Q&A-Abbas's Fatah holds long-awaited congress
Aug 3 (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will chair a congress of his Fatah movement beginning on Tuesday in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. It will be the group's first congress since 1989 and the first on Palestinian soil. Here are some questions and answers about Fatah.
Q - What is Fatah?
A -The secular movement was launched in 1965 and has dominated Palestinian politics for decades, most of the time under the late Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004 and was succeeded by Abbas. Fatah received a severe blow in 2006 when rival Hamas, an Islamist movement, won parliamentary elections. A year later Hamas routed Fatah-backed forces in Gaza and drove them out of the enclave, effectively splitting the Palestinian national movement.
Q - What is it trying to achieve?
A - Fatah wants to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank, strike a peace agreement with Israel and establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, co-existing with its Jewish neighbour. The movement is suffering from a crisis of leadership and is seeking rejuvenation through restructuring, and new blood in its top ranks. The congress aims to elect a Central Committee and Revolutionary Council, giving more say to a younger generation that grew up fighting the Israeli occupation and less to the "old guard" who lived most of the time in exile abroad.
Q - Why is this important?
A - Fatah's last congress was held 20 years ago in Tunisia. A lot has changed since then while the movement has atrophied, burdened by allegations of corruption and complacency. The Bethlehem convention is seen as an essential re-energiser ahead of Palestinian elections in January. Abbas also needs a strong and united Fatah to show Israel he can deliver on peace-making, provided the Israelis agree to halt settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.
Q - Why has Fatah not held a congress since 1989?
A - Fatah's own rules say it has to hold a congress every five years. But Arafat, who avoided challenge to his authority, kept postponing the convention citing new realities, such as the signing of the Oslo accords with Israel in 1993. The changing landscape also caused internal differences which a congress would have exposed. And the old guard did its best to delay the convention at which it knew the younger generation would challenge its dominance. It has taken four years of preparation to convene this Sixth Congress.
Q - What's on the agenda?
A - In addition to electing new leaders, the three-day congress will adopt a revised programme for Fatah to make a clear distinction between itself and Iranian-backed Hamas, which has rejected Western demands to renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept existing interim peace deals.
A draft of the new programme calls for new forms of resistance such as civil disobedience against the expansion of Jewish settlements and the building of the barrier that Israel is erecting inside the Palestinian territories.
But crucially, the draft leaves open the option of armed struggle if peace talks with Israel fail. It also does not rule out a unilateral declaration of a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, if peace negotiations, currently suspended, are stalemated.
Q - Who will attend the Congress and who will not?
A - Some 2,250 Fatah members are due to participate, including hundreds of veterans who have been living in exile but were given permits by Israel to take part. Some 400 Fatah members from Gaza will not be able to take part, as Hamas has prevented them from leaving. (Writing by Mohammed Assadi, editing by Douglas Hamilton and Richard Williams) (For blogs and links on Israeli politics and other Israeli and Palestinian news, go to blogs.reuters.com/axismundi)
