According to the latest comprehensive survey conducted by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA), there are 634 physical obstacles to movement throughout the West Bank, including 93 staffed checkpoints and 541 unstaffed obstacles (earthmounds, roadblocks, road barriers, etc.)

Collectively, these obstacles create a hermetic network of control valves which Israel opens and shuts at will. While Israeli settlers implanted throughout the West Bank have unrestricted access through these checkpoints, Palestinians find themselves increasingly confined to reservation-like ghettoes, deprived from any kind of normal educational, medical, social, economic, or familial existence.

It’s no wonder then that checkpoints are one of the most visible and despised symbols of Israel’s 42-year occupation. They physically entrench Israel’s notion of “separation” both between Palestinians and Israelis, as well as between Palestinians themselves – winning comparisons to apartheid from everyone from South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the OPT.

This is what the latter had to say about the phenomenon in 2007, a year before his tenure in the post was up:

Of course there are similarities between the OPT and apartheid South Africa. Anyone who experienced apartheid has a sense of deja vu when visiting the OPT. Laws and practices discriminate against Palestinians. Restrictions on movement within the West Bank and Jordan Valley resemble the «pass laws» of apartheid both in their discriminatory nature and brutal application. There is a system of «separate but unequal» roads for settlers and Palestinians – which was never even contemplated in apartheid South Africa. Jews may travel freely within the closed zone between the Wall and the Green Line but Palestinians require permits – which are frequently denied. The separate residential areas for Jews and Palestinians in Hebron remind one of the «group areas» for different races under apartheid. Palestinians are prohibited from living with their Arab Israeli spouses, but no such restrictions apply to foreigners living with Israeli Jewish spouses. House demolitions are carried out in a discriminatory manner. Over 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners are held in Israeli jails. Can it seriously be denied that such acts are committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over another racial group of persons – to use the language of the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid?

Dugard adds:

Israel takes care not to announce its apartheid practices. There are no signs on the roads or in the closed zone saying «No Palestinians Allowed» or «Settlers Only»; and there are no laws providing that only Palestinian houses built without a permit may be demolished. In this respect Israel has learnt the lesson of apartheid. But the result is the same – oppressive discrimination.

Apparently Dugard’s disdain for apartheid is not shared by all however.

Take a look at this picture taken from the Palestinian daily newspaper Al Quds this past Wednesday (11/11/2009).

It features the governor of the West Bank town of Jenin, Qadoura Mousa (second from right), Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, and Quartet Middle East Special envoy Tony Blair – cutting a ribbon at the opening ceremony of the reopening of the Jalama crossing point near Jenin.

The checkpoint was recently upgraded with money from USAID, and will now permit vehicular traffic between the Jenin district and the Galilee region.

When I first saw this picture, I was dumbfounded.

First, it discloses the lie that the Palestinian leadership is not engaged in any direct contacts with Israeli officials from the right-wing Netenyahu government.

Second, the idea that anyone (including a Palestinian official) would be willing to celebrate a symbol of apartheid is despicable in the least. The claim that this act will work to improve economic conditions is a sorry excuse. Traffic will only be one way, with Israeli citizens permitted to enter and buy cheaper produce inside the West Bank, but with Palestinians unable to reciprocate. Palestinian cars (green and white license plates) are not allowed to travel in Israel.

Third, in addition to continuing to supply Israel with military equipment, the United States government is now actively supporting checkpoint maintenance. Only Israeli soldiers man the Jalama checkpoint. This means that Israel (and its occupation) is now a direct benefactor of USAID money, despite not being on the list of countries entitled to such aid. The conclusion: America’s first Black American president is financing segregation.

by Guest Writer Aseel Najib

Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian physician and author based in London. Since her autobiography In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story was first published in 2002 by Verso Books, it has been translated into forty languages. The late Edward Said described the memoir as “…the story of a fascinating woman…humanly rich and interesting.” On a speaking tour throughout the US to promote the newly-released second edition of In Search for Fatima, Mrs. Karmi visited Columbia University at the behest of an Arab cultural group, Turath. While there, she sat down with TFT associate editor Aseel Najib to discuss her wok.

Q: Did your parents encourage your literary appetite?

A: I was encouraged to read by my father, Hasan, even as a child. But not directly. He encouraged me, rather, by example. He was an expert in Arabic language and literature, and had a wide interest in many subjects: philosophy, religion, politics, history. Our home in Palestine, and later, our home in London, was full of books in English and in Arabic. I remember once he gave me a book as a present. He had inscribed its front cover. From one book lover to another, it said. I drank that in as a young girl.

Q: How, then, did you come to write a book like In Search of Fatima?

A: To be quite honest, I did not think I would write a book like this one at all. For forty years, I read literary works. But my impetus in writing In Search of Fatima was not literary; it was political. Consciously political, you could say. I think it stemmed from my understanding of the tremendous effect the Holocaust had on the Jews, and of how narrative literature was used to then convey that effect to non-Jews. I felt very strongly that our story, the Palestinian story, should be told as well, and I saw literature and writing as the appropriate means by which to tell it.

That was my intent when I began to write In Search of Fatima. But as the book began to take its physical form – that is, as I added pages and chapters to the book, it began to take on a life of its own. I discovered, while writing it that it could not be the “Palestinians’ Story”; it had to be my own. I needed, emotionally, to be able to tell that story. I needed to be able to put it down in writing, share it with the world and explain the Palestinian experience not as an ideological or political one, but as a personal one. The book became an unintended novel. As you can see, really, I ended up with something rather different than what I had planned.

Q: How do you think the realms of politics and literature interact?

A: I think that is a very good question. To answer it honestly, I have to rely on personal experience. I grew up with a love for literature, but one that lacked a political context. I think this apathy stemmed from the attitude my parents had toward the events of 1948. It was as though, after being forced to flee their homeland, they decided it was best to get on with their lives and raise their children in a normal, meaning ‘apolitical’, environment. The result was that I grew up without an awareness of those events.

My political awakening came about in the wake of the 1967 Arab Israeli War. I was in my twenties, a young doctor. I believed myself a Londoner by all standards, and the war came as a tremendous shock for me. Now, in the language of the youthful, I knew that I was on the “Arab side.” My friends, on the other hand, were on in the “Israeli side,” and this split created a process of doubt, self-questioning and reflection.

It was then that I realized: I am not an ordinary young doctor. I cannot lie to myself and pretend that I bear no larger connection to this war, to the Palestinians being killed on the other side of the globe in this war. At that point, I accepted the responsibility of being a Palestinian, and the burden of identifying with the Palestinian cause. It is not merely a self-indulgent sadness; it is a compulsion to act for that cause. To be an activist, as they say. I have remained as such throughout the years.

People may find this difficult to understand. But living through the sadness of exile – and by exile I do not only imply physical disconnection from one’s homeland, but also emotional disconnection from a larger identity – makes it impossible to forget. For most Palestinians, there is no escape. That is why it is difficult to separate my political leanings from my literary inclinations. I do not believe I can produce literature that does not bear a larger connection to the Palestinian narrative.

Q: To what extent do you think writing can be used a means of resistance and protest?

A: Very generally, I think that art, in all its forms, is absolutely necessary in the fight against annihilation. In fact, one of the most pernicious effects of Israel was the systematic and deliberate destruction of Palestinian literature, culture and history. Those are all such vital components of a national identity that their destruction is endlessly more dangerous than the demolition of homes or the establishment of roadblocks may be. The arts, I feel, can fill certain gaps; they can create consciousness, instigate discussions, bring awareness. Sadly, it took Palestinians quite some time before they understood this and began to resist in a measured, appropriate manner. Before they began to paint, write and create their own works as an impetus to realize, remember and recognize themselves as Palestinians.

Q: Yes, but it is also important to note that what art can do is paint “Palestine” in an ideological, abstract light so that it loses its actual physical dimensions, and becomes an unreachable Eden, of sorts.

A: Oh, absolutely. And this process you speak of, by which Palestine becomes some dream-like notion, is exactly what Israel would like to see. After all, a few people running around with an idea can’t do Israel much harm. What the world must do is think of Palestine as actual land; it is very much real and existent. It may not be in Palestinian ownership, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. Palestine can and should be the subject of art and literature, but that should be rooted first and foremost in its physicality. It is very much a national struggle, but not in the taking-up-arms sense that most people get when I use the term. Rather, I mean that we must struggle to remember, and to remind ourselves always of the forced exile of Palestinians sixty years ago, and of the deplorable conditions that Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories today are still made to live under.

Q: What role can women play in this “struggle”?

A: Again, this is such a loaded question I think I can only answer it according to the dictates of my memories and experiences. Personally, I think it is our collective responsibility to protest and resist Israel’s actions in Palestine. It is not solely the responsibility of women, or of Palestinians, but the responsibility of each and every global citizen who believes in the basic human rights and dignity of all people, everywhere. Everyone really must join this struggle using the capacity that he or she has been given.

I always saw myself as a writer, first and foremost, and have attempted to use that ability to further the Palestinian cause. That said, I think my gender did not matter very much when I published In Search of Fatima. If anything, my being a woman may have made the book more accessible and appealing to all readers. But bear in mind that I was writing as an Arab woman in the West, and that I was writing the book for a largely western audience.

Q: Would things have been different, do you think, had you published it in the Middle East?

A: Well, if I were living in the Arab world, I think things would have been very different. Having taught for a number of years in more than one Middle Eastern university, I think it is fair for me to say that Arab women face a number of difficulties in making their voices heard. And it is interesting that in most cases, the discrimination they face does not come in the form of censorship, preclusion or exclusion. It is much worse from that. What most Arab female writers and thinkers face in the Middle East is marginalization. They are dismissed, overlooked, cast aside and made to feel that they-and their work-are unimportant and insignificant.

And personally, this marginalization would have defeated the spirit of In Search of Fatima. The book is about putting forth an essentially Palestinian voice rarely heard on the literary scene. Part of its importance stems from its uniqueness. And in the Arab world, women are made to feel as though their experiences are not unique or important. They are made to feel as though their experiences are banal, trivial and uninteresting. This contradiction is why I could never have published In Search of Fatima in the Arab World.

Interestingly enough, the book is currently being translated into Arabic. It strikes me as strange that this is happening just now; a book such as In Search of Fatima, in my opinion, should have been translated into Arabic years ago. It has occurred to me that my being a woman may have had something to do with the delay. You really do never know.

Q: In your opinion, how can women in the Middle East, and particularly in Palestine, make their voices – literary and otherwise – heard?

A: The answer I can offer is, simply: they will have to persist in their excellence. It is a step-by-step process. Women must first produce incredible work. They must continue to push the envelope in their writing. Good writing can only be ignored for so long. Excellent writing really cannot be ignored at all, especially not in today’s day and age when women have technological access that can help them “get their work out there”, as my editor used to say.

They must next believe in, and insist on, the excellence of their work. It is easy to be put off; it is easy to feel daunted, dejected or uninspired. But emotions such as these are really the cowards’ way out. Women must go on writing and confronting the prejudices against them. They can even do both at once! Women can confront those prejudices through their writing. But really, they truly must agitate, argue and make a clamor. And this is something we must all learn- as women, as Palestinians, as writers: we cannot be self-conscious in saying what we are compelled to say. We each have a valid point of view; we have every right to make it heard, even if we must shout it from the rooftops.

Q: Some women would argue that they do not write because an audience does not exist for their work.

A: I used to believe that I needed an audience of the “other” in order to feel as though I had achieved my goal. That in my lectures, in my book readings and signings, I needed to convert people to the Palestinian cause. Now, however, I do not wish to speak to the jaded, to the Zionist, to the uninterested. I’ve realized that I need to focus on the younger generation of activists who witness and protest Israel’s utter disregard for the basic human rights of Palestinians. I feel as though this educated, enthusiastic group could use some sort of direction – and I feel as though my generation has much to offer them. Mind you, this shift in my targeted audience has come about after years and years of activism on my part.

So, this question of, who will listen to me? is completely irrelevant and ultimately useless. It is also very sad. It is a way of giving into history and to power. A way of giving up before you have even begun and writing yourself off for fear that others will write you off.

Simply put, it is not a writer’s responsibility to choose who will read her work, or who will be affected by her words. It is up to her to tell her story. I would say to Palestinians, women and writers everywhere: write and leave behind your own truth; it will take care of itself.

The vote in the Council was 25 states for, 6 against with 11 abstentions. The recommendations of the Goldstone report will now make its way to the General Assembly where it will be discussed and voted on. If it passes, the report will continue on to the UN Security Council, where it would again have to be voted on to go any further. Israel had lobbied hard to prevent the report’s passage, as the bulk of its findings implicate Israel for conducting alleged war crimes.

UPDATE

A copy of the Human Rights Council resolution can be read here

A copy of the Goldstone Report can be read here

The motion was passed at the 2009 annual Trades Union Congress (TUC) held in Liverpool after being submitted by the Fire Brigades’ Union. The TUC is a coalition of 60 different unions representing the vast majority of organized British workers.

The congress voted to condemn “Israeli military aggression and end the blockade on Gaza” and calls for an end on all arms trade with Israel, the imposition of a ban on the importing of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and to support moves to suspend the E.U.-Israel Association Agreement.

It also calls for the TUC’s main leadership body, the General Council, to affiliate with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), to push for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel. The PSC is a major Palestinian solidarity organization in the U.K. that has worked with British trade unionists in different capacities to advance their work on Palestinian-related causes.

The motion is one of the most significant victories to date for the global movement to promote boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel – a movement whose roots stem from a 2005 call for such measures by wide swathes of Palestinian civil society organizations and actors.

I interviewed PSC’s General Secretary, Betty Hunter, to learn more about the organization’s work to get the motion passed and its significance.

The Boycott Movement’s “Big Step Forward”

Interview with Betty Hunter, General Secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)

Can you speak a little about how this vote came about?

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has been working with the trade union movement for some years. We won affiliations from the major trade unions to us. Over the years we’ve spent time working with them on bringing people over to Palestine to meet Palestinian workers and obviously Palestinian people, and to see what the reality of occupation is.

They have taken positions of course in support of Palestinian rights, but we’ve worked on convincing them that there is a need for practical action to be taken. They are very concerned obviously, and they have I think, put in money, to help projects [on the ground in Palestine]. But also we wanted them to actually get active here [in the U.K.] in helping to put pressure on, since our government simply does nothing about all the international humanitarian law that exists that should mean that Israel’s war crimes and Israel’s oppression should end.

So it’s taken some time to win them, but we have won unions over individually to a policy of boycott in some cases, mainly on consumer boycott and disinvestment, and that’s a big start. But this particular event is the Congress – the meeting of all of the union movement, and in a sense it represents the main stream of the British labor movement in Britain. So it’s a big step forward.

What about the motion’s impact?  What effect would these 6.5 million workers potentially have?

It is significant. Obviously we believe that our government is complicit. It’s done nothing. It did very little, even about the massacres in Gaza, and it’s certainly done nothing as far as we can see about the increase in settlement building and so on. They keep telling us of course that they are having talks with Israel. But talks with Israel have been going on for 60 years, and have resulted in no progress, but in fact increased oppression. So our government needs to feel the fact that the British public are against what their policy is, and I think that’s the significance of today’s vote. Because the Labor government does have close links with the trade union movement.

I haven’t got direct evidence, but we believe that the British government has been putting pressure on the trade union movement to not take this decision. But that’s what makes it so significant: that despite pressure – I mean the BBC has twice this week in the morning had people speaking on the main news program on the radio, against this resolution without having anybody speaking about it who supports the resolution. That’s pressure in our opinion. So we believe there has been a lot of pressure on, and so it just shows how strong the trade union leadership now believes that they have to do something to help the Palestinians’ situation.

Does this vote mean that 6.5 million British workers will no longer handle, for example, Israeli settlement products?

No I can’t promise that. Not immediately. What it means is that we can now campaign with more authority with workers. We haven’t called on workers not to handle goods, because our laws – our anti-trade union laws – in this country, are much stronger than they were during the period of our campaign against apartheid in South Africa. So we haven’t called for that because that would have resulted in I think a stalemate. What we have asked for is to encourage the actual trade unionists as individuals to boycott Israeli goods especially the agricultural products that have been produced in the illegal settlements. We believe that is a good way to start the ball rolling so that this becomes really a mass campaign where everybody in Britain will start to boycott Israeli goods. That’s I think the significance of it. Of course this resolution calls for an end to all arms trading with Israel. And it calls for the General Council, which is this very important trade union body, to pressure the government to do that, and to pressure the government to support the suspension of the E.U.-Israel trade association agreement. So there is quite a lot involved in the resolution.

What were the vote totals?

It was almost overwhelming.

What are the next steps of the campaign?

The next steps for us at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is to make contacts with all our affiliated trade unions, go and talk with them, discuss with them how they will get this message out to their members because that’s what we really need to do. The 6.5 million workers obviously don’t all necessarily agree with this yet. Most of them will. We’ve got to get them actually convinced. So we will be talking with the trade unions individually about how they can actually take up the issues in this resolution. We will also ask for a meeting with the Trade Union Congress General Council, which is this , if you like, ‘supreme body’ of the trade unions in this country, and which has definitely got significant opportunity to discuss with the government that we as a solidarity campaign do not have. We will go and talk with them about how we can take this forward too.

“Green Shoots in Palestine” parts one and two, shed light on transformations in the West Bank that apparently buck the miserable trends that characterize Palestine and the Arab world at large – from poverty and underdevelopment, to illiteracy and authoritarianism.

Instead Friedman sees some “good cheer” coming from the West Bank – security, fiscal transparency, and solid economic growth – trends he encourages the U.S. to “nurture”, presumably to allow these “shoots” to mature and bear more fruit.

At least one of the articles topped the “most emailed” list on the N.Y. Times website – an accomplishment considering it is the 28^th most read webpage in America. It is also a testament of how Western editors are oblivious to how wrong and hypocritical some of the things Friedman says actually are.

Friedman is not alone in promoting recent developments in the West Bank. U.S., E.U. and even some Israeli politicians have showered praise on these developments as well. Friedman’s paeans are thus consistent with his traditional grandstanding for these government’s foreign policies – from support for the U.S.-led war and occupation of Iraq, to the promotion of neo-liberalism as the panacea to world problems.

In order to expose Friedman’s arguments, it’s necessary to first provide an overview of them. Taken at face value, they may appear to some as perfectly sound. But, it is the context that Freidman fails to provide, which is so damaging and deceptive.

Friedman’s Take

Friedman begins by describing the grim findings of the 2009 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) – a UN-funded study outlining the most significant factors holding back the Arab world from achieving its developmental potential.

The report found that the great majority of Arab citizens today lack “human security – the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority.”

The report accounts that human security in the Arab world is undermined through a wide series of malaises, ranging from “environmental degradation” to “population explosion” (395 million by 2015); and from “high unemployment” (an average of 14.4 percent, compared with 6.3 percent for the rest of the world) to “autocratic and unrepresentative Arab governments.”

If this seems predictable and depressing enough, don’t despair. Friedman has found “the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever”, a phenomena he calls “Fayyadism.”

Fayyadism takes its name from Salam Fayyad, the current Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister in the West Bank, who also happens to have been a former economist at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). But it’s not just Fayyad’s resume that excites Friedman:

“Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.”

For Friedman, Fayyadist strategy is based on the notion that “the more we build our state with quality institutions – finance, police, social services – the sooner we will secure our right to independence.” This he sees as “a challenge to ‘Arafatism,’ which focused on Palestinian rights first, state institutions later, if ever, and produced neither.”

To buttress his argument, Friedman notes that 1,200 new companies registered for licenses in the West Bank in 2008, and an additional 900 have registered in the first six months of 2009. He also references IMF predictions that the West Bank economy should grow by seven percent this year.

Friedman’s second article highlights a crucial aspect behind Fayyad’s success – the deployment of four battalions of new Palestinian National Security Forces trained in Jordan under U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, and paid for by the U.S. The injection of  “improved Palestinian policing”, has in turn spurred “an economic-security dynamic” that has the potential “to give the post-Yasir Arafat Palestinians another chance to build the sort of self-governing authority, army and economy that are prerequisites for securing their own independent state.”

According to Friedman, the combination of “improved security” and the relaxing of Israeli restrictions on movement, have brought about accelerated economic activity that make Ramallah and Nablus, little boom towns.

Though Friedman acknowledges that “men and women do not live by shoe sales alone” and that the Palestinian leadership must “eventually [be] given political authority”, he believes the Palestinians in the West Bank are on the right track. He concludes by arguing:

“America must nurture this virtuous cycle: more money to train credible Palestinian troops, more encouragement for Israel’s risk-taking in eliminating checkpoints, more Palestinian economic growth and quicker negotiations on the contours of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Hamas and Gaza can join later. Don’t wait for them. If we build it, they will come.”

The Myth of Fayyadism

I sometime wish that political realities in Palestine would follow the plot of Hollywood movies too. But everyone knows they don’t, and the reality Friedman portrays is actually a fiction that should fool no one, especially his American readers who actually foot the bill in terms of how billions of their tax-payer dollars are spent.

In that regard, “Fayyadism” truly is a “field of dreams” that deserves to be mowed.

Let’s begin with Fayyad himself. The man is hardly the most popular figure in Palestine. His Third Way party received less than 2.5 percent of the vote in the January 2006 election. Hamas won that election, but it’s not Hamas that is governing the West Bank. Fayyad was empowered to be Prime Minister by a presidential decree, without the consent of the Hamas-controlled Legislative Council. PA president Mahmoud Abbas refused to hand over genuine control to Hamas after it won elections, and worked to subvert its power through a CIA-sponsored coup attempt. The coup went miserably wrong however, and once Hamas’ hand was forced to block it, expelling the military junta leading it from Gaza, Abu Mazen tapped Fayyad to run the West Bank as prime minister, ousting the democratically elected Ismail Haniyeh. Israel did its fair share to help Abu Mazen dethrone Hamas after the election in the West Bank by arresting 34 of 47 elected representatives to parliament. (11 were already in Israeli prisons at the time of their election.)

Friedman’s failure to mention the nature of Fayyad’s tenure makes him an apologist to these undemocratic trends in Palestinian politics. It also makes him a hypocrite for pointing to “authoritarianism” as an ailment of the Arab world.

But authoritarianism in the West Bank is not limited to critiques of Fayyad tenure as Prime Minister. It actually goes far deeper encompassing a wide array of political and civil rights.

The PA in the West Bank now holds at least 750 political prisoners in its jails and at least four prisoners have died in interrogation in the past year. Friedman would do well to take a look at the bruised purple thighs of Haithem Amr, who died while being incarcerated in a PA jail in Hebron last June, allegedly under torture. Amr was allegedly a Hamas member. But is this the way Friedman promotes dealing with the political opposition? Actually, it’s Fateh that should rightly be called the opposition, because it lost the election. This is not to white-wash Hamas’ crimes when it comes to political detention, but those of the PA should not be excused either, especially when they are backed by the West.

Political arrest and torture are not however limited to Hamas activists. Ask Sari Sammouri, an independent journalist and blogger from Jenin who was arrested for three weeks without charge for writing a series of critical articles about Fayyad and Fateh.

PA censorship and intimidation of journalists even went so far as Fayyad ordering the shutting of Al Jazeera satellite station in the West Bank, after senior Fateh member Farouk el Qaddoumi released a document accusing Abu Mazen of complicity in the assassination of former PA president Yasser Arafat.

Imagine Obama ordering the shutting down of the New York Times for reporting on an embarrassing issue such as torture memos or the powers of Homeland Security? When Friedman sings Fayyad’s praises, he is encouraging policies that curtail freedom of the press, even taking sides in intra-Fateh political disputes.

Then there is the issue of the four battalions trained by the U.S. in Jordan. Why doesn’t Friedman inquire as to why these forces are being trained in Jordan? And in what precisely are they being trained to do? Lt. General Keith Dayton has answers:

Now, you might ask, why Jordan? The answer is pretty simple. The Palestinians wanted to train in the region, but they wanted to be away from clan, family, and political influences. The Israelis trust the Jordanians, and the Jordanians were anxious to help. Our equipping is all non-lethal and it is fully coordinated with both the Palestinians [the West Bank PA] and the Israelis. Make sure you understand that. We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the state of Israel and they agree to it.

Dayton humbly pats his team on the shoulder, by noting the glee with which Israeli occupation army officials look to their work:

[..] [W]hat we have created are new men. [...] [U]pon the return of these new men of Palestine [from training in Jordan], they have shown motivation, discipline and professionalism, and they have made such a difference-and I am not making this up-that senior IDF commanders ask me frequently, ‘How many more of these new Palestinians can you generate, and how quickly, because they are our way to leave the West Bank.’

In an earlier era, honest journalists would characterize the training of a military force who will work in another ‘state’ (in this case the West Bank), away from the concerned eyes of its locals, as akin to milita training. Isn’t this similar to what the U.S. was covertly doing when it was training Contras in Hondouras, as a means to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? But in Friedman’s Middle East, this is something overt, necessary and worthy of encouragement.

The “security” dimensions to Friedman’s accolades of Fayyad are part of the overwhelming Western aversion to Hamas. But it is crucial to stress here that it is actually Palestinian democracy that is at stake here, and democracy as a whole in the region. This is precisely the Western double standard that contributes to the rise of movements like Hamas in the first place. Repression of an Islamist party is somehow deemed preferable to respecting the democratic process overall, even though the West bases its moral legitimacy on its very promotion of democracy as what distinguishes “us” from “them.

An Economic Boom?

Then there is Fayyadism’s supposed fiscal and administrative accomplishments – in Friedman’s words, Fayyad’s ability to “[deliver] transparent, accountable administration and services.” But this too is malarky. There has not been one trial of any big fish Palestinian figures involved in the widespread corruption witnessed throughout the Oslo era.

Moreover, Friedman ignores the work of the Palestinian organization Aman, which strives to fight corruption and foster genuine accountability. Its 2008 annual report – covering a period in which Fayyad was entirely in power – sites a public opinion poll the organization carried out that shows that 55.8 percent of respondents believe corruption is on the rise, while only 19 percent believe the opposite.

Corruption in the West Bank starts at the very top. Last April, Reuters ran a story about how companies owned by Abu Mazen’s two sons, Tarek and Yasser, won millions of dollars worth of contracts from USAID for construction projects throughout the West Bank. Correct me if I’m wrong, but not even Dick Cheney sent his daughter to run Haliburton.

The reality is, the coterie of financial elites who run the West Bank and are promoted by Fayyadism, treat the West Bank as though it is their personal captive market. This is the reason why every day in local newspapers, there are paid advertisements from fiscal groups and companies thanking Fayyad for the favorable treats he dishes out to their financial capital and investments.

And what about all that astonishing economic growth Friedman refers to in his article? The reality is, after the Hamas victory, and especially after the movement kicked out the Fateh junta from Gaza, Western and Arab governments have poured billions of dollars into the West Bank in a desperate effort to prevent Hamas from rising to power there. In the mean time, not a penny has entered the Gaza Strip to help it rebuild after the enormous devastation Israel deliberately inflicted against it during its winter military assault.

If billions of dollars was suddenly pumped into any government’s hands – remember there are only 2.46 million people in the West Bank – you would no doubt see impressive growth figures that inevitably trickle down in some form or another to the wider population. Friedman would do better to investigate who precisely is filing for these business licenses and what their connections are, if any, to Abu Mazen’s PA. I’m guessing these business licenses are not being dolled out to people who voted for Hamas, but I could be crazy.

The real point here is that it is Western governments and Israel who control all the spikets and levers of power to make one region blossom in growth (the West Bank) and make another wither on the vine (the Gaza Strip). While the PA in the West Bank has a new fleet of fancy vehicles for its security services and VIPs, it is the donkey and cart that has become the cutting-edge means of transportation for people in Gaza. One cannot be separated from the other as manifestations of the same overriding policy, though Freidman has no problem in doing just that.

The irony here is that Friedman’s arguments even ignore the warnings of Israeli commentators who warn not to be fooled by the Fayyad bubble. Veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar notes:

Without the assistance, though, of the European and American taxpayer, who are paying the salaries of the Palestinian Authority’s over 100,000 policemen and officials, the economy of the West Bank would long since have collapsed along with the PA.’

Israeli journalist Amira Hass goes a step further:

‘[T]he prosperity in Ramallah and Nablus is misleading, just as it was misleading between 1996 and 2000, when the Israeli media and the Oslo spin doctors were impressed by all the coffee shops and high-tech companies. Today, as back then, the people so impressed are visitors-for-a-moment who engage in occupation denial.

Make no mistake: The vibrant life reflects the desire and capability of leading a normal life. Yet even Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his close entourage – who need plaudits to justify the foreign donations and privileges they receive from Israel – know that this is just a thin veil. A favor here and a gesture there will not prevent the next popular uprising, nor will they change this insane state of affairs as dictated by Israel. Only a sharp reversal in its policy will, something it refuses to undertake.

Ignoring Western Regional Policies and Israel

One final, yet important Friedman elision relates to the UN report (the AHDR), which he quotes as the basis of his argument, and that Fayyadism is supposedly the refreshing remedy to.

Friedman ignores the fact that the ADHR is considered controversial throughout the Arab world because of how higher-ups in the UN interfered with its production, particularly when it came to its addressing of Israeli and Western policies in the region. AHDR’s main researcher, Dr. Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, has publicly washed his hands of the final product in protest of what he called “UN staff interferences and alterations.”

“Changing the order of the chapters and moving the one on occupation, military intervention, and human insecurity from second to ninth, to follow environmental threats, marginalizes the dangers of occupation,” said Sayyed.

Another of the report’s authors, Samah Idriss, critiqued the report’s approach to Israel, which neglects “Israeli racial discrimination, displacing Palestinian refugees, the Israeli occupation of Shebaa farms, Ghajar village and Kfarshouba and the Golan, as well as imprisoning Arabs and refusing to discuss any reparations.”

The report even names Iraqi and Palestinian resistance movements “militias,” but when talking about the American occupation uses ambiguous terms such as “policies of foreign forces.”

Ignoring the West’s hands in the region’s problems, while not even bothering to mention internal Arab debates about their own well-being, has been par for Friedman’s course for years.

All this is not to apologize or justify the reactionary, authoritarian policies of Arab dictatorships. But most of these are supported by the U.S. as well. Even Barak Obama, chose to deliver his address to the Muslim and Arab world from Cairo, the seat of the police state of Husni Mubarak – a man who also wins elections by 99 percent of the vote, and is well on his way to preparing his son, Jamal, as his successor. Leadership in the Arab world still remains in the hands of de facto dynasties, whether its Kings and Emirs (in Jordan, Morocco and the Gulf) or “elected presidents” (Egypt, Syria and apparently Libya as well.)

Western support for Arab dictatorships is nothing new, and Thomas Friedman is only adding Salam Fayyad’s name to the list. True, Fayyad is no Saddam Hussein, (who incidentally was supported by the U.S., at the beginning of his presidency). But what matters here is the principle, because it’s the principles that Fayyad supposedly represents and brings to the equation that makes him such an exciting new phenomenon to Friedman in the first place.

Though this is certainly not the first time Thomas Friedman has said something foolish, what distinguishes this foot in his mouth from the others, is that virtually all the criticisms Friedman directs at Arab politics are applicable to Fayyad in their own particular way. Indeed Fayyad’s image in the West has remained conspicuously clean for too long, and its long past due that conscientious voices problematize this new/old approach to governance.

So What Were those Green Shoots?

In that regard the “green shoots” Friedman sees popping up throughout the West Bank are not positive new developments, but old-school carrots and sticks, that repeat the miserable cycle of underdevelopment and authoritarianism that so characterize the region.

His misidentification of these “shoots” makes me wonder what Friedman actually did see during his trip to the West Bank. Could these “green shoots” have been the first buds of a Hamas revival? Green after all is Hamas’ favorite color, and the environment created under Abbas-Fayyad rule, combined with Israel’s ongoing colonialism and intransigence, will continue to provide fertile ground for the emergence of a political opposition – Hamas or otherwise – even if it is repressed and unable to take power.

Another scenario could be that Friedman’s green shoots were actually marijuana sprouts, and part of the West Bank’s rising drug problem that has blossomed under the rubble of its people’s defeated hopes and crushed dreams.

In either case, Friedman, the smarmy orientalist extraordinaire, needs to be retired as a political commentator as a relic of a by-gone era. The new social and political forces that brought Obama to power and who demand genuine social and political reform, both domestic and international, and in line with principles of justice, human rights and dignity, deserve better, as do the people of Palestine and the region at large.

Facing declining street popularity and internal leadership feuds, the historic Palestinian nationalist party, Fateh, finally convened its Sixth Conference in the movement’s 45-year history. Beginning on August 4, 2009 – fifteen years after it was initially supposed to take place – the conference finally commenced a fortnight later with the disclosure of voting results to the 128-seat Revolutionary Council. “Better late than never,” said one resident of the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem where the conference was held. “No comment,” said another.

The conference was a spectacle on many levels: 2300 delegates with their accompanying entourages crammed Bethlehem, many in a fleet of fancy cars with flashing lights and hidden sirens. Virtually all the city’s water was directed to various hotels where delegates stayed, resulting in massive water shortages throughout the rest of the city. There was an intriguing gradation between Fateh delegates who got to stay in the five-star suites, versus those for whom the two-star rooms sufficed. 2500 Palestinian Authority robocops were bussed in, quite literally stationed at every 50 meters of Bethlehem’s streets. Only one incident of gunfire between different security services was reported (Intelligence versus Presidential Guard.) Not to be left out, the Israeli Air Force made a point of conducting aerial maneuvers over Bethlehem skies throughout the duration of the conference, reminding everyone of their presence.

Indeed there was much to be cynical about by the time the conference finally ended. That said, what did take place requires assessment because it has broad implications on the trajectory of Fateh and the Palestinian national movement overall, particularly regarding Fateh’s main political rival Hamas, as well as towards Israel and the “peace process” in general.

Nonetheless, fairly assessing the conference is complicated because it is not entirely clear how Fateh will internalize the changes it just went through. While the organization did issue a new political document, in addition to 18 different position papers outlining the movement’s stance on everything from financial questions to armed resistance, the party has never been about political theories or ink on paper. What drives Fateh is personality, power, cunningness and opportunism. In this regard, election results for Fateh’s two main decision making bodies (the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council) are the best indicators of where Fateh stands today, as they compose the party’s main power brokers who were able to elbow their way into its commanding positions. When combined with the various statements, declarations and interviews provided by delegates and commentators in the wake of the conference, a picture emerges that allows us to draw the following conclusions:

Abu Mazen Rules the Roost
From the moment it was announced that there would be no contender to Abu Mazen’s leadership over the party, certain conclusions became immediately apparent.

The political trajectory of Fateh and its overall strategy is not about to change. A negotiated solution with Israel, enforced through international pressure, particularly from the U.S. and E.U., remains the party line. Abu Mazen has no serious political contender who challenges this overall strategic orientation. There also appears to be no serious contention over his tactics, which can be summed up as follows: beseech Western and Arab governments to apply political pressure against Israel to settle; avoid providing Israel with excuses that allow it to escape negotiations or attack the Palestinian project; in the mean time, sit tight, invest and develop in the areas the PA controls by giving free reign to Palestinian and international capital. Eventually, the demographic game and regional imbalances will force the U.S. to intervene and bring Israel to the table for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Despite much hoopla preceding the conference that the party was on the verge of fragmentation, nothing of the sort has come about, at least for now. In fact Abu Mazen appears to have strengthened his position by taking a page from the ruling style of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. That meaning, though the new 21-person Central Committee indeed features 14 fresh faces (and potentially 17, when three more political appointments to the Committee are finally handpicked by Abu Mazen), it nonetheless craftily balances the competing interests, personalities and powers that compose Fateh. Thus, relics of the ‘old guard’ (Salim Za’noun, Abu Maher Ghneim, Tayyeb Abdel Rahim), are balanced by a nationalist current (Marwan Barghouti, Mahmoud Aloul, Mohammed al Madani), a diplomatic current (Saeb Erekat, Nabil Sha’th, Nasser al Qidwa), a collaborationist/ security current (Toufic Tirawi, Mohammed Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub, Hussein el Sheikh) and a financial current (Mohammed Shtayya.)

This is quintessential Arafatism: forcing political rivals to compete amongst themselves horizontally for influence and power in order to access Abu Mazen vertically. In the end, Abu Mazen holds all the strings – particularly the purse strings, through his Prime Minister designate Salam Fayyad, who is not even from Fateh and is somewhat immune to its pressures. Abu Mazen sits atop them all, tightening or loosening each string pending the needs of the political circumstance.

Actual divisions within the party will have to wait for the final passing of the ‘old guard’, though Abu Mazen has even delayed these fights by tapping Abu Maher Ghneim as his successor. The latter is an old time Fateh stalwart who actually opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords and refused to return to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) – that is, until Abu Mazen apparently offered him succession in exchange for return. It is likely that Abu Mazen also wanted to isolate any remaining, powerful diasporic Fateh elements like Farouk al Qaddoumi, whose pre-conference accusations that he (Abu Mazen) and Mohammed Dahlan were complicit in Arafat’s death, were highly embarrassing. In the end, Ghneim won the highest votes in the Central Committee (1338) followed by the two leaders of the nationalist stream – former Nablus Mayor Mahmoud Aloul (1112) and imprisoned Fateh Secretary General for the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti (1063). Abu Maher’s older age makes him a back-stop candidate for party head after Abu Mazen, before the competing personalities within the younger generation of Fateh leaders fight amongst themselves for control of the party when its their turn to take over.

A Fair Election?
But how was Abu Mazen able to strengthen his position and engineer such an advantageous position in a democratic election? There are certainly those within Fateh who believe the vote was rigged. After loosing his seat in the Central Committee, former Palestinian Prime Minister and top negotiator Ahmed Qrei’ (Abu Ala) called the election’s impartiality “worse than Iran.” There were also voting discrepancies, including a unilateral, final moment decision made by Abu Mazen that delegates would have ten ballot boxes to vote in, instead of one. A subsequent recount of one ballot box, resulted in the surprise victory of Tayyeb Abdel Rahim, one of the most deplorable and corrupt of Fateh’s older generation, who is also virulently anti-Hamas.

But the real way in which Abu Mazen engineered his victory was through the delegate system overall, which controlled who was entitled to vote in the first place.

To begin with, the choice of the West Bank as the setting for the elections essentially cut off participation from those within the party who fear Israeli arrest, or refuse to return because they principally refuse to do so when the area is still under Israeli occupation. These elements, exemplified by Qaddoumi, oppose the Oslo Accords and all it has meant in terms of creating a Palestinian Authority with semi-autonomy in the OPT, while negotiating with Israel as the occupying power.

But deeper than that, the nature of Fateh actually facilitated Abu Mazen’s commandeering hand.  Fateh is a non-ideological, pragmatist and opportunistic party. That meaning, there is no real criteria for membership or even leadership. You just need to exert power, or perceived power, within the party, or vis-à-vis Israel – in both cases, usually through money, guns or a street following.

No more than 30 percent of conference delegates were elected Fateh members from their respective geographical districts. This left 70 percent of delegates appointed by virtue of their power as perceived amongst a handful of top party officials, led by Abu Mazen. Though the conference was initially supposed to have only 600 delegates, the final 2300 delegates – more than three times the original number – were able to attend because they raised complaints and lobbied for inclusion with higher-ups in the party. If the threat of these members’ exclusion could be seen as potentially damaging to the unity of Fateh or the legitimacy of the conference overall, they were allotted delegate status and voting rights by Abu Mazen and the small crew with the power to bestow accreditation.

What appears to have happened is that Abu Mazen allowed for the swelling of the ranks of delegates amongst the main powerful currents within Fateh, but allowing for them to rise with relative evenness. This prevented any one stream from overpowering the other, and gave the upper hand to those who already have the established networks of power and influence. For those unable to make it into the major leagues of the Central Committee, there was always the junior league of the Revolutionary Council, to assuage hurt egos.

Prospects within the National Movement
Now that membership in both bodies has been determined, it is also insightful to look at how their compositions are likely to affect the trajectory of the party overall within Palestinian politics, and not just in Fateh.

Without question, Abu Mazen’s commanding position makes him the final decider on all things Fateh, and PA in the West Bank. This means that Abu Mazen’s hand will continue to orient the movement’s political trajectory towards internal and national affairs.

No Reconciliation with Hamas
It is difficult to believe that after Abu Mazen’s hand has been strengthened through elections, he would feel compelled to reconcile with Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip. To begin with, Abu Mazen appears content with the tsunami of cash flowing into PA West Bank coffers from Western and Arab governments petrified by the idea of a potential West Bank take-over by Hamas. Politically, Abu Mazen thinks the funds can sufficiently buoy his lot at Hamas’ expense, as the latter suffocates in the Gaza Strip, with its population as collateral damage.

He is also not interested in meeting any of Hamas’ political demands (decision making power in the PA and PLO, control over security services, ministries, finances etc.) because he sees the movement as antithetical to his strategic vision. Hamas is political leprosy as far as Abu Mazen is concerned.  Though national reconciliation is crucial for any real political progress to take place, the reality is Abu Mazen’s eggs are in a totally different basket. National reconciliation would turn the clock back twenty years, taking the international spot light away from Israel’s de facto rejectionist stance towards Palestinian national rights and settlement construction, and reflecting it back on the Palestinians, questioning their “recognition of Israel”, and their “engagement in terrorism.” As far as Abu Mazen is concerned, the national movement has already paid the price of these bills through the Oslo Accords, and it is not about to pay them again, just to let a non-PLO actor (Hamas) ‘infiltrate’ the movement, and potentially take it away from their grip.

In fact, keeping Hamas at bay was more important to Abu Mazen than having a more democratic and participatory Fateh conference. The one condition Hamas set for allowing Fateh members to leave Gaza to attend the West Bank conference – the release of over 900 Hamas operatives and affiliates from West Bank PA jails – was cynically rejected by Abu Mazen outright. Hamas stuck to its position arguing that its political prisoners were no less important than 400 Fateh delegates from Gaza who wanted to participate in their party conference.

In the end, Fateh delegates in the Gaza Strip participated in the elections by phoning in their votes, though there was plenty of grumbling by this constituency regarding their sideline status. 60 odd Fateh delegates in the Gaza Strip claimed they weren’t even called by conference organizers to vote – a commentary on how important Abu Mazen considered their participation.

Fateh Can Forget Gaza
This issue sheds light on another likely outcome of the conference: forget Fateh in the Gaza Strip, at least for the foreseeable future. Gaza representation in the Central Committee is negligible. Nabil Sha’th, Nasser el Qidwa, and Mohammed Dahlan are the only representatives on the Central Committee who derive from Gaza. The first two can hardly claim wide popular support there as they have spent most of their careers overseas as PLO representatives, or in the West Bank since the establishment of the PA. Dahlan on the other hand is so sullied in Gaza because of his wheeling and dealing with the CIA-sponsored coup attempt against Hamas in June 2007, that he would likely get shot if he tried to return any time soon.

What remains of Fateh in the Gaza Strip appears to be weak and fragmented, and is unlikely to pose a serious challenge to Hamas in the near future. The latter has made great strides in consolidating its own position in the Strip since it kicked out Dahlan’s Fateh posse back in June 2007. It first clipped the wings of Mumtaz Dughmush’s Army of Islam in the wake of the Alan Johnston affair. Dughmush was an ex-Fateh member who had established a small militia responsible for kidnapping BBC reporter Alan Johnston. But soon after Hamas took control, the movement quickly surrounded the Dughmush stronghold and forced it to release him.

Then came the shootout on the Hilles compound in August 2008. Ahmed Hilles was the most senior Fateh representative in Gaza at the time, and had remained in the Strip after Hamas took power there because he genuinely differed with Dahlan’s ‘clockwork orange’-like approach to governance. But at the end of July 2008, a bomb killed five Hamas members near the seaside, and the alleged perpetrators hid out in Hilles’ compound. Hamas promptly surrounded the place, and eventually killed or arrested those it held responsible for the bombing.

Most recently, Hamas decimated the marginal Islamist Salafist “Jund Ansar Allah” movement in Rafah – a small sect with delusional ambitions of establishing an Islamic emirate in the Gaza Strip, and that had openly challenged Hamas’ governance. (Ironically, the group’s leader, Sheikh Abdul-Latif Abu Mousa, was a former preacher in a PA-run mosque). This series of events has collectively consolidated Hamas’ rule throughout the Strip, making any potential contenders – Fateh or otherwise – seriously think twice before challenging it.

Forget the Diaspora Too
But the election results do not just make Gaza increasingly out of reach of Fateh’s influence. The Palestinian diaspora – where more than half the Palestinian people reside – are also largely absent from Central Committee representation. Sultan Abu Einein, a prominent Fateh leader from Lebanon, is the only Fateh representative who derives and still lives in a constituency based outside of the OPT. The heightened status and representation of West Bankers on the Central Committee is sure to weaken the party’s membership and following outside of Palestine. This continues the long decline in the role Palestinian exiles plays in Palestinian politics since the Oslo Accords. It is also a policy Abu Mazen has carried over from Arafat, a major part of which has been the deliberate sidelining of the PLO and its institutions in decision making. Instead of building or even maintaining the PLO as the national liberation movement of the Palestinian people wherever they reside, Abu Mazen appears intent to continue focusing his energy and resources in building the statist-inclined Palestinian Authority, and most specifically in the West Bank.

Additional Considerations
A few other points are worth noting before wrapping up.

The Fateh conference appears not to have solved the structural overlap between Fateh and the Palestinian Authority. Though the issue was addressed at the conference, and motions were passed to prevent conflicts of interest between the two, when it comes to actual politics on the ground, the election results make it no clearer where Fateh ends and the PA begins. This structural overlap played a crucial role in sullying Fateh’s image in the OPT, as it contributed to the movement’s political and financial corruption. Most members of the Fateh Central Committee have been PA officials in some fashion or another in the past, and that tendency seems likely to continue.

How likely is it for example, that prominent PA spokesmen like Saeb Erekat and Nabil Sha’th will now only speak on behalf of Fateh? Will Mohammed Shtayeh, the former head of PECDAR – one of the main PA investment arms – now exclusively conduct his business as a member of Fateh? Unlikely. This essentially means Fateh’s lot will continue to be determined by the overall lot of the PA in the West Bank, led by Abu Mazen. The track record of this overlap has not been positive for Fateh and the national movement overall, and the conference results only seem likely to duplicate that experience.

In that regard, though the short term results of the conference sure up Abu Mazen and bring a modicum of stability to Fateh, possibly even bolstering its credibility, particularly in the West Bank, the longer term fate of the party is still largely tied up with how it fairs regarding winning Palestinian national rights vis-à-vis Israel. Here, prospects don’t appear to be any more promising. Despite heightened pressure and critical attention towards Israel and the Netanyahu government, we have seen no serious indication that the U.S. and E.U. are willing to force Israel to comply with the red lines of the Palestinian national movement which Fateh declares as its party platform: a sovereign, decolonized Palestinian state on 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital, and the implementation of the right to return of Palestinian refugees. Without success on this larger front, any short-lived boost to Fateh’s lot after the conference will inevitably deflate. And it won’t be Fateh that will benefit from this failure, but Hamas. After all, there are limits to how many times you can put humpty-dumpty back together again, even with American super glue.

In the end, Fateh’s opportunistic, non-ideological approach to national liberation; its elite-oriented approach to politics while ignoring grassroots mobilization; the free reign it has given to local and international capital and the devastating class divisions this will only further deepen; its continuation of non-accountability for party and movement errors – all seem destined to duplicate in one form or another the same miserable experience of the Oslo years. Only this time, there will be no spectacle of a peace process, the local population is devastated from years of closure and Israeli repression, and the fragmentation in leadership of the national movement between the West Bank and Gaza leaves people with few places to turn. This is surely a recipe for implosion.

This is an image of a page from a French passport, whose owner recently went through the Allenby Bridge border crossing between Jordan and the Israeli occupied West Bank. It shows an Israeli-issued stamp that provides the passport owner with a three-month tourism visa. What makes this stamp unique however is that the Israeli border agents who issued it appear to have come up with a new criteria regarding the freedom of movement of its holder.

The presence of “Palestinian Authority only” on the stamp is what makes it unique.

Previous Israeli-issued tourism visas do not restrict the freedom of movement of tourists who are allowed passage into the country, and who originate from countries which Israel has diplomatic relations and reciprocal arrangements regarding travel. That meaning, as long as someone was allowed into the country, they were able to travel freely whether they chose to visit the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, or the Palestinian city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

“Palestinian Authority only” greatly restricts this freedom of movement, and thus undoes the former arrangement. It essentially precludes travel to areas of pre-1967 Israel, as well as to Israeli controlled areas in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Israel exercises full control over 59 percent of the West Bank – areas known as “Area C.”

It further exercises security control over an additional 24 percent of the West Bank (Area B) with the Palestinian Authority [PA] in control of civil affairs there.

The only area which the PA nominally controls in full, and which a holder of this stamp is thus presumably eligible to travel to, is Area A. The latter comprises the remaining 17 percent of the West Bank.

Area A however is not composed of one territorial unit, but is divided into thirteen non-contiguous areas.

Furthermore, the Israeli army routinely invades Area As, to arrest Palestinians, making a mockery of Palestinian control there.

The fragmentation of PA jurisdiction in the West Bank has invited comparisons to the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa. Bantustans were false states set up by the white apartheid regime as a means to enforce the segregationist nature of apartheid, controlling the primarily black population, while disenfranchising them particularly with regards to expropriating their land and resources.

In a recent speech, John Dugard, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, made the comparison directly. Dugard, who is South African and a professor of international law noted:

“Are there Bantustans in the West Bank? And I think the answer to this question is yes. We do see territorial fragmentation of the kind that the South African government promoted in terms of its Bantustan policy. We see, first of all, a very clear separation being made between the West Bank and Gaza. But within the West Bank itself, we see a separation to essentially three or more territories and some additional enclaves with a center, north and south. And it’s quite clear that the Israeli government would like to see the Palestinian Authority as a kind of Bantustan puppet regime.”

Israel’s travel restrictions to PA areas are somewhat contradictory. Visitors can seemingly travel to Area As but must do so by crossing Israeli controlled areas (Area C). This means that visitors have the right to hop between different Area A ‘islands’, but can’t be caught in between.

Moreover, the very restriction on travel is equivalent to a country issuing a visa to a specific area of its country, but not to the whole country. A parallel might be the U.S. issuing a visa only to majority-black Harlem in Manhattan, or the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Connecticut.

This happens to violate the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (also known as “Oslo II” or “Taba”) which states that “Tourists to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from countries having diplomatic relations with Israel, who have passed through an international crossing, will not be required to pass any additional entry control before entry into Israel.” (Annex 1, Article IX  “Movement Into, Within and Outside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” 2 (e))

As far as I am aware, this stamp has begun to be issued within the last month, and no Palestinian or international body, official or grassroots, has identified or spoken publicly of the phenomenon, whose scope is also not known.

The stamp has also been issued to at least one American citizen, as the below image taken from a U.S. passport attests.

In this case, the visitor was only issued a one-week visa to PA areas, affirming that Israel also has the power to determine not only the areas visitors go to, but also the time period they spend there.

Though it is not clear why Israel decided to issue this new kind of visa, certain things can be discerned by assessing Israel’s overall policies towards Palestinians, as well as towards those who seek to visit the areas in which they live.

Israel wishes to strictly regulate travel of visitors who come to the country, especially those curious to see the West Bank. Though it is likely to justify its regulation to PA areas only, under security pretexts, this doesn’t really stand up because in order to get to a PA area, you would need to travel through an Israeli controlled area. Even if this visa ensures that Israeli security cannot be breached in pre-1967 Israel, there is nothing preventing the breaching of security in Israeli controlled areas of the West Bank, including areas of Israeli settlements, and settlement by-pass roads, which Jewish settlers and the Israeli occupation army use.

A more likely justification can be found elsewhere. Israel is issuing a visa for a jurisdictional area (the “Palestinian Authority areas”), that the nominal jurisdictional power (the Palestinian Authority) does not control or issue itself. It would seem logical that the Palestinian Authority issues visas for its areas itself. But the PA does not have that power, and Israel is taking the initiative to do so on its behalf, but without PA consent.

The repercussions of this are multifold. “Palestinian Authority areas” become ‘hardened’ as a territorial and jurisdictional unit, when previously these areas were only intended to be temporary areas of jurisdiction, that would eventually form the basis of a future Palestinian state, to be negotiated between Israel and the PLO. Hence, without the need to negotiate the latter, and to gain agreement from the PA for the actual borders of its state-to-be, (and all that entails with regards to sovereignty), Israel is de facto transforming and elevating a pre-existent jurisdictional arrangement, into a de facto border between itself and the areas the Palestinian Authority “controls.”  In sum, Israel appears to be issuing a visa for a Bantustan-like state, that is yet to be declared officially, but which de facto is being created by such bureaucratic measures.

To many the news came as a surprise. “It’s like we voted right and got left,” said one resident of the Jewish only settlement, speaking to the Jerusalem Post. “Bibi said one thing and now he’s doing something else. If we had elections tomorrow, Likud would be out.”

Indeed, the ruling government coalition in Israel is considered amongst the most Right-wing in the country’s history. That’s actually saying a lot, given what previous Israeli governments have actually done: from the ethnic cleaning of Palestinians in the Nakba between 1947-1949, to the 2009 New Years assault upon Gaza, which killed 1400 people.

But then again, the classic Left-Right divide is skewed in Israel, and has never actually reflected the perceived binary between a liberal, social-democratic, anti-occupation “Left” on the one hand, versus a socially conservative, neo-liberal, pro-settlement/ expansionist “Right” on the other. But that’s another story for the time being.

So then, this Right-wing government – which includes the likes of a Foreign Minister, (Avigdor Lieberman) who himself is a settler, and who says outrageous things like offering to provide buses for the mass drowning of Palestinian political prisoners in the Dead Sea – this government is actually stopping the construction of some settlements?

Settlement construction is a critical question that most Palestinians see as zero-sum.

When negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians began in Madrid in the early 1990s, the head of the Palestinian delegation to the talks, Haidar Abdel-Shafi noted, “We consider settlements to be a central issue, and if there is no cessation of the settlement process, that practically means there is no peace process.”

Abdel Shafi’s position has been vindicated over time. Settlement construction never stopped throughout the “peace process”, and now West Bank settlers, including those in East Jerusalem, are more than double their numbers – standing at about half a million people.

This not only makes their removal more difficult, while preventing a Palestinian state in the West Bank from coming about. It actually lends credence to Palestinian fears that settlements are part of the colonial numbers game that Israel and the Zionist movement have been playing for the past hundred years. That meaning, just as before 1948 where Jewish settlements slowly built during the British mandate served as the base from which Zionist militias expelled Palestinians, Israel’s post-1967 settlements are part of a long term plan to ultimately push Palestinians out of the West Bank, fulfilling the Zionist movement’s vision of a Jewish state free of the indigenous Palestinian population.

Geoffrey Ahronson, the director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace has insightfully written about the history of settlement expansion, and the failure of the U.S. to force Israel to stop. This despite the fact that the State Departments’ own legal advisers knew that settlements were illegal as early as 1979, according to documents recently published in the Washington Post. That’s another way of saying that the U.S. has been complicit in supporting Israel’s threats and actions to Palestinian existence on their land since 1967.

How then does this jig with the recent settlement freeze, which everyone acknowledges was brought about by heavy U.S. pressure on Israel, exerted through Obama’s special envoy George Mitchell?

Too often, news like this causes people to miss the forest from the trees.

First its important to say that stopping 900 settlement units is not going to significantly change much as far as the settlement map is concerned.

Officially there are already 121 settlements throughout the West Bank, plus 12 main large settlements in East Jerusalem. There are also around 100 settlement “outposts” throughout the West Bank – settlements made by the settlers themselves, often by simply taking over a hilltop somewhere on private Palestinian land. Though these are technically “illegal” under Israeli law, the Israeli army just happens to provide their security and water.

Additionally, according to a March 2009 report by the Israeli organization Peace Now, the Israeli government is planning to build more than 73,300 new housing units in the West Bank – which if actualized would mean an 100-percent increase in the total number of Israeli settlers. So Bibi’s freeze only halts 1.2 percent of planned construction, to say nothing of the “unplanned” outposts.

With that said though, achieving a small symbolic settlement freeze has significance for other reasons. It reveals what’s really at play here – that it’s the U.S who really runs the show around here.

For all those who talk of the overwhelming power of Jews in the U.S. and the Israel lobby – go shove it. This is the best evidence that when the U.S. wants something from Israel, it can get it, and get it fast. Israel is the U.S. client state, not the other way around. There is no other explanation for why Netanyahu would commit to such a step, knowing the reverberations – particularly the ideological ones – for his coalition.

Why then does the U.S. want a freeze, and want it now?

It’s no secret that the Obama government wants to change course in the Middle East and break from his predecessor’s policies. But the reality is that Obama is only breaking from Bush’s tactics, and not the overall U.S. strategy towards Palestine/ Israel.

Bush basically allowed Israel a free hand to build settlements during his reign. Israel was also allowed to attack the Palestinian nationalist movement and leadership during the second Intifada, crushing both. The net sum did grave damage to the Fateh leadership of the Palestinian Authority, led today by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). The damage was so bad that Fateh lost the January 2006 elections to Hamas – an election that was supposed to grant him legitimacy in the post-Arafat era.

When Fateh lost the elections, it marked a turning point for U.S. policy.

Unlike Israel, which no longer found any utility in the continued existence of the PA after the failed Camp David Accords, the U.S. could not tolerate the final elimination of the Palestinian national leadership under Fateh. This would have been too destabilizing throughout the Middle East, particularly amongst the supposed “moderate Arab states” – which are in practice, U.S. sponsored dictatorships – with Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia being the key three.

The U.S. needed to keep the Palestinian leadership under Fateh alive, because if it didn’t, Hamas would simply replace it. This would encourage the people of the region and their variants of resistance / opposition movements, to reject their pitiful lot and look to create something new.

For this reason, the U.S. began to try and put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Its first rather clumsy attempt was to back a CIA-sponsored coup in Gaza through Fateh, to prevent Hamas from taking power. But the maneuver was aborted by Hamas, who sniffed it out in advance, and pushed Fateh figures involved in it, out of Gaza first.

Ever since, the U.S has shifted focus to the West Bank and worked determinately to prop up Fateh there, while simultaneously allowing for the continued strangulation of Hamas in Gaza.

U.S. aid is thus pouring into the West Bank in the form of money, opportunity and training on all levels of society. Just last week, Palestinian “Prime Minister” Salam Fayyad opened up two major trade fairs in Hebron and Nablus, the two largest and most important political cities in the West Bank. He also came to Bethlehem, and cut the ribbon on the new state-of-the-art Ma’an media center, also backed by U.S. cash. Fayyad deserves the quotation marks around his “Prime Ministership” because he only got the position through a presidential decree from Abu Mazen, while the elected prime minister is Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza.

Quietly and in the wings, U.S. envoy Mitchell has also made Israel lift travel restrictions on West Bankers. A handful of checkpoints have been lifted, and the Allenby Bridge – West Bankers’ only access to the outside world – is soon to be open around the clock – a remarkable contrast to how Gaza’s Rafah terminal was totally closed for 345 days in 2008 and partially closed the remaining twenty-one.

The idea is to bleed away the notion of resistance and militancy against the Israeli occupation, embodied somewhat symbolically in Hamas, and to palliate that feeling with some hard cash and development opportunities.

Through this, Palestinians in the West Bank can forget about Israel’s brutal crushing of the Intifada, their connection with the people of Gaza, and their own election results. They can also be made to accept the silent coup that has taken place in the West Bank in the past two years, where Abu Mazen has exploited Israel’s arrest of elected Hamas officials to institute his own ministerial and mayoral personnel on the ground. All this of course is backed up with a goon squad of freshly trained troops, also thanks to U.S. taxpayer money.

Of course, Bush II supported Israel’s attempted public execution of Hamas during Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza at the turn of the year. But Obama hasn’t said a peep about it since taking office either, and has also allowed for Israel to maintain its blockade of the Strip, which is basically starving and under-developing the population in medieval besiegement fashion.

That said, the final cherry on the top of this policy, is of course, the recent settlement freeze in Pisgat Zeev. And it should come as no surprise that the leak of the freeze comes right in time for Fateh’s Sixth conference on August 4, in Bethlehem.

Indeed Abu Mazen doesn’t just need to wean West Bankers off of their own democratic election results, which supported Hamas. He also needs to win back Fateh to the fold, because most of the party is demoralized, unenthused by its leadership, or is simply stuffing its pockets with Fayyad cash.

It remains to be seen if indeed the American plan will bear fruit or not. On more than one occasion, the U.S. has counted its chickens in Palestine before they have hatched, and gotten stuck along the way with egg on its face. The Fateh conference will be a first test of things to come. We’ll know then if Obama’s new tactics are working to keep old U.S. strategies in place.

The most significant political development currently taking place in the Palestinian political arena is not between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, or between Fateh and Hamas. It is the struggle within Fateh over the movement’s identity, history and political program.

August 4, 2009 will mark the first time Fateh holds a party conference in 20 years. The movement is set to assess the movement’s recent history, elect its leadership and vote on its political platform.

The last time Fateh held a conference in August 1989, political conditions were far more optimistic.

The first Intifada — a popular civil disobedience campaign against Israeli occupation forces who were in the heart of Palestinian cities and refugee camps — had swept across the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) for over a year. Images of rock-throwing children confronting armed Israeli troops generated international attention and support for the Palestinian cause. The Intifada provided a lifeline to the exiled Palestinian leadership hunkered down far away in Tunis since its expulsion from Lebanon in 1982.

In July 1988, Jordan abandoned its claims to represent the Palestinians in negotiations — a victory for the independence of the national cause, at the expense of the Jordanian monarchy, which had formerly clung to territorial and political ambitions over Palestine.

In November 1988, the PLO also declared an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, even if the Israeli occupation continued in force on the ground. The declaration was a symbolic expression of the will for Palestinian self-determination and statehood, and was a show of strength given that the number of countries which recognized the PLO and the state of Palestine, rivaled if not surpassed those which recognized Israel.

But today the atmosphere is far more reserved, if not depressing. In many ways, Fateh has been forced to hold its conference — its sixth since its founding in 1965 — because the national movement it has led for the last 40 years is in shambles. So is the party itself.

Fateh lost the January 2006 elections to Hamas because the movement’s political program embodied in the Oslo Accords — the “peace process” failed to yield Palestinian national rights — to independence, to the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, to release political prisoners, even to ending Israeli settlements whose populations doubled between 1993 and 2000. Fateh was also accused of corruption and nepotism, and Hamas offered a reformist alternative to Palestinian affairs, and a harder line regarding negotiations with Israel.

But Fateh’s woes didn’t stop there. After loosing the elections, its most corrupt elements attempted to organize a coup with CIA backing in Gaza, against Hamas. The former were trounced by the more popular and dynamic Hamas, and the coup’s backer’s had to flee under Israeli protection to the West Bank.

There are other outstanding questions the party needs to resolve. Damning allegations of corruption are rife within the party, including accusations that some party bigwigs sold Israel cement to build its enormous 724 kilometer  wall. Then there are questions over how Arafat died and whether anyone within the movement should be implicated in what many believe was an assassination. Thousands of Fateh prisoners also languish in Israeli prisons and feel abandoned by the leadership. Internal democracy in the movement has be stifled for so long that two generations of party leaders have never been able to exercise control over the party’s organs.

The task before Fateh is indeed daunting, and it is by no means certain that the movement, led by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) — the same leader in charge during many of Fateh’s worst moments — will be able to take the challenges head on.

The significance of the Fateh conference thus lies not only in what will come of Fateh, its leadership and its political trajectory, but what will be its implications on the movement’s relations with Hamas, and the national movement’s approach to Israel, and its Likud-led government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

To gain a sense for the dynamics going on in Fateh in the run up to the conference, I decided to translate a large excerpt from an article published in the Pan-Arab daily, Al Sharq al Awsat, which comes out of London, written by Bilal al Hassan. Hassan was a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and a former editor of the journal Shu’un Filasteeniya (Palestine Affairs), the seminal journal of the Palestinian national movement in the late 1960s up until the 1980s. He is also the brother of Hani al Hassan, a former close political adviser to Yasser Arafat, and a ranking member of Fateh. Bilal has been around long enough to understand the dynamics of Fateh, and he also has the contacts to be able to write with credibility on what is going on in the movement, as it prepares for its moment of truth with itself. His conclusions are not very optimistic I’m afraid. It seems that many of the ploys and power games used by Fateh throughout the years to manipulate and control other factions within the Palestinian national movement, have now been turned inward against Fateh, thereby setting the stage for the movements final demise.

Excerpts from “The Moment for the Curtain to Fall on the Unity of Fateh Has Arrived”
Bilal Al Hasan
Al Sharq al Awsat July 19, 2009
Unofficial translation by Toufic Haddad

Meetings held by the “Preparatory Committee for Fateh’s Sixth Conference” were taking place in a successive manner, and witnessed various differences and agreements revolving around three [main] issues: the place in which the conference would be held — either in areas beneath the Palestinian Authority [in the OPT] or in an Arab capital; the delegates to the conference — who are they? how many would there be? and the criteria for choosing them?; and finally, the documents to be presented at the conference, and which political tack they would take – one that confronted the Israeli occupation, or one that saw the end of this discourse, and instead emphasized the need to engage in building the [Palestinian] Authority.

As is always the case with Fateh, the Committee witnessed different currents and opinions [as to how to resolve these matters]. Until something strange happened, when Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the movement announced in an individual manner, the [Preparatory] Committee’s dissolution, which was headed by Mohammed Ghenim (Abu Maher), a member of Fateh’s Higher Committee. Mahmoud Abbas also announced in an individual manner, that he was calling upon a number of Fateh cadres located in the West Bank to an emergency meeting in the presidential compound. The meeting — the majority of whose attendees derived from one political stripe — took absolute and binding decisions regarding all three issues that had been debated in the dissolved “Preparatory Committee.”

It was decided that the conference would take place inside [i.e. in the OPT] and that the delegates would be open to 1200-1600 [members of Fateh], so as to give the opportunity to change and exchange [members]. As for the [conference's preparatory] documents [and their political line], discourse would head towards ending armed confrontation with the occupation. It [armed struggle] will remain mentioned in [the movement's] general principles, but will be removed from the operational program.

This is what happened in the face of the Preparatory Committee, and against it. A coup by all meanings of the term. A coup inside Fateh, led and implemented by the head of the government, that aims in the end at controlling it organizationally, intellectually, and politically, and with the support of a group that represents one stream inside Fateh with respect to its political coloration. One stream [as well] as far as its membership.

Everyone was aware that what took place in Ramallah was an actual introduction to the splitting of Fateh — a split between one current on the inside [in the OPT] that brings with it from outside those who resemble it [a reference to inviting diasporic members supportive of Abu Mazen to the conference in Bethlehem], and the exclusion of any other current that might be in opposition. All were also aware that matters would not be confined to the level of mere opinion and [political] approach but would also result in a leadership of the same coloration, within the Fateh Central Committee as well as within Fateh’s Revolutionary Assembly — the principle two bodies of the movement.

Some time passed on the decisions taken by Fateh president Mahmoud Abbas, and an atmosphere of silent protest overcame the movement, were it not for two leaflets published in the name of Fateh’s fighting cadre [its armed wing.] [The leaflets] failed to mention names, [but] announced their opposition to what took place, and accused those behind what happened with a host of matters.

Then Farouq al Qaddoumi (Abu Lutf) called for a press conference in Amman in which he detonated a bombshell more powerful than Abbas’. He [Qaddoumi] is the only one capable of doing this. Qaddoumi said, “so and so from Fateh conspired with Ariel Sharon to kill Yasser Arafat.” Qaddoumi is a founder of Fateh, a member of its Central Committee, the Secretary General of its Central Committee (Higher Committee), the head of the politburo of the PLO, and the Foreign Minister of the state of Palestine, as declared in 1988 [when the PLO declared independence.]

Behind the detonation of his political bombshell, stands Qaddoumi’s political credibility.

It is thus possible to say that the splits inside Fateh are no longer a question of analysis or conclusion [made from the outside], but have become a reality — with one wing led by a big Fateh leader in Ramallah [Abu Mazen] and the second led by a Fateh heavy weight in Amman — and in Tunis [the cities Qaddoumi has largely resided in since the Oslo Accords of 1993.]

Now it remains to be seen what the position of the cadre and membership of the movement will be, and to whom they will declare allegiance, whether for one wing or the other. They could even express indifference [to both] in which case matters [inside Fateh] will collapse even faster.

Observers of Fateh, and those familiar with its atmosphere, currents and issues, expect that nothing from here on in is going to be smooth or simple. Developments will also not be solely determined on the basis of ideas or logic. That is, the Fateh wing enthroned in Ramallah, owns the money through which it guarantees the salaries of tens — actually, hundreds — of members on its payrolls. It also owns the money that guarantees the paychecks of those heading into retirement, once they turn 60, or after 45 if they [the leadership] so desire. The paying of these salaries takes place by way of the budget of the Ministry of Finance in the Palestinian Authority, or from the budget of the Palestinian National Trust, which for years has had the political task of exiling the generation of resistance from Fateh and the like, into the world of retirement [a reference to a PLO practice of marginalizing former guerillas and nationalist figures (many from the early days of the Palestinian revolution) by forcibly retiring them and giving them a salary.]

It is then, a war of money, a war of hunger, which we might be witnessing in the coming months, which could result in the hunger of some who in turn seek an outlet for themselves. Or, it will result in the silencing of some, who refrain from declaring their opinion so as to secure their daily bread for their families. This is a pitiful state, in which the path of fighters, strugglers, cadre and their qualifications — those who worked for many years to create what is termed the history of “the Palestinian Revolution” will end. Rather than giving them praise and thanks [for their sacrifices], they face the terror of silence, the terror of hunger, or the tragedy of life on the margins.

But if Fateh splits, it won’t just split in two. There could be successive splits — one splitting off independently in an Arab country, another in Europe [etc.] so that we find ourselves before a series of Fateh splinters. Moreover these splits will not result in anything inevitable [such as the reform of the movement], but could bring about the gradual diminishing of the movements membership [overall], such that its [Fateh's] body, presence and influence atrophy day after day, until one day the only part of Fateh within them is a piece of its history.

These splits point to the end and failure of the Palestinian national project that was led by Fateh, by way of the PLO, and its declared political program. They also point to the end of the revolution and the failure of the revolution. The question here is what comes after the end of a revolution and its failure?

Qaddoumi heads the PLO politburo and Fateh’s Central Committee. Last week he released a document that implicated current PA president Abu Mazen and his henchman Mohammed Dahlan in Israeli intentions to poison former PA president Yasser Arafat. The damning allegations were a frontal attack on the legitimacy of Abu Mazen and Dahlan, who remains a powerful, albeit controversial figure in its backrooms, despite not currently holding any governmental position. Qaddoumi’s allegations have weight to them because he is one of the last remaining, heavy-hitting Palestinian revolutionary figures from the era when the PLO was established, and one of a handful of surviving founders of Fateh. The allegations also cast a shadow over the upcoming August 4 Fateh Conference to be held in Bethlehem, raising questions about the extent to which the matter will genuinely be investigated internally, and if needed, whether Abu Mazen and Dahlan will be held accountable by the party’s base.

It is first necessary to update developments in this case to see where things have been heading.

The pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera conducted a live interview with Qaddoumi on July 16 in which he reiterated that the document he presented was indeed genuine. Qaddoumi claimed he had hoped to release the document at the upcoming Fateh Conference but was forced to release it now because Abu Mazen decided – in an illegitimate and unilateral manner, according to Qaddoumi – to hold the conference in the West Bank. Qaddoumi argues that this essentially prevents members from Fateh who live outside of Palestine from participating in the conference. Elements of the diasporic Palestinian leadership, including Qaddoumi, refused to return to Palestine in 1993 after the signing of the Oslo Accords, because they fundamentally disagreed with them. Qaddoumi also objects to holding the conference in areas where Israeli occupation troops essentially do as they please – entering and arresting who they want – though nominally Bethlehem is under PA control. The concern over holding the conference in Bethlehem extends beyond Qaddoumi though, as elements of the movement are still wanted by Israel and fear arrest if the conference is actually held there. Rumors have circulated that Abu Mazen is extending invitations and using his influence with Israel to have his loyalists who reside outside Palestine, return for the conference, as a means to consolidate his supporting camp within the party.

A couple of other pieces of information have also been thrown into the mix.

Qaddoumi still refuses to reveal how he obtained the minutes of the secret meeting in which the plan to poison Arafat was supposedly hatched. But he does claim to have spoken to Arafat about it, confirming receipt of the document. Qaddoumi apparently tried to convince Arafat to leave the country, but the latter insisted on dying like a martyr without turning back on his beliefs.

Other Arabic news sources are reporting separate interviews with Qaddoumi in which the latter has threatened to release more information, saying, “Now I say to them [the Fateh Executive Committee and the Central Committee, who have harshly criticized Qaddoumi for airing the document:] ‘what would be your response if I released an audio recording in the voice of President Arafat based upon his [posthumous] request, in which he says the same things that I have said?’”

Qaddoumi has yet to release any new evidence. But if he indeed has an audio recording of Arafat, it would certainly raise the stakes for all concerned, adding weight to his allegations, which by nature are difficult to substantiate. Rather than clarify matters, Qaddoumi’s allegations have tended to throw up a lot of other questions surrounding how he got the meeting minutes in the first place, why he waited so long to release them, and what he intends to get out of the whole affair.

In this regard, Qaddoumi’s allegations appear to re-enforce pre-existing divisions in the Palestinian political theater, with PA stalwarts defending Abu Mazen, and the political opposition, primarily Hamas, believing they have credence.

Inside Fateh – where it really matters -  the picture is murkier. Five branches of the Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, Fateh’s armed wing in the West Bank and Gaza, released a joint statement on July 18 in which they pledge allegiance to Qaddoumi and support maneuvers to remove Abu Mazen and Dahlan from the leadership of the party and the PA. But the party’s main organs remain in the hands of Abu Mazen, who has used them to paint Qaddoumi as a senile relic of a bygone era. The PA leadership has also been supported by more independent figures who defend the innocence of the current Palestinian leadership.

Mahmoud Damra, one of Arafat’s personal body guards during his besiegement in the Muqata’a and currently a prisoner in Israel, and Arafat’s former political adviser Bassam Abu Sharif, have both rejected the claim that Abu Mazen had anything to do with Arafat’s death.

Abu Sharif suggested the intriguing theory that Arafat was indeed poisoned, but the work was all Israel’s. He claims that Israel knew Arafat was taking medication at the time and at one point stopped an ambulance headed to deliver his serum. After briefly detaining the ambulance staff, Israel replaced Arafat’s authentic medication with one that contained poison, eventually leading to its ingestion by the leader and his eventual death. Abu Sharif has referenced similar Israeli assassination methods in the past, including the killing of the legendary Palestinian guerrilla figure Wadi’ Haddad in Iraq in the 1977 with a box of poisoned Belgian chocolates, passed through an Israeli collaborator. The poison resulted in a degenerative blood illness, which eventually killed Haddad in similar mysterious circumstances. There is also the well-known case of how the Israeli Mossad tried to use poison to kill Hamas chief Khaled Mishal in Jordan in 1997. Mishal survived the assassination only because the Israeli operatives were embarrassingly caught, and Israel was forced to provide an antidote in exchange for their release.

The volley of PA counter attacks against Qaddoumi has been incessant. Al Jazeera reports that Abu Mazen is preparing to gather the existing members of the PLO Executive Committee to remove Qaddoumi from his post in the PLO. Further preparations are underway to use the convening of Fateh’s conference to remove him from Fateh’s Central Committee. There are even reports that the PA pressured Jordan to expel Qaddoumi from the country,  to Syria.

The PA also ordered Al Jazeera closed for three days for publicizing the Qaddoumi affair, though it was by no means the only television station to do so. It seems that Abu Mazen wished to send Al Jazeera a message not to use its broad and powerful reach to sway opinion in the run up to the conference, while also sending a forceful message to local Palestinian media, not to investigate and report on the affair. Most local media (besides those associated with Hamas) have toed the line, resulting in much of the Arabic media discussion on the matter deriving from outside the borders of territorial Palestine.

Indeed Abu Mazen, together with his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (a former World Bank and IMF official) are trying to run a tight ship in the West Bank, cracking down on any buds of dissent to their control over the territory. They are aided in their task by a new PA crack force trained in Jordan under U.S. General Keith Dayton. Each member is vetted by Israel to make sure they have a “clean” resumé. Hamas claims that more than 1100 of its members are currently held in PA detention facilities – about a tenth the number of prisoners held in Israeli jails.

The content of Qaddoumi’s document is indeed difficult to verify. Many of the basic elements of the document are not in fact new: we know the PA leadership meets on high levels to discuss “security matters,” and that this issue became of primary importance to the Palestinian leadership after the Intifada began, and especially since Hamas took control over Gaza in June 2007. “Security” is a euphemism for the PA monitoring Palestinian political factions and ensuring that no militant activity takes place against Israel and its occupation. Many Palestinians already see this as a form of collaboration with Israel, not only because Israel fails to recognize any Palestinian national rights, while continuing its occupation, building Jewish settlements, demolishing homes, confiscating land etc., but also because Israel has simply killed over 6000 Palestinians since the Intifada began, and it is hardly the time to cooperate on “security matters” with those who are killing the Palestinian popular leadership.

One way to parse what’s going on is to read Qaddoumi’s document carefully. Abu Mazen’s participation in the discussion is not actually as incriminating as one might think.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the one who raises the issue of killing Arafat and other resistance leaders. Abu Mazen plays a kind of restraining role to Sharon, essentially arguing that neither the marginalization of Arafat nor brute force will deter the resistance or help anyone. The only way to control the situation is to have Palestinians control their affairs and to get the Israeli army out of Palestinian cities.

This raises the possibility of tactics in negotiations, which could be playing out here as well, if the document is genuine.

The PA was most interested at the time in winning time, and hopefully an Israeli withdrawal on the ground. Dahlan and Abbas’ interventions in the discussion, though cynical and seemingly treasonous, are consistent in pushing for this end. Perhaps they presumed that Sharon anyway would act as he pleased, defending what he saw as Israel’s interests. The PA needed to bring about an Israeli withdrawal, so they could reorganize their ranks, which were severely fragmented by Israel’s blows. I don’t even see it as beyond Arafat to have sent Abu Mazen and Dahlan to the meeting with these directives in the first place, allowing them to say what needed to be said to bring about this desired result. He couldn’t have done so himself. But Dahlan and Abu Mazen could. Such short term opportunism characterized Arafat’s leadership style, as long as the movement (and his leadership over it) was able to survive.

In any respect, Israel’s strategy to extinguish the Intifada relied upon shaking the Palestinian leadership, showing them ‘who’s boss’, eliminating any ‘rebellious’ nationalist figures through assassination or imprisonment, and simply playing on the contradictions that emerged within the Palestinian elite as it struggled for its survival.

In this regard, it is difficult to assess how seriously Abu Mazen and Dahlan aspired to take advantage of Israeli maneuvers to prepare the ground for taking power from Arafat. No doubt Abu Mazen and Dahlan both had interests in pushing Arafat out of the way. And the tension did spill over to the extent that Abu Mazen in fact did resign as Prime Minister, because he believed he was not getting enough power from Arafat. But the question remains whether the duo would go the length of cooperating with Israel towards that end. Israel’s maneuvers – including the assassination of resistance leaders from other factions, as well as from within Fateh – no doubt make Abu Mazen and Dahlan passive benefactors of Israel’s policies. But this is also not the same as participation in murder.

Time will tell what comes of the affair, and all eyes are set on what happens at Fateh’s conference. If Abu Mazen and his crew are able to assert leadership and control over the party, Qaddoumi and his allegations will be buried in history. But if elements of the party are determined to raise what happened in the waning days of Arafat’s rule, sticky questions will remain that threaten to split the party. Much will depend upon the composition of the conference itself, and to what extent Fateh opposition figures are allowed to participate. Additionally you have the movement’s most popular figure (Marwan Barghouti) sitting in an Israeli prison serving out a five-life term sentence, whose opinion is likely to have substantial weight in determining the trajectory of coming developments.