First Jew is elected to a Palestinian liberation movement (Extra)

Aug 15, 2009, 17:20 GMT

Ramallah - The official list published Saturday of winners in elections to the Revolutionary Council of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement, included 67-year-old Uri Davis, a Jerusalem-born Israeli Jew.

He is the first Jew to become a member of the liberation movement established in 1958 with the goal of liberating Palestinian from Israeli occupation.

Davis, who in the 1980s abandoned his Israeli citizenship in protest over Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and later received Palestinian citizenship, was the only non- Arab to run for a seat in the Revolutionary Council, Fatah's legislative body.

When his name was announced as number 31 on the list of winners, members in the auditorium of the Bethlehem school where the conference held its meetings applauded long and loud.

Davis, who considers himself anti-Zionist and who after renouncing his Israeli citizenship joined Fatah because he says he saw it as a socialist movement, was among more than 600 Fatah activists who competed for 80 seats of the council.

Author of the books 'Israel: An Apartheid State,' published in 1987 and 'Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within,' published in 2004, Davis prefers to identify himself as a Palestinian Jew.

Speaking perfect Arabic, he teaches Jewish studies at the Palestinian al-Quds University in Abu Dis, located just outside an eight-metre high concrete wall Israel has built around occupied East Jerusalem to separate it from its West Bank environs.

Davis said in Bethlehem last week as he was campaigning for a seat in the Revolutionary Council that he wants to see more anti-Zionist Israelis and internationals take up leading posts in Fatah.

Fatah opened its sixth congress, the first in 20 years, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on August 4.

After a week of deliberations, over 2,000 delegates voted for 18 seats on the 23-seat Central Council, whose official results were announced on Wednesday, and for 80 seats of the 128-seat Revolutionary Council. dpa mak sc