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Things were never entirely clear in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict during the time of Yasser Arafat, as the peace process worked alongside ongoing violence. But the doubts surrounding Yasser Arafat’s true intentions in the peace process supposedly died when he did. Abbas, a more moderate Palestinian leader, who even critiqued the violence of the Second Intifada, was supposed to possess a sincere desire for peace. But does he? And even if he does, could he garner enough support from his own political party to achieve it?
A Two-Faced Assembly
The sixth General Assembly for the Fatah party had a chance to genuinely change the direction of Israeli–Palestinian relations. As just one example, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) pointed out on their Web site, www.palwatch.org, that Fatah’s charter still called for the destruction of Israel. PMW quoted Article 19 of the charter from Fatah’s Web site: “Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People’s armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.” PMW noted that Fatah should have changed the charter at their assembly, a step towards peace. Fatah did not make the change.
On the other hand, Abbas used the General Assembly to denounce terrorism, according to The Jerusalem Post. Furthermore, Fatah also endorsed negotiations as their option of choice for the time being, a noteworthy point for Dr. Anat Kurz, senior research fellow and director of research at the Institute for National Security Studies who has researched the Israel–Palestinian conflict. In an interview with Bridges for Peace not long after the General Assembly, Kurz said that while the Fatah resolution for the event retained “resistance” as an option should talks fail, they nonetheless also confirmed the option of peace talks with Israel. “In this sense, we are talking about moderate policies integrated into the platform of the movement,” said Kurz.
Sadly, the rest of the Fatah General Assembly seemed to be a dramatic effort to nullify whatever gains were made by this endorsement of negotiations. Here’s a brief list of some of the other actions done at the conference:
Perhaps most confusing is that following elections for Fatah’s powerful Central Committee, a group of peace negotiators were named to the committee—alongside a negotiator-turned-convicted terrorist and a former peace negotiator, Mohammad Dahlan, whom PMW pointed out has said even Fatah doesn’t recognize Israel. And that’s not even the most troubling name on the list.
The Most Popular and Most Extreme
The man who garnered by far and away the most votes of anyone named to the committee was Muhammad Ghaneim. If that name sounds unfamiliar, it’s probably because little is known about him. But don’t let the lack of media coverage fool you. According to Dr. Barry Rubin—director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center (www.gloria-center.org), author for the Rubin Reports blog, and someone who has studied the Palestine Liberation Organization for 30 years—Ghaneim was a key figure in Fatah under Arafat and has been involved in radical Arab groups for decades.
Ghaneim was first involved with an Islamic movement more than 40 years ago before joining Arafat’s Fatah movement, according to Rubin. Rubin says that Ghaneim was the “head of the armed militia in Jordan” for Arafat, just one of a “succession of extremely important posts.” His connections to people under Arafat may have contributed to the high number of votes he received from the recent Fatah General Assembly. Rubin did note, however, that as far as is known, Ghaneim’s main job since at least 1970 was not organizing attacks directly.
Despite his connections to Arafat, Ghaneim decided not to join his long-time leader in coming to Israel as part of the Oslo Accords. Although Rubin did not present any specific, definitive statements from Ghaneim that prove he was too hard-line to join Arafat under Oslo, and while he noted Ghaneim’s decision may have been influenced by internal politics and a pro-Syrian Palestinian faction, Rubin still thought the decision had some serious implications. “Precisely what happened, we don’t know, but we have to assume that this is based on his beliefs: absolutely not, no negotiation, just continue an armed struggle,” said Rubin. “…[Fatah] is a movement that he’d spent his whole life in, that he was dedicated to, that he really believed the ideology that you shouldn’t make any compromise whatsoever, no matter what, and so stuck to it.”
Then, after years of refusing to join Fatah in Israel, Ghaneim arrived this past July and subsequently won a sizable number of votes to be named to Fatah’s newest version of a powerful official committee. Rubin believes Ghaneim was convinced by Abbas to finally make the jump because he has the potential to someday lead Fatah. And that is a concern, according to Rubin.
“The problem is that he is the most hard-line person who could possibly be selected for this job,” according to Rubin. “He’s against negotiations, he’s against peace, he’s against compromise, so what effect would it be to have a person like this heading the organization?” While Ghaneim may never take over Fatah, his position as the top vote-getter in the last election casts shadows over Fatah as a whole. A sizable chunk of the elite members of Fatah endorsed a man Rubin believes to be more hard-line than Arafat. Even if the vote was rigged or cast as a way to endorse an outsider to mediate party conflicts—a purely internal political choice—the move still raises serious questions about the party and their priorities. Are peace and statehood really the most important things for them, or internal disputes?
Yet, what about the prospect that Ghaneim has finally moderated, hence his return to the West Bank (Judea and Samaria)? Comments Ghaneim made on the conflict when returning was, according to Rubin, “We will continue fighting until we win victory.” Said Rubin, “There are people who want to engage in wishful thinking and say the fact that he returned proves that he has changed his views. Well, I think we need a bit more than that to reach that conclusion.”
Little is known definitively about Ghaneim. His exact responsibilities under Arafat for the terror-version of Fatah are unclear. His exact reasons for not joining Arafat under Oslo are unclear. And his reasons for finally coming to the West Bank are unclear. While that isn’t particularly condemning (that Ghaneim could be the most moderate leader yet after all), it offers more doubt than hope.
Ongoing Incitement
When compared with Hamas media, which openly endorses martyrdom against Israel even for children, the media for the Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled by Fatah appears mild. That doesn’t mean it’s peaceful, however. In late August, PMW found a program that taught children that Israeli cities Jaffa and Acre are both “Palestinian” cities.
According to their Web site, PA TV broadcast a set of quizzes on children’s television in which they asked the children, “Where is Palestine’s most important port, in Haifa, Jaffa, or Acre?” The child then “correctly” answered “Jaffa”—an Israeli Arab sister city with Tel Aviv. All three locations are in pre-1967 Israel. In a second quiz, the host asks, “There’s a Palestinian city whose walls are very high and strong, and Napoleon, whom we all know, stopped his battle [there], because he was unable [to breach] the solid walls. Which city is it: Jaffa, Acre or Tiberias?” The child then answers “Acre,” which is a city in northern Israel on the coast that is home to both Jews and Arabs. Earlier this year, PMW also noted Palestinian textbooks taught fifth-grade students in physical geography that the famous Sea of Galilee is Palestinian, referring to it as “the Tiberias Lake, in Palestine.”
Furthermore, PMW analyst Nan Jacque told Bridges for Peace that a newspaper said Abbas’s office funded a new computer center in the West Bank named for Mughrabi, the aforementioned notorious female terrorist who took part in attacks that killed 37 people.
In addition, Jacque said the blood libel is alive and well in Palestinian media. Following the controversial August 2009 report in a Swedish newspaper about the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) harvesting Palestinian organs, Jacque said Palestinian media sponsored by the Palestinian Authority went so far as to describe how Israel buried dead Palestinians a certain number of centimeters down, so it was easier to harvest their organs later. PMW’s Web site even said in July of 2008 a libel was put out by official Palestinian media connected with Fatah that Israeli settlers were intentionally infesting Jerusalem’s Old City with what PMW termed “super rats” in order to drive Arabs out.
Jacque said that rather than laying the groundwork for peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, the libels are leading to the opposite. “Hearing all these libels, reading them in the papers, the Palestinians are made to believe that Israelis and Jews are evil, and that, of course, leads to hatred,” said Jacque. “If you are made to believe that you are a target and that you are under a threat, then it’s natural to start hating that other person. This is, of course, a very problematic issue, and we haven’t seen any lessening of this phenomena, unfortunately.”
A Shot in the Dark
Overall, Fatah and the Fatah-led PA present a confusing picture when it comes to peace. Though they are not as bad as Hamas, or even as Arafat’s Fatah, it is clear they are not where they need to be either.
In the last couple of years, major organized terror endorsed or ignored by Fatah seems to have declined, but individual East Jerusalem Arabs engaged in three separate terror attacks using bulldozers, and another gunned down eight young people in a Jerusalem yeshiva (religious school) in March of 2008. A large car bomb at the Haifa mall in March of 2009 failed to go off. Anti-Israel violence isn’t resolved, even with the IDF active in Palestinian areas. One shudders to think about what would happen if the IDF leaves the West Bank and East Jerusalem for the Palestinians to police.
With so much unknown about the Fatah leadership, with their self-contradicting approaches to peace and their incitement to hatred, any effort to establish a Palestinian state and grant them control over security in the near future is at best a shot in the dark. And that dark future just might shoot back.
By Joshua Spurlock, Correspondent, BFP Israel Mosaic Radio
Photo Credit: Photo: Isranet
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