Abbas stronger but movement weakened after Fatah congress, analysts say

Palestinian president's exclusion of rival Mohammed Dahlan and his supporters has underlined split in Fatah and could undermine it in the long term.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas casts his vote at the Muqataa, the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, during a conference of the Fatah movement on December 3, 20Show more

Jerusalem // The Fatah congress that concluded on Sunday after six days of deliberations in Ramallah has strengthened Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as leader in the short term but leaves the troubled movement fractured and bereft of new ideas or a new direction, analysts say.

Results of the elections to the Fatah central committee show the movement has also failed to inject much new blood into top leadership positions or come up with a pluralist body rather than a team of yes-men (and one woman) to Mr Abbas.

“Abbas after this conference is stronger than before,” said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian Authority minister and now vice president of the West Bank’s Bir Zeit University. “He succeeded in convening it and he managed to renew the legitimacy of Fatah and himself.”

In the opening session of the Fatah congress, the first held since 2009, Mr Abbas won unanimous endorsement to continue as chairman of the dominant movement in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The congress has put Mr Abbas in position to call a much delayed session of the PLO’s parliament – the Palestine National Council – to hold elections for the PLO executive committee and the PLO central council, moves which on the surface could further enhance his legitimacy as leader.

But Fatah, which faces a challenge from rival Hamas on the one hand and is presiding over the loss of statehood hopes to Israeli settlement expansion on the other, is now formally split as a result of the conference. Mr Abbas excluded followers of former Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan, preventing them from being a part of the elections or Fatah institutions.

Mr Dahlan, who was expelled from Fatah in 2011 for criticising Mr Abbas, now lives in exile in the UAE but has built up a significant following in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank.

“This will be remembered as the conference that split Fatah,” said Naji Shurrab, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza. “The split is a reality now but the problem on the side of Abu Mazen [Abbas] and his congress and the new central committee is that they deny there is a split. If they recognised it, there would be options to find a solution, but they don’t recognise it at all. They say Fatah is united, that it’s strong. But this isn’t completely right. Dahlan and his supporters are strong. They have many means, especially money.”

Mr Abbas had reportedly been urged by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to reconcile with Mr Dahlan before the conference. But the Palestinian president refused to do so.

If Mr Abbas is able to convince Arab countries that his leadership has been reinvigorated by the conference and that Mr Dahlan has been marginalised, they may be less willing to back Mr Dahlan. If not, Mr Dahlan’s challenge will resonate further.

According to Jihad Tomaleh, a key Dahlan backer in the West Bank, the dispute is not over political stances. “We are in dispute with Abu Mazen’s method – dictatorship and exclusion of others,” he said.

Ahead of Mr Abbas’s closing remarks to the conference on Sunday, the meeting was bereft of new political directions for the movement. In a speech on Wednesday, Mr Abbas reaffirmed his desire for a negotiated solution with Israel, condemned Israeli settlement building and indicated that Palestinian recognition of Israel could be withdrawn unless Israel recognised Palestinian statehood.

“We didn’t hear any substantive political debate,” Mr Khatib said. “The whole thing was about names and persons, of who was running for Fatah positions, about who is coming and going.’’

In that respect, too, there was an absence of innovation. The congress re-elected most of the 21-member central committee, with only a few younger leaders added. The results indicated that veteran Fatah leaders Jibril Rajoub, Tawfiq Tirawi, Saeb Erekat, Nasser Qidwa, Abbas Zaki and Mahmoud Alul kept their seats. Marwan Barghouti, the popular leader of the second intifada uprising, who is serving multiple life terms in an Israeli prison, tallied the most votes in the election.

“The central committee is made of one colour,” said Mkheimar Abu Sada, also a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza.

Mr Dahlan will now have to decide whether or not to call a counter-conference of his supporters. “Most likely there will be a lot of incitement between Dahlan and Abbas, they will keep inciting and accusing each other,” Mr Abu Sada said. “The best thing Dahlan can do is wait for the next congress because as long as Abu Mazen is alive he will not be able to come back to Fatah.”

He said Mr Abbas was likely to intensify a crackdown on Dahlan supporters after the congress, including cutting more Palestinian Authority salaries of Dahlan loyalists in Gaza and perhaps waging a security campaign in West Bank refugee camps such as Amari and Balata where support for Mr Dahlan is strong.

Critics of Mr Abbas say the real loser from the conference was the Fatah movement itself. "It will never go back to the previous period," wrote the Gaza-based analyst Fayez Abu Shamaleh in the Rai Al Youm website on Sunday. "It will not reunite its members, who are dissipating, with unity gone. Its vision is split."