UN-Truth

The nomination period for candidates to the Fatah Central Committee and the Fatah Executive Committee has been extended until Friday evening.

According to sources in the secretariat of the 6th Fatah General Conference meeting in Bethlehem this week, the conference itself has been officially extended until Tuesday. It will last more than twice the time originally planned (Tuesday through Thursday).

And this is creating enormous costs and logistical difficulties — delegations from around the world will have to rebook travel plans. Hotels in Bethlehem have other bookings which they are cancelling, but tourists (the backbone of the Bethlehem economy) are having trouble getting through layers of Palestinian Authority security to reach the main touristic destination, Manger Square with its Church of the Nativity, where Christ is believed to have been born. It is almost right next to the Terra Sancta auditorium where the Fatah Conference has been meeting.

But perhaps some of these costs will be defrayed by the payments that each candidate must make in order to run. It apparently costs $2000 dollars to be validated to run for the Central Council, and between 85 and 120 candidates are said to be running. There are also costs to run in the Revolutionary Council, where there are said to be at least 500 candidates.

Among the candidates for the Revolutionary Council, for the first time, is Israeli Uri Davis, who is a long-time supporter of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian cause. He is also married to a Palestinian woman, and they have been living in Ramallah for the past year-and-a-half.

A “solution” is said to have been found to the problem of the Gaza delegations. Quite a lot of publicity has been given to Hamas statements saying that it would not permit the invited Fatah members in Gaza from travelling to the Conference, and if they managed to get to Bethlehem anyway (either through Israeli coordination via the Erez border terminal, or maybe through the tunnels). Hamas has also reportedly threatened to arrest upon return anyone who managed to defy the travel ban. Somewhat less publicity has been given to a report in the Arabic-language media quoting Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar in Gaza as saying that he was asked by “a historical Fatah leader in Ramallah” — apparently Ahmed Qureia, or Abu Alaa — not to permit the Gaza delegates out of Gaza. Israeli also reportedly denied transit to a handful of the Fatah invitees. But, according to a source in the conference secretariat, some 350 of the total of 500 Fatah members as being from Gaza are present in Bethlehem, more than 50% of the total, thereby making their participation in the voting and their candidacies legal.

Upon this determination, Mohammad Dahlan, formerly one of the strongest men in Gaza as head of its Preventive Security Force, and now one of the most hated, submitted his candidacy for reelection to the Central Committee. “But voting for him will be according to the rules here”, said the secretariat source.

Those Fatah members stuck in Gaza who wish to vote can do so by mobile phone, it was determined on Friday. However, that would make their votes pubic, and no longer secret, as they are supposed to be, according to the By-rules.

In addition, some 5 additional seats in the Central Committee will be tagged or reserved for Fatah members in Gaza, expanding the body from 18 to 23 elected members (another 3 of the current 21 members are appointed). Nominations and voting for those seats will take place when it is possible for the Fatah members in Gaza to travel. (It is not clear if any seats will be similarly reserved in the Revolutionary Council.)

This expansion of the bodies has also been described as a means of alleviating some of the conflict between various factions in Fatah — described, somewhat misleadingly, as the “older” and “younger” generations with “Dahlanists” being a third group. One Fatah Central Commitee candidate said, however, that there was also a fourth group — those who want to reconcile all the others.

The voting for most members will be on paper ballots — but some Conference participants claimed that they were told that it will be done by “lists”, and if they did not check off every name on a list, their ballots will be ruled invalid.

Through the week, accusations have been made in the corridors and coffee shops in Bethlehem that hundreds of additional Conference participants have been packed into the event — including secretaries, neighbors, and drivers or security personnel — all of whom are expected to vote for their patrons.

Meanwhile, one source of anxiety has been soothed, according to a story published by Ma’an News Agency, based in Bethlehem, which reported that the Israeli Supreme Court “fined and rejected the petition of two right wing politicians requesting the arrest of five delegates to the Fatah conference, Israeli High Court judges decided Friday. The High Court of Justice rejected the appeal of MK Michael Ben Ari (Ichud Leumi), a settler, and his Knesset aide, Itamar Ben-Gvir, requesting the arrest of five Fatah members who had been granted amnesty in exchange for swearing off armed resistance. The two right wing leaders said the men should be arrested regardless because they had ‘blood on their hands’. Israeli internet news network Ynet quoted the judges as saying ‘the verdict is of decidedly political nature relating to the government’s political path on foreign and defense affairs’, and found it was a decision for the government, not the court”. This report can be read in full here.

This came despite negative Israeli reaction to a decision reportedly taken inside the Conference on Thursday, when, according to Haaretz, “Top Fatah officials on Thursday ruled that Israel was to blame for the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Officials on the third day of the Fatah convention in Bethlehem accepted the proposal, put forth by the chairman of the Arafat Institute, stating that Israel had been behind the ‘assassination’ of the late Palestinian Authority Chairman. The second clause of the proposal, following the blame on Israel, called for leaving the investigation into Arafat’s death open. The third clause affirmed Fatah’s request for international aid to probe the issue”. This report can be read in full
here.

[The chairman of the Arafat Institute is Nasser Al-Qudwa or Al-Qidwa, the nephew of the late Yasser Arafat, who served for a long time as the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN, and who was PA Foreign Minister at the time of his uncle's death in France. Al-Qudwa, who has French citizenship by virtue of his marriage to a French woman who works for the United Nations, was one of the very restricted number of people who was given access to the medical personnel who treated Yasser Arafat, and Nasser Al-Qudwa was given the full medical report after his death.]

This proposal neutralized the statements made two weeks before the Fatah Conference opened by Farouk Qaddoumi, who accused PA President Mahmoud Abbas and “young generation” strongman Mohammed Dahlan of being present with American officials and Israeli officials who talked about the necessity of getting rid of Yasser Arafat not long before his death.

The lobby of the Jacir Palace Intercontinental Hotel in Bethlehem was hopping on Friday morning, full of candidates for the Central Council and the Revolutionary Council, and other interested parties. They were table-hopping in the central courtyard area, and holding forth in small meeting rooms off the main areas. Nasser al-Qidwa, Jibril Rajoub, Mohammed Shtayyeh,
Nabil Shaath, and more.

Back in Jerusalem a while later, the Hanoun family was literally living on the street.

In his speech to the opening session of the Fatah Conference, President Mahmoud Abbas said there had been many achievements in the recent period, including the opening of a cinema in Nablus, the new laws obliging Palestinian motorists to wear their seatbelts while driving, and the fact that there is now no dispute with any Arab country.

And, as Ma’an News agency also reported. “The head of the Palestine Football Union, Jibril Rujoub, presented the [Yasser Arafat] award at a news conference in Ramallah in honor of the winning team [in the annual inter-Palestinian competition]. Rujoub said the cup had been held by President Mahmoud Abbas before it was handed over to the team. The cup, made from 54,000 dollars worth of 10 karat gold, was the most expensive in the competition’s history”. This report is posted here.

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians