The Corner Report

Will there ever be a seat at the negotiating table for Ismail Haniya?

Excluding Hamas from current and future Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations is an exercise in futility, Larbi Sadiki writes

Sidelining Hamas in any process to craft genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians is a glaring omission tantamount to ignoring an elephant in the room.

Whether it is Obama's or the UN's negotiating room, pretending something of that size absent is an exercise in futility. Hamas is definitely an elephant with many tales. Telling some of these tales recounts the Islamist movement's rise to power against all odds.

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One wonders how much longer the Palestinian leadership can sustain this act.

By Ramzy Baroud

Each time Israel fails to keep its 'side of the bargain', the Palestinian Authority responds with the same redundant language. The cycle has become so utterly predictable that one wonders why the Palestinian Authority officials even bothers protesting Israeli action. They must be well aware that their cries, genuine or otherwise, will only fall on deaf ears. They know that their complaints could not possible contribute to a paradigm shift in Israel’s behavior, or the US position on it.

Let’s take a look at the context for the language of the Palestinian Authority’s complaints. In a speech made in early July, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas referred to any direct talks with Israel as ‘futile.’ Thousands of newspapers and news sites beamed this ‘headline’, highlighting the word ‘futile’ between inverted commas - as if it constituted some kind of earth-shattering revelation. But anyone following the Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular already knows that such talks will be ‘futile’. More, Israel has hardly made secret its lack of desire for a peaceful and just settlement.

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A Palestinian boy leaving Gaza hands his passport to a Hamas official at the Rafah border crossing. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

ByRami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 19 July 2010

Nidal Abdo lives in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Four years ago he was at a friend's house in the nearby al-Bureij refugee camp when Israeli tanks moved in. When Abdo tried to escape the area, Israeli soldiers shot him in his left foot. Due to the injury, Abdo still can't walk or stand for long periods of time. He needs a metal rod inserted into his foot and because the surgery can't be performed in Gaza, his doctors have referred him abroad.

Amid all the obstacles preventing Palestinians in Gaza from traveling outside the besieged territory, Abdo faces an additional one. He needs a passport and despite five attempts to obtain one, he has so far failed.

"After three weeks, another travel agent phoned me and told me that officials refused to issue me a passport for security reasons," Abdo told The Electronic Intifada after just returning from a visit to a doctor in Gaza City. "I am a member of the Nuseirat Camp handball club and, thank God, most of the team members are considered to be Fatah supporters." This is significant for Abdo because many Palestinians believe that passports are now being issued based on political affiliation.

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GAZA – Ma’an News – Nakba Day has united major factions in Gaza, including Fatah and Hamas, as Palestinians marked the 62nd anniversary of mass forced displacement from their homes by pre-state Israeli militia in 1948.

Protesters marched from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to the UN building in Gaza City to affirm their right to return, participants said, referring to the estimated 750,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled from Palestine during the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Fayez Abu Aita, a Fatah leader, said “the message today is a message of national unity in facing the Israeli occupation.” He added that the political split is an unusual situation which should end as it is not possible to return the homeland without national unity.

Ismail Radwan, a Hamas leader, said “national unity is the way to preserve the right of return … The right of return will be achieved through resistance -- not negotiations.” He called on the Palestinians to unite and refuse calls to sacrifice the right of return.

Ramzi Rabbah, a member of the political bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that “on this day, we hold fast to Palestinian rights,” and called to escalate all forms of political resistance to restore the Palestinian rights.

Muhammad Al-Hindi, member of the political bureau of Islamic Jihad, said that “today is the day of national unity; the Nakba unites us in the very same way that the prisoners’ cause unites us. ... Today is the beginning of more national unity.”

“All the Palestinian factions are here to say that we are holding onto Palestine, all of Palestine,” Al-Hindi added.

Thousands of Palestinians joined rallies and demonstrations in the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora refugee camps to demand for their right of return to their homes and lands, rejecting what gatherers called "conspiracies" aimed at depriving them of their right.

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Can there be free elections under Fatah?

[ 03/04/2010 - 10:37 PM ]

By Khalid Amayreh

The American-backed Fatah group has been demanding the organization of general elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as soon as possible. However, the demands don’t seem to reflect genuine concern about democracy as one might take it at face value.

Fatah officials and apologists argue that elections represent the only exit out of the present political deadlock at the Palestinian arena, including the enduring rift between Fatah and the Islamic movement, Hamas.

However, in the absence of real guarantees for holding truly free elections, the raucous blather about elections by the Fatah organization, or any other Palestinian group, remains an expression of deception and hypocrisy.

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On top of political failure, the regime of Abbas and Fayyad has now to contend with charges of moral degeneracy and criminality, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Fahmi Shabana, a high-ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence officer, had been warning the Ramallah leadership that corruption was rampant throughout the PA regime and that effective steps had to be taken immediately to stem its tide. However, very few people in the PA hierarchy took him seriously.

One of the main reasons for ignoring Shabana's warnings had to do with the fact that the problem, in its multi- faceted forms, was so widespread that stemming it would be a formidable task the execution of which could seriously destabilise the PA and undermine its public image.

Last week, Shabana, who has been until recently in charge of the Anti- Corruption Department in the PA regime, made serious revelations that would indict a number of PA officials for decidedly criminal behaviour, including sexual misconduct, financial embezzlement, breach of trust, nepotism, favouritism, graft, misappropriation of public funds and indulging in behaviour unbecoming a public official.

In an interview with the rightwing Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, and later with the Israeli Television Channel 10, Shabana disclosed two main cases of corruption. He revealed that unnamed Fatah officials embezzled much of the $3.2 million bribe given by the US to Fatah ahead of the 2006 legislative elections. The money had been intended to enhance Fatah's image and boost its chances of winning. Some of the sum was used as "inducements" to make young people vote for Fatah. However, the bulk of it evaporated, using the words of one Fatah official from the Hebron region.

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Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Fatah leader Nabil Sha’ath

By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

The recent visit to the Gaza Strip by Fatah leader Nabil Sha’ath should be a welcome first step toward Palestinian national reconciliation.

Unlike many Fatah fanatics, who openly advocate an unending war on Hamas, Sha’ath has repeatedly displayed a great deal of moderation vis-à-vis Hamas, refusing to view the Islamic liberation movement as “the enemy” as many of the anti-Islamist elements within Fatah have been insisting.

To his credit, the veteran Fatah leader never harbored any illusions as to boundaries between inter-Palestinian troubles, such as the rift between Fatah and Hamas, and the fundamental conflict between the Palestinian people and Israel .

Unfortunately, it is these boundaries that some high-ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) operatives have sought to blur and obliterate in the service of Israel.

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Al Ahram

His political credibility wagered on the peace process, Palestinian President Abbas is not coping well with Israel's perpetual intransigence, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

With the Obama administration effectively reneging on pledges to get Israel to freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank, or even abide by the outdated "roadmap" peace plan, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas is finding himself in an increasingly unenviable position.

Abbas had been insisting all along that he wouldn't agree to resume talks with Israel unless the latter agreed to halt settlement expansion in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. However, in recent weeks, the Palestinian leader has been signalling that he may return to the negotiating table virtually without conditions.

In an interview that appeared on Sunday 31 January on The Guardian website, Abbas was quoted as saying that he would be prepared to resume face-to-face talks with Israel if the latter froze all settlement construction for three months and accepted the borders of 4 June 1967. "These are not preconditions; they are requirements in the roadmap. If they are not prepared to do that, it means they don't want a political solution."

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Dr. Azizi Duweik, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council

By Khalid Amayreh

Recent statements by Palestinian Islamic leader Professor Aziz Duweik about the possibility of amending or even abandoning some clauses in Hamas’s charter have elicited a plethora of reactions in occupied Palestine and abroad. Some hostile groups have been quick to conclude that Hamas is now willing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. Moreover, PA propaganda organs have deliberately twisted Duweik’s remarks, claiming that Hamas is finally following the footsteps of the PLO.

Well, the truth is that none of this is true since sidestepping or even abandoning the so-called “Hamas charter” should never be confused with the Islamic liberation movement’s principled stance on the Zionist entity.

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Hamas MP Mushir Al Masri

GAZA, (PIC)-- Hamas MP Mushir Al-Masri has asserted that the recent tour of a Hamas delegation in a number of Arab and Islamic countries had proven that all projects aimed at liquidating resistance and Hamas movement had failed.

He told a seminar in Gaza city on Saturday evening that Gaza, though small in size but big in steadfastness, has become the hope of the Islamic Nation and has nestled in the hearts of the entire world.

Hamas could never give up Palestinian constants topped by not recognizing Israel regardless of threats and siege, Masri emphasized.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/

Abbas does not want a second term in office due to frustrations with Israel and the US

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has extended the mandates of both president Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas-dominated parliament until new elections are held.

The decision was made by PLO's Central Council at a meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday.

Qaid al-Ghul, a PLO representative said: "The PLO took the decision that president Abbas and the Legislative Council will continue their duties until the next election in accordance with the Basic Law."

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RAMALLAH – Official sources in the Fatah movement said they secured a promise from President Mahmud Abbas that he would not "make any surprise decisions" around whether or not to run for reelection in the next Palestinian vote.

The source said Abbas made the commitment front of the Fatah Central Committee, which met Tuesday in Ramallah. The committee reportedly took the comments as a sign that Abbas would not resign before elections are held.

Abbas was also quoted as telling the party's highest governing body that "there remain steps I can take, but I will discuss them at a later date."

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Any political decision must include Fateh and Hamas, refugees and exiles.

By Ghada Karmi

Palestinian history is at one of its most serious and important junctures. The peace negotiations that commenced with the Oslo accords in 1993 are at an end. Even hardened devotees of the peace process with Israel have now given up and are adopting positions that threaten to disrupt the cozy status quo of the "peace process". The Palestinian president's announcement that he will not seek re-election, and the recent demand for UN recognition of a Palestine state on the 1967 territories are examples of this trend. It has become impossible for even the most pliant Palestinian leadership to ignore Israel's strategy of "talking and taking", its relentless colonization of the occupied territories, which doubled after the Oslo agreement and is ever more blatant and aggressive. The Palestinian maneuver, taking advantage of an assumed US frustration with Israeli intransigence on settlement building, is clearly designed to challenge the international community out of its inertia.

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The PA leadership in Ramallah is leading the Palestinian movement of independence to a dead end with its proposed unilateral call for Palestinian statehood. (Thaer Ganaim/MaanImages)
The Electronic Intifada, 19 November 2009

By Virginia Tilley,

From a rumor, to a rising murmur, the proposal floated by the Palestinian Authority's (PA) Ramallah leadership to declare Palestinian statehood unilaterally has suddenly hit center stage. The European Union, the United States and others have rejected it as "premature," but endorsements are coming from all directions: journalists, academics, nongovernmental organization activists, Israeli right-wing leaders (more on that later). The catalyst appears to be a final expression of disgust and simple exhaustion with the fraudulent "peace process" and the argument goes something like this: if we can't get a state through negotiations, we will simply declare statehood and let Israel deal with the consequences.

But it's no exaggeration to propose that this idea, although well-meant by some, raises the clearest danger to the Palestinian national movement in its entire history, threatening to wall Palestinian aspirations into a political cul-de-sac from which it may never emerge. The irony is indeed that, through this maneuver, the PA is seizing -- even declaring as a right -- precisely the same dead-end formula that the African National Congress (ANC) fought so bitterly for decades because the ANC leadership rightly saw it as disastrous. That formula can be summed up in one word: Bantustan.

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05/11/2009 20:05

BETHLEHEM - Ma'an – Mahmoud Abbas has stated he will not seek Fatah's nomination for next January's presidential election, Palestinian officials said on Thursday.

Fatah spokesman Fahmi Az-Zarir said that during a PLO Executive Committee meeting, Abbas announced he had had enough with "Israel's obstruction of the peace process" and its refusal to cooperate with Palestinian and international calls that it fulfill its most basic agreements, namely freezing settlements.

In an interview with Ma'an Radio, Az-Zarir added that Abbas is "upset and angry" over various internal and political matters, but particularly on "the peace process, on which the Palestinian people rely, to end the Israeli occupation with Arab and international support."

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By Haaretz Service

The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip have arrested over the last two days a number of Palestinian militants planning to fire rockets at western Israel, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported Tuesday.

The report quoted group sources as saying Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has organized a crackdown against Palestinian factions to curb the attacks against Israel.

Hamas has warned the factions not to fire rockets under any circumstances, according to the report, even in response to Israeli measures at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

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by Naseer Aruri, Ph.D
Monday, October 5, 2009

Palestine Center Brief No. 182 (5 October 2009)

By Naseer Aruri, Ph.D

The news coming out of Geneva these days is indeed very shocking and depressing. The Abbas government, whose term in office has expired long ago, has succumbed to pressure being exerted by Hillary Clinton and Avigdor Lieberman to defer any and all discussion of the Goldstone report on the war crimes in Gaza until next March. Such action or inaction is tantamount to a permanent deferral favored by the US and Israel. The unprecedented Goldstone Committee report accuses Israel of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity this past winter in Gaza. In the meantime, 36 nations are ready to resist such vulgar pressure in order to give the Goldstone report a legal standing and to facilitate the prosecution of Israel in the International Criminal Court. Such abhorrent action, or inaction by the Palestinian Authority (PA), makes it complicit in the crimes committed by Israel last winter against defenseless civilians in Gaza.

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Justice Richard Goldstone at the UN [MaanImages]

RAMALlah -- president Mahmoud Abbas has ordered an investigation into why his own government delayed international action on a United Nations report on alleged Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

There has been an outpouring of public anger at Abbas’ leadership after the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mission to the UN in Geneva dropped its endorsement of Judge Richard Goldstone’s report in the UN Human Rights Council last week. The PLO’s move, reportedly under US pressure, led the Council to delay action on Gaza until next year.

The secretary of the PLO Executive Committee, Abed Rabbo said in a statement that “after deliberating between President Abbas and members of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad , President Abbas issued a decree to form a committee to find the reasons behind postponement of the debate on Goldstone’s report at the UN f Human Rights Council.”

“The mission of the committee will be specifying the responsibilities concerning this issue and to submit a report to PLO Executive Committee within two weeks,” the statement added.

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Haaretz

By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgavaya, Haaretz Correspondents

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday decided to drop its draft resolution condemning Israel's conduct during the Gaza Strip offensive, in effect deferring its adoption of the Goldstone's Commission report accusing both sides of war crimes.

The PA had originally planned to present the draft to the Human Rights Council for a vote in Geneva on Friday. The decision not to pursue the resolution means that any similar effort will have to wait until at least March, a political source in Jerusalem said.

The source added that the decision appears to be based on pressure from the Obama administration, exerted by way of U.S. representatives in Geneva, as well as through contacts between Washington and Ramallah.

The Obama administration has told the Palestinians that a renewal of the peace process must come before any diplomatic initiatives based on the Goldstone report, or any other initiatives that could stifle efforts to renew Israel-PA negotiations.

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BETHLEHEM -- The Fatah party has demanded that former Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who continues in office even thught his term ended last January, refuse to continue peace talks with the Zionist Israeli government until its head, Benyamin Netanyahu, agrees to halt settlement construction, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Fatah Central Committee member Mohammed Dahlan told the news agency that the 23-member committee was unanimous on the issue, and also insisted an agenda for the talks be set ahead of time.

Analysts say the move may help Abbas request that US President Barack Obama remove his pressure from the Palestinian side to let go of their earlier condition. Reports last week said Abbas had bowed to US pressure over the settlement issue shortly after the tripartite meeting between Israel, Palestine and the US in New York on 22 September.

The meeting was held at Obama's personal request, after US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell failed to secure a meet after a week of intensive shuttle diplomacy in the region.

Follow-up talks have continued in New York and Washington following Abbas and Netanyahu's return to the region. According to the AP report, the Israeli delegation met with Mitchell on Wednesday.

While Europe, the UN and International Quartet remain adamant that settlement construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem halt, US policy on the matter seemed to shift as officials tried to coax sides to the negotiating table.

Agencies

By Stuart Littlewood - London

As if they didn't have enough problems, tormented Palestinians suffer the added misfortune of being represented here in London - the media capital of the western world - by the most invisible and silent embassy it is possible to imagine.

A year ago, campaigners urged the ambassador to get his act together or go home. He angrily retorted that he had "a plan of how to influence British Media to give us the Palestinians more exposure".

Whatever the plan was, it hasn’t worked. Press releases and briefings are non-existent. It is many months since I last heard the ambassador on radio or TV, while his Israeli opposite number pops up on the national airwaves with nauseating regularity. And the Palestinians' precious shop window - their embassy website – never functioned properly and has now been taken down.
What a way, as the Americans say, to run a f***ing railroad. So what’s going on?

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Palestinians in Gaza wearing masks of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh call for unity between the feuding groups. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

By Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 27 August 2009

A delegation of Egyptian security officials have once again embarked on another mission impossible to lay the ground for the next round of intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks originally scheduled to take place between Hamas and Fatah in Cairo later this month. The Egyptian delegation, headed by intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, first met with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, before proceeding on to Ramallah, Damascus and Gaza for meetings with other Fatah and Hamas officials in the hope of softening their respective positions in advance of the Cairo meeting.

The Egyptians reportedly suggested that the factions accept that Palestinian legislative and presidential elections, currently set for January, should be held prior to a reconciliation agreement. But neither this idea, nor any others, have succeeded in breaking the logjam.

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By Hasan Afif El-Hasan

Nations and organizations reward success. They elect and re-elect leaders who deliver and advance the interests of their constituency and they terminate the tenure of the failure, the incompetent and the corrupt. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had to step down when he was investigated for alleged corruption, and for his mishandling of the war against Hizbullah. In February 2001, the Israelis booted Ehud Barak out of office because of his failure to deal with the Palestinians and replaced him with Ariel Sharon by the widest margin in Israeli history. President Jimmy Carter, who later was awarded the Noble Peace Prize, negotiated the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel but he lost the second term election to Ronald Reagan for his failed attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. President George H.W. Bush won the Gulf War but he lost the election to Bill Clinton for reneging on a campaign promise not to raise taxes. Tony Blair resigned both his leadership of the Labour Party and as Prime Minister for the low approval of his role in the Iraqi war.

In contrast, Fatah did not show Mahmoud Abbas the door for his failure to name any tangible success. Fatah has rewarded failure and incompetence! It re-elected Abbas as its undisputed leader by unanimous vote even knowing he was the first to stage a coup against the first intifada leadership in 1993 and actively participated with the US and Israel in another coup to topple his mentor, Yassir Arafat, in 2004. And on his watch, the settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem doubled, the separation wall was built, the daily life of the non-VIP Palestinians worsened and the occupied lands have been disintegrated and partitioned between Fatah and Hamas.

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Al Ahram

Many passed over in Fatah's elections are disgruntled while Abbas drops talk of resistance and picks up the prospects of peace with Israel, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank

While Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to utilise the outcome of Fatah's Sixth Congress held in Bethlehem to boost his status and stature, and possibly enhance the Palestinian negotiating position vis-à-vis Israel, voices are being heard within Fatah questioning the legitimacy of the group's new leadership.

The protesters are many and are generally at a loss as to how they should organise themselves into a coherent body. They are reportedly arguing, correctly, that the new Executive Committee were actually elected by a minority within Fatah and that the majority of Fatah's rank and file didn't approve of the new leadership.

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Al Ahram

A Palestinian youth looks askance at the rubble following an Israeli air strike on the border between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza.

Having succeeded in holding its first general conference on Palestinian land, Fatah's ultimate success hedges on the extent to which it can extricate Palestinian rights from Israel's parsimonious hands, writes Khaled Amayreh in Bethlehem

The week-long Fatah sixth general conference in Bethlehem was wrapped up Tuesday with the election of a new 18-member executive committee, fourteen of them new faces. The newly-elected members include several former chiefs of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security agencies, including Muhammed Dahlan, the controversial former Fatah strongman who is widely considered an arch-foe of Hamas.

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Related: Who killed Arafat and why?
Fatah members launch accusations over plot to assassinate Arafat
Arafat was poisoned
Abbas' security chief -- Mohammed "Allow us to finish (Arafat) off our way" Dahlan -- quits
Treason within: Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine

By ESAM AL-AMIN

“He is our guy.” -- George W. Bush speaking of Palestinian security chief Muhammad Dahlan, June 4, 2003

The U.S. government has been meddling in the Palestinian internal affairs since at least 2003. Its effort is to transform the Palestinian national movement for liberation and independence into a more compliant or quisling government, willing to accede to Israel’s political and security demands.

The tactics employed by the U.S. include military, security, diplomatic, and political components. With the ascension of Hamas after the 2006 legislative election, U.S. strategy has been fixed on unraveling the election results. Its aim for a political comeback of the pro-American camp within the Palestinian body politic has been initiated with the convening of Fatah’s national conference this last week.

During the week of August 4, 2009, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement Fatah, convened its sixth national conference in its 44-year history. Fatahhas historically been considered the largest Palestinian faction, but that perception changed when it lost the legislative elections to Hamas in January 2006. As the group wrapped up its conference after eight days, it announced the results of its elections. The international media, particularly western outlets, framed the election as “fresh” and “new” faces ascending to power in the movement. But what actually happened in the vote?

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BETHLEHEM - The “Fatah movement will face any split” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said at a press conference one day after the controversial announcement of the 19 elected members of the Central Committee for the party.

Speaking from the presidential compound in Ramallah, Abbas praised the integrity of the elections, following accusations from ousted Central Committee member Ahmad Qureia and on-the-outs Fatah member Farouq Qaddoumi that the elections were “unclean” and the conference rigged.

The vociferous rejection by Qureia of the election results, coupled with uncertainty around the Gaza delegates’ reaction to what some say is a lack of representation on the Central Committee, and Qaddoumi’s rejection of the conference entirely, have lead to questions around a possible split in the party.

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BETHLEHEM -- “The forgeries in Iran were much smaller than what we had in Palestine," the Israeli news website Ynet quoted former Palestinian Prime Minister and Central Committee member Ahmad Qureia as saying.

The site ran an unsourced interview Thursday, where the ousted Qureia alleged that "arrangements were made behind the scenes that led to having some of the names pushed aside and other names forced in," and accused election winners Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub, and Tawfiq At-Tirawi of being "coordinators with the occupation." Qureia wondered out loud about a connection between the men’s alleged ties with Israel and their win at the ballot boxes.

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GAZA -- Two prominent Fatah leaders from Gaza Strip accused officials in the Fatah’s sixth congress in Bethlehem city of forging results of the elections for the faction’s central committee, urging Mahmoud Abbas not to announce the official results till the issue is resolved.

Ahmad Nasr, who contested the elections for the central committee but failed, asserted that the results were forged and did not reflect true opinion of the participants in the conference.

“What had happened is indeed a catastrophe that would lead to a new stage of political degradation that the entire Palestinian people would pay the price for” underlined Nasr in a statement he issued in this regard.

He added, “Simply, I want to say that those who were declared as winners weren’t the real winners, and results of the elections express only the personal will of those who have money and political influence”.

“It is not Fatah only that would be buried but the entire Palestinian issue if those fabricated results were endorsed and ratified, and I urge the honorable people in Fatah to profoundly read the results and to take decisive decisions on what had happened”, Nasr underscored.

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GAZA-- Fatah strongman and veteran political leader Farouq Qaddoumi asserted Wednesday that regardless of the outcome of the elections in Fatah’s sixth congress he is still the legitimate secretary of the faction.

He lashed out at some Fatah leaders who, according to him, garnered their seats in the new set-up of the faction’s central committee although they were behind many national catastrophes that rocked the Palestinian community that should bring them before justice.

“I am still the secretary of Fatah, and I don’t need a recommendation from anyone as my record in the Movement testifies for me”, said Qaddoumi in an interview with the Shehab news agency Wednesday commenting on rumors that Mahmoud Abbas, the former PA chief and Fatah leader, might reinstate him in the central committee.

Moreover, the Fatah leader categorically rejected legitimacy of the entire process in Bethlehem and raised doubts on the way Abbas was elected as Fatah’s supreme leader, explaining that Fatah’s laws and regulations stipulate that the voting process should be made secretly and not publicly.

“This form of voting is considered as indirect coercion to influence the will of the electorate and give absolute power to the ruler to banish his opponents”, Qaddoumi pointed out.

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RAMALLAH-- Hamas lawmakers in Israeli jails on Wednesday appealed to Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to urgently intervene to stop the cycle of torture and death taking place in the prisons of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

In a leaked letter, the lawmakers stressed that the torture and death of innocent people cannot be tolerated, stressing the need for pressuring the PA to curb its security apparatuses from issuing extrajudicial death sentences in their jails.

In a related context, Hamas prisoners refuted in a leaked letter the allegations made by PA militias about the death of prisoner Fadi Hamadna in their jails.

The prisoners said that the execution of Hamadna is not a precedent in the history of the security apparatuses which were trained by US officer Keith Dayton on hunting and killing Palestinian resistance fighters and on protecting the security of the Israeli occupation.

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Despite the show of rhetoric, Palestinians know that Fatah is in trouble having lost its fighting credibility as a force against occupation, writes Khaled Amayreh in Bethlehem

Riding in new limousines and other smart cars, hundreds of Fatah delegates on Tuesday converged on Bethlehem where the movement's much-heralded and long-awaited sixth congress is being held amid heavy security and high hopes for revitalising a political current beset by internal divisions and a reputation for corruption.

Thousands of security personnel were deployed all over Bethlehem with the venue of the conference made inaccessible to many journalists, some of who were detained briefly for "trespassing" and "not possessing valid press credentials".

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IN THE SHADOW OF ARAFAT: Abu Mazen presiding over the opening session of Fatah's general conference taking place in Bethlehem now. Scheduled to coincide with the birth anniversary of Arafat, the meeting invoked the late PLO leader as the icon of a time when Palestinians were more united and the resistance more effective, but whether Fatah will overcome its own internal divisions remains doubtful

A single question hangs over Fatah's first general conference in 20 years. What is the movement for? There are no easy answers, writes Amira Howeidy

It is almost five decades ago that Fatah emerged as an icon of armed resistance against Israeli occupation. Under the leadership of Yasser Arafat the movement which launched its first military operation in January 1965, grew to control the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), "the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," as heads of Arab states decided in their 1974 Rabat summit.

Thirty five years and several "peace agreements" later, the PLO's charter has been modified to recognise Israel's right to exist and renounce "terrorism" (aka resistance) when Arafat, in his joint capacity as both Fatah leader and PLO chairman, approved the Oslo Accords, the maze-like framework between Israel and the Palestinians that was supposed to lead to a "peace settlement".

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BETHLEHEM - Fatah will continue in a downward spiral following the reelection of President Mahmoud Abbas to the party's leadership, the Hamas movement said on Saturday evening.

"The reelection of Abu Mazen [Abbas] is the continuation of Fatah's political and organizational downfall and a continuation of the policy of dependence on foreign authorities from which the organization suffers," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth.

Sixty-five of over 2,000 delegates to the sixth Fatah congress opposed the motion to elect Abbas, the Palestinian president and current party leader, as head of the mainstay political movement.

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Abbas, who took over as party chief after the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, will retain his position [AFP]

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been re-elected as leader of the Fatah movement by delegates attending the party conference in Bethlehem.

Abbas, who stood unopposed for the position, was elected by consensus on Saturday through a show of hands from the 2,300 delegates attending the conference.

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Fatah: Gazan delegates to vote Saturday; Dahlan nominated for CC seat

BETHLEHEM - Moments after the Fatah Central Committee announced Gazan delegates could vote in the Saturday elections Mohammad Dahlan nominated himself for a spot on the Central Committee.

His nomination came almost one day after most of the nominations were already in. The old-guard Fatah strongman originally from Gaza but living in the West Bank since 2007 is a current member of the Central Committee. He said he could only nominate himself for a role once the issue over Gazan delegates’ votes was resolved.

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (center) addresses delegates at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem. (Haytham Othman/MaanImages)

By Sousan Hammad, The Electronic Intifada, 6 August 2009

It has been an unnatural string of days here in Bethlehem. Gone is the usual quaintness. Palestinian police are working overtime and coffee shops are being lit up by men in suits with cigars in town for Fatah's sixth general assembly. The secular Fatah movement was founded in the 1950s and has since been at the forefront of the Palestinian national movement.

This is the first visit for many of the 2,000 Fatah officials who were exiled from Palestine decades ago. The last general conference of this kind happened more than 20 years ago in Tunis, but this year's assembly, which will re-elect the organization's 21-member central committee, comes at a bitter point in the Palestinian struggle. With Israel's recent (and yet another) act of violence -- the dispossession and eviction of two families from their Sheikh Jarrah home in East Jerusalem -- Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah cohorts have to work against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's uncompromising chutzpah attitude.

But if there is one thing for which Fatah can be counted on, it is exemplary power and its capacity to intimidate -- in this case with the trappings of totalitarianism as defined by the single party and the suppression of all opposition.

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Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah are locked in a dispute that threatens to derail talks [AFP]

The first Fatah party conference in 20 years has been extended amid infighting between delegates.

The meeting of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' movement in Bethlehem was scheduled to end on Thursday after resolving disputes over how to vote for a new leadership.

But it has been extended into the weekend after some reformists walked out of the conference on Wednesday after Abbas was accused of manipulating their choice of delegates.

There have also been widespread calls for a full report on how party funds have been spent over the last two decades.

"[The conference] is not a disaster, it's expected after 20 years of no conference being held," Maryam al-Arouri, a Fatah delegate, told Al Jazeera.

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BETHLEHEM - Fatah delegates nearly came to blows Wednesday after participants in 18 different committees demanded information on the 20 years of Fatah activities and finances since the last conference in Tunis in 1989, and discovering that the Central Committee had prepared no reports for the conference.

Fatah leader and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was called into the meeting hall several times from side meetings he was conducting, to quell the arguments between members and the Central Committee. Finally Abbas told parties that his 46-page speech from the day before, which glossed the history of the movement including the 20 years since the last conference, would be the reference document to replace the non-existent report from the Central Committee.

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Fatah co-founder Farouk Kaddoumi has accused Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and others of corruption, collusion with the enemay and of plotting to assassinate the late Fatah leader Yassir Arafat

A senior figure in the Palestinian Fatah movement has accused the party's leadership in the West Bank of getting rich at the expense of their own people.

Farouk Kaddoumi, one of the founders of Fatah, made the claims in a statement released before more than 2,000 Fatah delegates began a second day of meetings at the party's conference in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Wednesday.

"Have you ever heard in history about revolutionary leaders who possess, along with their sons, millions of dollars and sterling pounds?" he asked in the statement released to media organisations.

Kaddoumi also criticised the Palestinian leadership for travelling in private jets and accused them of collecting taxes "for their own pocket".

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Fatah delegates from around the Middle East have already started arriving for the conference [AFP]

Fatah is set to hold its long-awaited congress in the West Bank, despite Hamas threats to prevent delegates from the Gaza Strip attending the meeting.

The three-day congress is due to begin in the city of Bethlehem on Tuesday, seen by many as Fatah's last chance to reform itself.

The movement, which is paralysed by infighting and power struggles, is backed by the West as the only mainstream Palestinian champion of compromise with Israel.

But Hamas has said it would allow the departure of about 400 Fatah members from Gaza only if Fatah frees hundreds of Hamas activists detained in West Bank round-ups.

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Al Ahram
The Fatah leadership continues in disarray, its bets with Israel having failed and with no credentials for restoring Palestinian unity, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank

Despite efforts to put a good face on the latest meeting in Amman of Fatah's Executive Committee, the movement's highest decision-making body, the rift between Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and Abbas's opponents remains unresolved.

The two camps are deeply divided over the largely moribund political process with Israel, relations with Hamas as well as political and organisational reforms within Fatah. And the two camps continue to be divided over the convening of the movement's long overdue Sixth Congress. Fatah's last congress was held in Algiers in 1989.

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Israeli military officials reportedly congratulated the PA leadership for killing the “terrorists.”

By Anwar Kheir in the northern West Bank

QALQILIA -- American-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) forces in the northern West Bank on Sunday murdered two prominent Islamic resistance fighters affiliated with Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades.

Local sources in the north-western city of Qalqilia intimated that Muhammed al-Samman, Hamas’s resistance chief in the northern West Bank, and his assistant, Muhammed Yasin, were killed during a fierce clash with forces loyal to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Eyewitnesses said hundreds of PA troops besieged a house in which the two Qassam fighters were hiding shortly before midnight Saturday.

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Pre-empting the outcome of national dialogue, Mahmoud Abbas has reappointed his unpopular premier. It won't do him good, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Abbas; Fayyad

After repeated deference, mainly due to opposition from the Fatah movement, a new Palestinian government headed by incumbent Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was sworn in on Tuesday in Ramallah. The new cabinet comprises 20 ministers, seven of them members of the outgoing government. Said Abu Ali, the governor of Ramallah, is the new interior minister.

One of the major challenges facing Abu Ali is how he will relate to political opposition, especially Hamas. The movement has gained more popularity in the West Bank, especially since the bloody Israeli blitz on Gaza four months ago. Hundreds of Hamas supporters and sympathisers have been rounded up by the Palestinian Authority (PA) security apparatus as part of an all-out campaign to punish the Islamic movement for ousting Fatah from the Gaza Strip nearly two years ago.

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RAMALLAH - Former Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose term expired in January, swore in a replacement caretaker government on Tuesday evening, with unelected Salam Fayyad to stay on as prime minister.

Abbas appointed Fayyad as prime minister after the Hamas party expelled Fatah provacateurs from Gaza in a bloody battle in 2007.

The parliament bloc of Abbas' own Fatah movement said it would refuse to support the new government, though two Fatah-lawmakers were sworn in Tuesday. Two other Fatah-affiliated lawmakers tapped for the new government, Rabiha Diab and Issa Qaraqe refused Abbas offer to join the government.

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May 12, 2009

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Hamas Movement on Tuesday said that the Israeli document that was revealed earlier today on the Ramallah authority's coordination with the Israeli occupation authority during the war on Gaza displayed the big conspiracy on Hamas and the Palestinian people.

Fawzi Barhoum, the spokesman of Hamas in Gaza, regretted in a press release that the head of the political echelon in the PA in Ramallah was involved in the Israeli occupation forces' operation "Cast Lead".

The Ramallah team does not want dialog for reconciliation but rather exploits the dialog to refurbish its image after its failure in achieving partisan and personal interests through the security chaos, isolation, siege, political embezzlement and finally the latest war on Gaza, Barhoum elaborated.

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Mahmoud Abbas, the former Palestinian president whose term ended in January but who continues to act as president, has said he will swear in a new government in the next 48 hours without Fatah's rival, the democratically elected Hamas government.

Announcing his intention on Monday, he said that he was not closing the door on power-sharing talks with Hamas, which effectively governs the Gaza Strip.

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GAZA -- Responding to a statement from former Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas that he would unilaterally form a new Palestinian government, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said Wednesday that any government formed by Abbas, whose term of office ended in January, would be illegitimate.

"Any government that Ramallah forms would be illegal even if the entire world recognized it," said Salah al-Bardaweel, a spokesman for Hamas lawmakers.

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Al Ahram

Fatah's internal problems continue as the current leadership tries to stuff the long-awaited Sixth Congress with its own cadre, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Mahmoud Al-Abed, 26, has given up trying to secure the passport that would allow him to travel outside of the Gaza Strip to continue his higher education in a Malaysian university. Like many Palestinians in Gaza, Al-Abed doesn't have a passport because they are supposed to be sent from Ramallah and, due to disputes with the Hamas government, the government there has refused to send passports to Gaza for over a year.

Al-Abed had hoped that the positive atmosphere produced by the recent national dialogue sessions would help to dissipate the tension in relations between the Ramallah and Gaza governments, and that as a result the Salam Fayyad government would resume sending passports to Gaza. Yet some Palestinian circles have indicated that President Mahmoud Abbas is studying the possibility of forming an expanded government in the near future, before even the dialogue is brought to a close. To Al-Abed, this is a sign that matters are only growing more complicated, and that he and other Palestinians will have to go on bearing the catastrophic outcomes of the domestic rift.

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Al Ahram

Palestinian national dialogue hangs by a thread as leaders in Ramallah suggest that unilaterally they will form a new Palestinian government outside its framework, writes Saleh Al-Naami

Despite numerous undertakings by Fatah leaders to hold "sooner rather than later" the movement's long-overdue Sixth Congress, sharp differences and disagreements among Fatah's competing camps continue to impede the convening of the conference.

Last month, Hakam Balawi, secretary- general of Fatah's Executive Committee, was quoted by the pro-establishment Maan News Agency as saying: "An announcement as to the date and venue of the Sixth Conference will be announced within a few hours." Since then, several weeks have passed and it is still uncertain when and where the movement's convention will take place.

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