ANALYSIS: Fatah hopes convention vote will lead to rejuvenation

By Jeff Abramowitz Aug 12, 2009, 13:04 GMT

Bethlehem, West Bank - The first convention in 20 years of the mainstream Palestinian party Fatah has strengthened its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, who analysts say, emerged as the 'biggest winner' from the elections to the party's central committee, its highest decision making body.

The 74-year-old is now the unquestioned leader not only of Fatah but of the Palestine Liberation Organization and of the Palestinian Authority.

The near-final results of the elections to the central committee also saw the defeat of several of the Palestinian leader's main opponents, although their successors, from Fatah's so-called young guard, or new generation, are unlikely to give Abbas a blank cheque to do whatever he wishes.

The central committee victory of such young guard figures as jailed West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan, and former West Bank security chief Jibril Rjoub, is seen indicating that Fatah is determined to wean itself from its reputation as a movement blighted by bureaucracy and plagued by corruption and nepotism.

Such charges are thought to have been a prime reason for Fatah's shock defeat, in the 2006 legislative elections, to the Islamic Hamas movement.

Palestinian political analyst Hani al-Masri says the election of the young guard to the central committee is a 'white coup against the old generation' who are held responsible not only for the January 2006 elections loss, but also for Fatah's humiliation at the hands of Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip 18 months later, when the Islamic movement seized control of the salient.

Hopes are now high in Fatah that the successful convention just held, and the new central committee, will allow the party to recapture its position as the natural party of Palestinian governance.

'The new Fatah emerging from the Bethlehem conference will embark again on the track to restore its public support and pull the carpet from under feet of Hamas,' former Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Zayyad wrote in the Jerusalem Post daily Wednesday.

But a dissenting voice was sounded by veteran Palestinian correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh, who noted in the same publication that there is 'much doubt' as to the amount of support Barghouti, Dahlan and Rjoub enjoy among the wider Palestinian public.

He pointed out that the fact that Barghouti was serving time in an Israeli jail did not help Fatah when he stood at the head of its list in the 2006 elections.

And Dahlan and Rjoub, who have been accused by their political opponents of torturing people when they ran the Palestinian preventive security service in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, are not short of enemies.

The new central committee members are also likely to influence how Abbas now approaches peace-making with Israel.

Al-Masri said the new committee could be expected to support the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but would demand conditions for restarting the talks with Israel.

Dahlan has already made his views known, saying Palestinians will no longer accept open-ended peace talks with no end in sight.

Whereas the former central committee saw the peace talks with Israel as the only option available, al-Masri said the new committee sees negotiations as one only option of several.

But the peace process with Israel is only one of three challenges facing Fatah.

Several delegates to the convention said the main task facing Fatah is rebuilding confidence in the movement.

'The new leadership will proceed carefully to see whether it faces the same corruption accusations as its predecessor,' Palestinian affairs observer Avi Issacharoff noted in the Ha'aretz daily

'If it avoids such pitfalls,' he concluded,' Fatah is very likely to gain support in Gaza and the West Bank.'