The Fatah movement, the key Palestinian guerrilla movement within the Palestine Liberation Organization moved one step closer to becoming a political party.
With the holding of their sixth congress for the first time in occupied territories, it is hard to continue pretending to be a liberation movement. Officially, however, the over 2,000 delegates representing former Fatah fedayyin (guerillas) and intifada activists voted to continue the resistance struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Resistance however was explained in a much wider perspective than the military struggle. Mahmoud Abbas who was unanimously elected as party leader and commander in chief made it clear that while all options are still available, our choice for ending the occupation is through negotiations. And if anyone (such as Israeli defense minister Barak) took the rhetoric on resistance seriously, congress spokesman Nabil Amr officially assured all concerned that Fatah is committed to peaceful resolution of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.
Signs of the move to a political party were evident all over the place. Gone were the khaki suits and militaristic paraphernalia, and instead it was replaced by men in suits and proper ID badges for all delegates. Backroom decisions and top down guidance was replaced with a democratic free fall that saw many of Fatah's historic leaders fall to the way side making room for younger and locally popular leaders. Naturally the 20 year hiatus since the last congress created a huge gap that was quickly filled with street credentials rather than military ones.
The ballot rather than the bullet process produced the failures of some of Fatah's famous names such as Ahmad Qurei and the Intisar Wazir the widow of Abu Jihad, the movements founder along with Arafat and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad).
Holding the congress in Palestine ended the role of many of the anti Oslo leaders such as Mahmoud Jihad and Farouk Qadoumi. Sidelining Qadoumi whose accusation, on the eve of the congress, that Abu Mazen and Dahlan had helped Israel in poisoning Arafat will close the role of some of the Fatah leaders who were aligned with some of the hard line Arab countries such as Syria and Libya. President Abbas, however, showed magnanimity towards Qadoumi by calling him to return to the movement's fold, despite all that happened in the past.
Fatah guerilla leaders who have dominated the movement since its establishment were replaced by intifada activists. Most of the newly elected central committee members represent the leadership of the 1987 uprising in the occupied territories. In his speech Abbas referred to these intifada leaders telling the congress that the first intifada wrote the guidelines that has become the movement's political platform since then. Leaders like imprisoned tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, former Preventative Security chief Jibril Rajoub and Gaza's Mohammad Dahlan are now in the driver's seat of the Fatah movement.
Dahlan who many had accused of personal responsibility for the loss of Gaza to Hamas gave a strong speech accusing the previous Fatah leadership of having lost Gaza long before it actually fell in June 2007. Speaking to clapping from the congress Dahlan detailed how the former Fatah leadership repeatedly ignored his warnings and his pleadings to the central committee members to come to Gaza and to see for themselves the situation on the ground.
The Fatah congress also dealt a blow to the abuse and corruption that has plagued the movement in recent years and especially since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Speaker after speaker insisted that the movement's weakness happened when its leaders were sucked into government positions and all the temptations that are connected to that. A resolve to attempt to distance the movement from the Palestinian Authority was the overriding sentiment in the conference. This sentiment was translated in the voting out of those who represented this duplicity, perhaps the chief among them former prime minister and leading negotiator Ahmad Qurei.
The Fatah movement has a way to go before it becomes a fully fledged political party. The overwhelming argument of delegates was that the movement must keep its options open to move back to secret underground movement if the negotiations for statehood fail while being ready for a political party if a Palestinian state is born. For the time being the conclusion of the sixth congress reflects an inclination towards a party rather than an underground resistance movement.