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Fatah and the Palestinians
Fresh faces, old hands
Aug 13th 2009 | BETHLEHEM
From The Economist print edition
Don’t expect anything too different, too soon, from the new leaders of Fatah
AP
A NEW leadership of Fatah, the biggest and best financed of the Palestinian factions, has emerged from
the party congress which finally ended on August 11th in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank. The “Old
Guard” suffered a decisive defeat by the movement’s younger generation in the elections to its main
executive body. Fourteen out of 18 men voted onto the party’s Central Committee are new, most notably
Marwan Barghouti, a popular leader who is serving several life sentences in an Israeli prison.
Another strong contender to the presidency once President Mahmoud Abbas steps down, Muhammad
Dahlan, was also elected to an executive post, as were Jibril Rajoub, a former head of the Preventive
Security Force, and Tawfiq Tirawi, a former chief of the Palestinian intelligence service. They all represent
a new generation of Fatah figures, eager for power—and change. One of the most loathed figures on the
Palestinian “street”, Ahmed Qurei, a former prime minister whose family company sold cement to Israel
which was used for building the much-reviled separation wall, was not re-elected.
Fatah has been at the core of the Palestinian national movement for five decades, but since the signing of
the Oslo Accords in 1994 and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza and the West
Bank, it has earned a reputation for corruption and cronyism. In recent years it has been losing ground to
its militant rival, Hamas. The congress, the first in 20 years, was seen as a long-overdue opportunity to
breathe new life into the stagnant organisation. Yet although the delegates succeeded in changing the
composition of Fatah’s executive organs, the election results are unlikely to lead to the upheaval that
many have long wanted.
The new leadership is not expected to shake up the party radically or alter Fatah’s position towards the
Israelis or the peace process. These supposedly “young” leaders are, after all, already in their 50s, with
decades of experience in politics, and largely support Mr Abbas’s current policies. Indeed, Mr Abbas
himself was unanimously re-elected as head of the party, a post he has held since the death of Yasser
Arafat, the founder of Fatah, in 2004.
The charismatic Mr Barghouti is considered the leader with the best chance of reuniting the deeply divided
Palestinians. Binyamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government is not likely to release him for some time, as he
was jailed in 2004 on five counts of murder. But Mr Barghouti’s strong win has secured his position as the
main contender to the presidency and could lead to increased American pressure on the Israelis to let him
out, perhaps as part of a prisoner-swap. And Mr Netanyahu, who favours any strengthening of Fatah at
the expense of Hamas as a long-term Israeli interest, may be a little more amenable than he looks. He let
virtually all Fatah’s delegates attend the congress (a courtesy Hamas did not extend) and in private was
generally well-disposed towards its outcome.
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