Fatah's much-heralded, long-awaited and long-delayed sixth General Conference, slated for March, has fallen victim to Fatah's chronic internal contradictions, reports Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah According to insiders in the movement's higher echelons, the conference has been postponed "until further notice". In Fatah-speak, this probably means "never". Many of Fatah's younger leaders and activists had hoped and probably still hope that the organisation of the conference would provide a rare opportunity to put Fatah's house in order and introduce badly-needed democratic reforms to a movement that is increasingly suffering from a host of ailments, including corruption, rampant factionalism and demoralisation. However, Fatah's veteran leaders, especially at the national level, have been resisting and effectively opposing internal elections because of the impossible situation on all fronts; namely, the enduring rift between Fatah and Hamas, the precariousness of the "peace process" with Israel, and the widespread malaise in Palestine and the region as a whole. Still, Fatah's internal disunity remains the most serious factor hampering the convening of the conference at this time. There are some veteran Fatah leaders in the West Bank, people like Qaddura Fares and Jebril Rajoub, who are worried that holding the conference under existing circumstances might cause an implosion within the movement. "We can't convene the sixth conference now with all these internal differences. Because then instead of achieving unity, we would be consolidating disunity and Fatah would come out of the conference in much worse shape," said Fares. He pointed out that Fatah might be better off "patching up" its differences by way of reconciliation rather than elections. But reconciliation according to whose criteria? That is the question for which no one seems to have a satisfactory answer. None of this talk seems acceptable to the younger Fatah leaders who accuse the veteran leadership of wanting to remain in their seats forever. "They are all liars, in any company, let alone a political movement or a political party. Managers don't remain in their seats for 20 years. How can we compete with Hamas if our leaders remain in their seats till they are senile or dead?" asked Jamal Qawasmeh, a local Fatah leader in the Hebron region. "Authoritarianism has harmed Fatah so much, and if it persists unchallenged, it could very well bring about Fatah's demise." One of the most disquieting and potentially destructive problems facing Fatah these days is the so-called "warring camps". This is by no means a new phenomenon within Fatah, which is often described as a supermarket of ideas and political orientations. There are all kinds of political and ideological trends within the movement, ranging from far right to far left. There are also loyalties inside Fatah to regional, even foreign powers. More to the point, there are Jordanian, Egyptian, American, and, some say, even Israeli lobbies. This cacophony of contradictions, however, had been kept under control, thanks to Yasser Arafat's strong personality and unchallenged dominance in Fatah. Arafat, after all, held all the reins, took all the decisions and controlled all the money, and no Fatah leader could have challenged him. Now, with no charismatic leader -- no one would ever compare the current PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to Arafat -- and in the absence of genuine democratic traditions which the movement could rely on to resolve and reconcile internal differences, Fatah is facing one of the most difficult crises in its history. In the past few weeks, recrimination spilled over into the media, with Hakam Balawi, an aide to Abbas and Mohamed Dahlan, the former Fatah strongman in Gaza whose forces Hamas defeated in June 2006, engaging in a showdown of verbal abuse and name-calling with Dahlan. Balawi has been accusing Dahlan of seeking to topple Abbas, by hook or by crook, and replace him as PA president, in coordination with unnamed external powers, a possible allusion to the United States and probably Israel as well. "Dahlan is an opportunist who is spreading chaos, illusions and poison," said Balawi in a statement issued on behalf of Fatah's central committee. "His actions and statements have long been based on intimidations, threats and ultimatums." Earlier, Balawi lambasted Dahlan "for losing Gaza to Hamas and fleeing with your tail between your legs." Fighting back, Dahlan called the present Fatah leadership "a failed leadership," saying that Abbas and Fatah's entire top echelon were responsible for Fatah's defeat in the Gaza Strip. Dahlan went as far as accusing Balawi of being a traitor working and spying for Israel. "It is you who planted Israeli spies in Abu Mazen's office in Tunis," said Dahlan in a statement to the media this week, referring to Adnan Yassin, the Mossad agent who infiltrated Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headquarters in Tunis in the late 1980s. A few weeks ago, Abu Ali Shahin, another Gaza Fatah leader, who fled to the West Bank following Hamas's countercoup in Gaza, lashed out at Abbas, calling him a failed leader who was not capable of taking the right decisions at the right time. Some Fatah leaders are worried that the acrimonious showdown between Balawi and Dahlan might eventually evolve into a kind of Gaza-West Bank split. Balawi hails from the northern West Bank while Dahlan is from Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. Peace talks with Israel, as usual, are leading nowhere because of Israeli intransigence and refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 war. At the same time, Fatah's internal problems are worsening rather than receding, so the movement's political future and internal cohesion are very much on the line. Fatah has to choose the lesser of its two evils: holding the sixth conference this year, or not holding it at all. Both are a recipe for disaster. One Fatah leader, Ikrema Thabet, believes that this is not the season to reap gains for Fatah but rather to limit losses. "If our discussions and arguments outside the conference are like this, then what hope do we really have for achieving unity inside the conference?" asked Thabet in an article released by the Maan News Agency this week. He added, "what we need is a conference to unify our ranks, not a conference that would make the situation worse than it already is."
