Fateh will internalize the changes it just went through. While the organization did issue a new political document, in addition to 18 different position papers outlining the movement’s stance on everything from financial questions to armed resistance, the party has never been about political theories or ink on paper. What drives Fateh is personality, power, cunningness and opportunism. In this regard, election results for Fateh’s two main decision making bodies (the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council) are the best indicators of where Fateh stands today, as they compose the party’s main power brokers who were able to elbow their way into its commanding positions. When combined with the various statements, declarations and interviews provided by delegates and commentators in the wake of the conference, a picture emerges that allows us to draw the following conclusions:

Abu Mazen Rules the Roost
From the moment it was announced that there would be no contender to Abu Mazen’s leadership over the party, certain conclusions became immediately apparent.

The political trajectory of Fateh and its overall strategy is not about to change. A negotiated solution with Israel, enforced through international pressure, particularly from the U.S. and E.U., remains the party line. Abu Mazen has no serious political contender who challenges this overall strategic orientation. There also appears to be no serious contention over his tactics, which can be summed up as follows: beseech Western and Arab governments to apply political pressure against Israel to settle; avoid providing Israel with excuses that allow it to escape negotiations or attack the Palestinian project; in the mean time, sit tight, invest and develop in the areas the PA controls by giving free reign to Palestinian and international capital. Eventually, the demographic game and regional imbalances will force the U.S. to intervene and bring Israel to the table for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Despite much hoopla preceding the conference that the party was on the verge of fragmentation, nothing of the sort has come about, at least for now. In fact Abu Mazen appears to have strengthened his position by taking a page from the ruling style of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. That meaning, though the new 21-person Central Committee indeed features 14 fresh faces (and potentially 17, when three more political appointments to the Committee are finally handpicked by Abu Mazen), it nonetheless craftily balances the competing interests, personalities and powers that compose Fateh. Thus, relics of the ‘old guard’ (Salim Za’noun, Abu Maher Ghneim, Tayyeb Abdel Rahim), are balanced by a nationalist current (Marwan Barghouti, Mahmoud Aloul, Mohammed al Madani), a diplomatic current (Saeb Erekat, Nabil Sha’th, Nasser al Qidwa), a collaborationist/ security current (Toufic Tirawi, Mohammed Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub, Hussein el Sheikh) and a financial current (Mohammed Shtayya.)

This is quintessential Arafatism: forcing political rivals to compete amongst themselves horizontally for influence and power in order to access Abu Mazen vertically. In the end, Abu Mazen holds all the strings – particularly the purse strings, through his Prime Minister designate Salam Fayyad, who is not even from Fateh and is somewhat immune to its pressures. Abu Mazen sits atop them all, tightening or loosening each string pending the needs of the political circumstance.

Actual divisions within the party will have to wait for the final passing of the ‘old guard’, though Abu Mazen has even delayed these fights by tapping Abu Maher Ghneim as his successor. The latter is an old time Fateh stalwart who actually opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords and refused to return to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) – that is, until Abu Mazen apparently offered him succession in exchange for return. It is likely that Abu Mazen also wanted to isolate any remaining, powerful diasporic Fateh elements like Farouk al Qaddoumi, whose pre-conference accusations that he (Abu Mazen) and Mohammed Dahlan were complicit in Arafat’s death, were highly embarrassing. In the end, Ghneim won the highest votes in the Central Committee (1338) followed by the two leaders of the nationalist stream – former Nablus Mayor Mahmoud Aloul (1112) and imprisoned Fateh Secretary General for the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti (1063). Abu Maher’s older age makes him a back-stop candidate for party head after Abu Mazen, before the competing personalities within the younger generation of Fateh leaders fight amongst themselves for control of the party when its their turn to take over.

A Fair Election?
But how was Abu Mazen able to strengthen his position and engineer such an advantageous position in a democratic election? There are certainly those within Fateh who believe the vote was rigged. After loosing his seat in the Central Committee, former Palestinian Prime Minister and top negotiator Ahmed Qrei’ (Abu Ala) called the election’s impartiality “worse than Iran.” There were also voting discrepancies, including a unilateral, final moment decision made by Abu Mazen that delegates would have ten ballot boxes to vote in, instead of one. A subsequent recount of one ballot box, resulted in the surprise victory of Tayyeb Abdel Rahim, one of the most deplorable and corrupt of Fateh’s older generation, who is also virulently anti-Hamas.

But the real way in which Abu Mazen engineered his victory was through the delegate system overall, which controlled who was entitled to vote in the first place.

To begin with, the choice of the West Bank as the setting for the elections essentially cut off participation from those within the party who fear Israeli arrest, or refuse to return because they principally refuse to do so when the area is still under Israeli occupation. These elements, exemplified by Qaddoumi, oppose the Oslo Accords and all it has meant in terms of creating a Palestinian Authority with semi-autonomy in the OPT, while negotiating with Israel as the occupying power.

But deeper than that, the nature of Fateh actually facilitated Abu Mazen’s commandeering hand.  Fateh is a non-ideological, pragmatist and opportunistic party. That meaning, there is no real criteria for membership or even leadership. You just need to exert power, or perceived power, within the party, or vis-à-vis Israel – in both cases, usually through money, guns or a street following.

No more than 30 percent of conference delegates were elected Fateh members from their respective geographical districts. This left 70 percent of delegates appointed by virtue of their power as perceived amongst a handful of top party officials, led by Abu Mazen. Though the conference was initially supposed to have only 600 delegates, the final 2300 delegates – more than three times the original number – were able to attend because they raised complaints and lobbied for inclusion with higher-ups in the party. If the threat of these members’ exclusion could be seen as potentially damaging to the unity of Fateh or the legitimacy of the conference overall, they were allotted delegate status and voting rights by Abu Mazen and the small crew with the power to bestow accreditation.

What appears to have happened is that Abu Mazen allowed for the swelling of the ranks of delegates amongst the main powerful currents within Fateh, but allowing for them to rise with relative evenness. This prevented any one stream from overpowering the other, and gave the upper hand to those who already have the established networks of power and influence. For those unable to make it into the major leagues of the Central Committee, there was always the junior league of the Revolutionary Council, to assuage hurt egos.

Prospects within the National Movement
Now that membership in both bodies has been determined, it is also insightful to look at how their compositions are likely to affect the trajectory of the party overall within Palestinian politics, and not just in Fateh.

Without question, Abu Mazen’s commanding position makes him the final decider on all things Fateh, and PA in the West Bank. This means that Abu Mazen’s hand will continue to orient the movement’s political trajectory towards internal and national affairs.

No Reconciliation with Hamas
It is difficult to believe that after Abu Mazen’s hand has been strengthened through elections, he would feel compelled to reconcile with Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip. To begin with, Abu Mazen appears content with the tsunami of cash flowing into PA West Bank coffers from Western and Arab governments petrified by the idea of a potential West Bank take-over by Hamas. Politically, Abu Mazen thinks the funds can sufficiently buoy his lot at Hamas’ expense, as the latter suffocates in the Gaza Strip, with its population as collateral damage.

He is also not interested in meeting any of Hamas’ political demands (decision making power in the PA and PLO, control over security services, ministries, finances etc.) because he sees the movement as antithetical to his strategic vision. Hamas is political leprosy as far as Abu Mazen is concerned.  Though national reconciliation is crucial for any real political progress to take place, the reality is Abu Mazen’s eggs are in a totally different basket. National reconciliation would turn the clock back twenty years, taking the international spot light away from Israel’s de facto rejectionist stance towards Palestinian national rights and settlement construction, and reflecting it back on the Palestinians, questioning their “recognition of Israel”, and their “engagement in terrorism.” As far as Abu Mazen is concerned, the national movement has already paid the price of these bills through the Oslo Accords, and it is not about to pay them again, just to let a non-PLO actor (Hamas) ‘infiltrate’ the movement, and potentially take it away from their grip.

In fact, keeping Hamas at bay was more important to Abu Mazen than having a more democratic and participatory Fateh conference. The one condition Hamas set for allowing Fateh members to leave Gaza to attend the West Bank conference – the release of over 900 Hamas operatives and affiliates from West Bank PA jails – was cynically rejected by Abu Mazen outright. Hamas stuck to its position arguing that its political prisoners were no less important than 400 Fateh delegates from Gaza who wanted to participate in their party conference.

In the end, Fateh delegates in the Gaza Strip participated in the elections by phoning in their votes, though there was plenty of grumbling by this constituency regarding their sideline status. 60 odd Fateh delegates in the Gaza Strip claimed they weren’t even called by conference organizers to vote – a commentary on how important Abu Mazen considered their participation.

Fateh Can Forget Gaza
This issue sheds light on another likely outcome of the conference: forget Fateh in the Gaza Strip, at least for the foreseeable future. Gaza representation in the Central Committee is negligible. Nabil Sha’th, Nasser el Qidwa, and Mohammed Dahlan are the only representatives on the Central Committee who derive from Gaza. The first two can hardly claim wide popular support there as they have spent most of their careers overseas as PLO representatives, or in the West Bank since the establishment of the PA. Dahlan on the other hand is so sullied in Gaza because of his wheeling and dealing with the CIA-sponsored coup attempt against Hamas in June 2007, that he would likely get shot if he tried to return any time soon.

What remains of Fateh in the Gaza Strip appears to be weak and fragmented, and is unlikely to pose a serious challenge to Hamas in the near future. The latter has made great strides in consolidating its own position in the Strip since it kicked out Dahlan’s Fateh posse back in June 2007. It first clipped the wings of Mumtaz Dughmush’s Army of Islam in the wake of the Alan Johnston affair. Dughmush was an ex-Fateh member who had established a small militia responsible for kidnapping BBC reporter Alan Johnston. But soon after Hamas took control, the movement quickly surrounded the Dughmush stronghold and forced it to release him.

Then came the shootout on the Hilles compound in August 2008. Ahmed Hilles was the most senior Fateh representative in Gaza at the time, and had remained in the Strip after Hamas took power there because he genuinely differed with Dahlan’s ‘clockwork orange’-like approach to governance. But at the end of July 2008, a bomb killed five Hamas members near the seaside, and the alleged perpetrators hid out in Hilles’ compound. Hamas promptly surrounded the place, and eventually killed or arrested those it held responsible for the bombing.

Most recently, Hamas decimated the marginal Islamist Salafist “Jund Ansar Allah” movement in Rafah – a small sect with delusional ambitions of establishing an Islamic emirate in the Gaza Strip, and that had openly challenged Hamas’ governance. (Ironically, the group’s leader, Sheikh Abdul-Latif Abu Mousa, was a former preacher in a PA-run mosque). This series of events has collectively consolidated Hamas’ rule throughout the Strip, making any potential contenders – Fateh or otherwise - seriously think twice before challenging it.

Forget the Diaspora Too
But the election results do not just make Gaza increasingly out of reach of Fateh’s influence. The Palestinian diaspora – where more than half the Palestinian people reside - are also largely absent from Central Committee representation. Sultan Abu Einein, a prominent Fateh leader from Lebanon, is the only Fateh representative who derives and still lives in a constituency based outside of the OPT. The heightened status and representation of West Bankers on the Central Committee is sure to weaken the party’s membership and following outside of Palestine. This continues the long decline in the role Palestinian exiles plays in Palestinian politics since the Oslo Accords. It is also a policy Abu Mazen has carried over from Arafat, a major part of which has been the deliberate sidelining of the PLO and its institutions in decision making. Instead of building or even maintaining the PLO as the national liberation movement of the Palestinian people wherever they reside, Abu Mazen appears intent to continue focusing his energy and resources in building the statist-inclined Palestinian Authority, and most specifically in the West Bank.

Additional Considerations
A few other points are worth noting before wrapping up.

The Fateh conference appears not to have solved the structural overlap between Fateh and the Palestinian Authority. Though the issue was addressed at the conference, and motions were passed to prevent conflicts of interest between the two, when it comes to actual politics on the ground, the election results make it no clearer where Fateh ends and the PA begins. This structural overlap played a crucial role in sullying Fateh’s image in the OPT, as it contributed to the movement’s political and financial corruption. Most members of the Fateh Central Committee have been PA officials in some fashion or another in the past, and that tendency seems likely to continue.

How likely is it for example, that prominent PA spokesmen like Saeb Erekat and Nabil Sha’th will now only speak on behalf of Fateh? Will Mohammed Shtayeh, the former head of PECDAR – one of the main PA investment arms – now exclusively conduct his business as a member of Fateh? Unlikely. This essentially means Fateh’s lot will continue to be determined by the overall lot of the PA in the West Bank, led by Abu Mazen. The track record of this overlap has not been positive for Fateh and the national movement overall, and the conference results only seem likely to duplicate that experience.

In that regard, though the short term results of the conference sure up Abu Mazen and bring a modicum of stability to Fateh, possibly even bolstering its credibility, particularly in the West Bank, the longer term fate of the party is still largely tied up with how it fairs regarding winning Palestinian national rights vis-à-vis Israel. Here, prospects don’t appear to be any more promising. Despite heightened pressure and critical attention towards Israel and the Netanyahu government, we have seen no serious indication that the U.S. and E.U. are willing to force Israel to comply with the red lines of the Palestinian national movement which Fateh declares as its party platform: a sovereign, decolonized Palestinian state on 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital, and the implementation of the right to return of Palestinian refugees. Without success on this larger front, any short-lived boost to Fateh’s lot after the conference will inevitably deflate. And it won’t be Fateh that will benefit from this failure, but Hamas. After all, there are limits to how many times you can put humpty-dumpty back together again, even with American super glue.

In the end, Fateh’s opportunistic, non-ideological approach to national liberation; its elite-oriented approach to politics while ignoring grassroots mobilization; the free reign it has given to local and international capital and the devastating class divisions this will only further deepen; its continuation of non-accountability for party and movement errors - all seem destined to duplicate in one form or another the same miserable experience of the Oslo years. Only this time, there will be no spectacle of a peace process, the local population is devastated from years of closure and Israeli repression, and the fragmentation in leadership of the national movement between the West Bank and Gaza leaves people with few places to turn. This is surely a recipe for implosion.