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The mainstream Palestinian movement Fatah came together here on Tuesday for a landmark three-day gathering, its first in 20 years and its first ever on Palestinian soil.
The opening ceremony was festive and emotional, though the celebratory tone did not dispel the difficult situation Fatah found itself in. It has struggled to recover from a humiliating defeat by Hamas, its Islamic rival, in the 2006 elections and the subsequent loss of Gaza. Fatah continues to be riddled with internal divisions, and many participants said the conference might be the movement’s last chance to revive.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sought to reinvigorate his Fatah movement Tuesday, launching the party's first congress in 20 years -- and its first ever in the West Bank. More than 2,000 delegates from around the world have gathered here to choose a new party platform and hold elections for Fatah institutions.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas opened his Fatah movement's first congress in 20 years Tuesday with a call to step up nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and to keep faith in peace talks despite years of setbacks to the dream of statehood.
But he stopped short of renouncing a clause of Fatah's founding charter that prescribes "armed revolution" against the Jewish state.
"Although peace is our choice, we reserve the right to resistance, legitimate under international law," he said, using ambiguous language that covers violent as well as peaceful action.
For the first time in two decades, the most enduring force in Palestinian politics convened a partywide congress Tuesday to strengthen its position in negotiations with rival Hamas as well as with Israel.
"Although peace is our choice, we reserve the right to resistance, legitimate under international law," said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the party's pro-West chairman, in his opening speech.
It was 13-year-old Diala who was awoken first, just after 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, by the commotion outside. She rushed to the window, saw special riot police in black uniforms, and ran to wake her parents.
By the time she did, the Israeli police were already breaking in through doors and windows, forcing the 17-member Hanoun family – three brothers, their wives, and children – to leave the home their relatives acquired a half-century ago. In all, 58 Palestinians were evicted in this predominantly Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah.
In 2002, the U.N. Development Program released its first ever Arab Human Development Report, which bluntly detailed the deficits of freedom, women’s empowerment and knowledge-creation holding back the Arab world. It was buttressed with sobering statistics: Greece alone translated five times more books every year from English to Greek than the entire Arab world translated from English to Arabic; the G.D.P. of Spain was greater than that of all 22 Arab states combined; 65 million Arab adults were illiterate. It was a disturbing picture, bravely produced by Arab academics.
President Obama will soon unveil a new Middle East peace initiative, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.
Speaking Tuesday at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Barak said the initiative's details were still in the works.
Larry Garber remembers the last time he was living in Israel and someone wanted to cut off foreign government funds to human rights groups that discomfited the political establishment.
It was 2000 and Garber, who then ran the U.S. Agency for International Development mission in the West Bank and Gaza, was meeting with Hasan Asfour, a Cabinet minister in Yasser Arafat’s notoriously corrupt Palestinian Authority government.
Silver-haired Fatah Party members in dark, pinstriped suits draped with kaffiyeh scarves bearing the colors of the Palestinian flag greeted each other with kisses as they converged in Bethlehem for the movement’s first congress in 20 years.
On Tuesday, more than 2,000 delegates from all over the Arab world came to the conference, which was held in the hall of a private Christian school near the Church of the Nativity. The last time Fatah convened a congress was in Tunis in 1989, when the movement’s leadership was living in exile.
Authoritative sources in the Fatah movement have asserted to Asharq Al-Awsat that the Palestinian leadership has decided to stop all the funds it pays to the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority's [PA] budget apart from the salaries of its own employees.
A juxtaposition of several simultaneous events this week indicates just how difficult it is going to be to achieve any meaningful progress in Arab-Israeli peace talks, when the heart of the conflict is land that Israelis and Palestinians both claim as their ancestral patrimony.
Washington issued another diplomatic protest over Israeli conduct in East Jerusalem on Monday, its second in as many weeks.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman summoned Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, to tell him that the United States views Sunday's eviction of two Palestinian families from homes in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as a "provocative" and "unacceptable" act that violates Israel's obligations under the road map peace plan.
The eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in order to replace them with Jewish families, predictably sparked harsh condemnations. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the government to refrain from such actions, which she described as "provocative."
President Barack Obama's first encounter with Middle Eastern realities ended in great disappointment. His effort to restart the peace process, which was supposed to offer revivifying hope to the peoples of the region after George W. Bush's diplomatic freeze and war on terror, hit a wall of stubbornness and rejectionism. Instead of Obama's suggestions being received with cries of joy, they were answered with three nos: Israel will not freeze the settlements, the Palestinians will not resume negotiations and the Arab states will not take any steps toward normalization with Israel.
The US State Department once again expressed its disapproval Tuesday night over Israel's eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
The American officials made a phone call to Israel's Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren and protested the move. Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem stressed Wednesday that the call was not a reprimand.
On Monday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the eviction "deeply regrettable" and "provocative."
Jordan's foreign minister strongly backed the Obama administration's efforts to garner confidence-building measures toward Israel from Arab states Tuesday, bolstering the US approach in the face of public opposition from other Arab leaders.
Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh stressed that Jordan is "committed to creating the right atmosphere" and supporting the "vision" of the US, which wants to see conditions for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a two-state solution set by gestures from Arab states and Israel.
The Americans might be waiting for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to declare a freeze on new Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, but according to the settlers, such a moratorium has been in place since Netanyahu took office at the end of March.
"Everything is frozen already," Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shaul Goldstein told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/8242
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/8242
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/8242
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/gala_2009
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/middleeast/05fatah.html?_r=3&ref=middleeast
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/04/AR2009080403114.html
[8] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-palestinians-fatah5-2009aug05,0,2595116.story
[9] http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0804/p06s05-wome.html
[10] http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0804/p06s12-wome.html
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/opinion/05friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
[12] http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/04/1007020/new-ameriacn-peace-plan-in-the-works
[13] http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/04/1007009/netanyahus-proposed-ban-on-ngo-funding-raises-questions-for-us-groups
[14] http://forward.com/articles/111394/
[15] http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=17668
[16] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=104963
[17] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1105309.html
[18] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1105316.html
[19] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1105315.html
[20] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418524275&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[21] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418523232&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[22] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418522954&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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