As far as I can tell — and I took the trouble to come again to Bethlehem and even to stay overnight, and though I have made and received at least a dozen phone calls this morning — here has not yet been an official announcement for results of who won seats in the Fatah General Conference voting for either the “new” Central Committee or the “new” Revolutionary Council.
However, there have been indications that the results were tallied hours ago, perhaps soon after midnight for the 18 seats up for election in the Central Committee, and perhaps by early this morning for the 80 seats on the Revolutionary Council.
Of course, what this means is that the Palestinian and Arab media have published various lists of supposedly winning names which are said to be NOT FINAL.
However, it appears clear that nobody who opposed The Machine won.
And two of the winners are Mohammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, two former leaders of Fatah/Palestinian Preventive Security (Dahlan in Gaza and Rajoub in the West Bank), who have an intense rivalry.
Ahmad Qureia (Abu Alaa’), who headed the Palestinian negotiations team during the Annapolis Process, and who, like President and Party leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), was one of the key negotiators during the secret negotiations that led up to the Oslo process in the early 1990s, was not on the list that was read to me at breakfast time.
Also not elected, according to my source, are Qaddura Fares, Hussam Khader (who said he knew he would not win, but ran anyway — and one Fatah operative told me that he saw Hussam Qader’s name on many of the unofficial lists that were circulating before the vote, so he had a good chance), and Sari Nusseibeh (for whom this candidacy appears to have been a political come-back and a political rehabiiltation, and he can now come back in from the cold. Nusseibeh was interviewed for an hour on Palestine TV last night, and none of his red lines were crossed, he was not personally attacked. Nusseibeh did say that this sixth Fatah General Conferene or Congress shows that neither the Americans nor the Europeans have anything to teach the Palestinians about democracy.
Among the other reported winners are Salim Zaanoun, Abu Maher – Mohammed Ghneim, Tawfik at-Tirawi, Hussein ash-Sheikh, and Othman Abu Gharbiya, Nabil Shaath, Saeb Erekat, Nasser Qudwa, Mohammed Shtayyah. Then, Sultan Abu Al- Eineen, Jamal Mheisen, Mohammed a-Madani, Mahmoud al-Aloul.
UPDATE: Apparently, our earlier report that Tayib Abdel Rahim was one of the 18 winning candidates was wrong. I am told he came in 19th. I am also told that the names of the other two winning names that were not available to me earlier are: Azzam al-Ahmad and Abbas Zaki, the official PLO representative in Lebanon. We are also told that President Abbas has sent out the word that the results are NOT FINAL.
And of course, another winner was the highest-profile Palestinian political prisoner, Marwan Barghouthi, currently serving several life sentences in an Israeli prison for leading the Fatah Tanzim during the second intifada — but who even some Israeli ministers would like to see freed. He was on all the (unofficial) lists. “It would be a shame if Marwan didn’t win”, one Fatah source said during the voting.
The interesting question now will be, what will Abu Mazen do with the four seats that he has been authorized to nominate (he has to then get the approval of two-thirds of the new Central Committee, and two-thirds of the new Revolutionary Council), to officially appoint these nominees. I am willing to bet that three of the four appointees will be: Abu Alaa’, Farouk Kaddoumi, and Sari Nusseibeh.
The Revolutionary Council results will not be ready until later today, I was told. But I noticed one person being told who (probably himself) won the 17th place out of 641 candidates.