Voting started in Bethlehem for delegates to the Sixth Fatah General Conference — the first such meeting in 20 years, which will result in a change of leadership in the largest and most powerful Palestinian political party.
Mahmoud Abbas has surprisingly managed to dominate the Fatah conference, but Fatah activists say a new leadership will now limit Abbas’ power.
Photo from the Ma’an News agency website – Mahmoud Abbas puts the ballot it took him 20 minutes to complete (because of the long list of names of candidates) into a Fatah ballot box in Bethlehem on Sunday. His son, Yasser Abbas, stands behind and to the left in the photo.
Pre-conference fears of dissidence and clashes were not realized. The actual problems were minimal, the protesters were fundamentally polite, and Abbas modified his tone somewhat in the session in which his nomination to lead the party was passed by acclamation (“Sit down, habibi[my dear, in English] and be patient” he cajoled, unlike his order to Central Committee candidate Husam Khader a few days earlier: “Sit down or get out!” Khader, who was protesting the lack of a report from the outgoing Central Committee about what had happened over the last 20 years since the last Fatah General Conference, said in a later interview that he responded to Abbas by saying he might be the President outside, but he is just another Fatah member inside. However, since the nomination-by-acclamation process, Abbas is now officially the President inside the party conference as well.)
The most trenchant criticism was, like Husam Khader’s, targetted at the failure — in fact, it was an outright refusal — of the outgoing Central Committee to present a report accounting for mistakes made, lessons learned, and funds received and spent. In remarks to journalists in Bethlehem’s central Manger Square after an Abbas spokesman gave a press briefing implying that the Conference delegates were satisfied with reports from the Conference’s 18 committees
as a substitute for a summary report, Qaddura Fares said that if they tried to get away with that “they would get a sifir [zero, in English], just like students who show up at exams but fail to turn in a paper”.
What public jostling there was, often though not always was split along the “generational” lines generally used to describe factions in Fatah. The “older generation” includes the remaining survivors of what Fatah calls its “historical leadership”. A “younger generation” is now over 40 years old, and could better be described as “transitional”, and a slightly younger generation is less powerful but still hardly what has been called “politically toothless”. Zakaria Zubeidi, for example, the now-amnestied former most-wanted-outlaw of a Jenin military militia aligned with Fatah was admitted to the opening session, then excluded after criticism he made was reported in an interview published by Ma’an News Agency, then readmitted and allowed to make his own statement to the conference.
Abbas’ appointment as Fatah party leader was greeted with Palestinian-style celebration (including a older woman in a traditional embroidered dress calling out shrill fellahi [peasant] poetic praise). Campaigning and electioneering is over. And many delegates were relaxing in a pleasant evening around Bethlehem’s Manger Square, facing the Church of the Nativity where Christ is believed to have been born.
The voting is expected to last until after midnight. It is taking place in the same Terra Sancta school in Bethlehem, just off Manger Square, where delegates have been meeting and confronting their differences — some of them very strong — since last Tuesday.
The disputes. and a certain amount of disorganization, have delayed proceedings considerably. The Fatah Sixth General Conference was originally scheduled to end on Thursday, but is now expected to continue until the coming Tuesday, at the earliest.
The results of the voting may be known sometime late on Monday.