Palestine's Fatah movement holds first congress in 20 years
President Mahmoud Abbas opened his Fatah movement’s first conference in 20 years on Tuesday, saying Palestinians sought peace with Israel but "resistance" would stay an option. It is the group’s first congress to be held on Palestinian soil. The last Fatah congress was held in Tunisia in 1989.
More than 2,000 delegates will seek in three days of talks to adopt a program that distinguishes Fatah from Islamist Hamas which has rejected Western demands to renounce violence and recognize Israel.
"Although peace is our choice, we reserve the right to resistance, legitimate under international law," the Western-backed Abbas said in a policy speech, using a term that encompasses armed confrontation as well as non-violent protests.
New forms of resistance
Officials said a draft of Fatah’s new program called for new forms of resistance such as civil disobedience against Jewish settlement expansion and a West Bank barrier Israel says is for security but which Palestinians see as a land grab.
Crucially, the draft leaves open the option of "armed struggle" if peace talks with Israel fail and does not rule out a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if peace negotiations remain at a stalemate.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be no immediate comment on the speech.
Fatah’s 400 delegates who live in the Gaza Strip were banned from travelling to the city of Bethlehem for the conference by the territory’s Islamist rulers, Hamas.
A threat by Fatah officials to arrest Hamas members in the West Bank failed to persuade the group, which violently wrested control of the Gaza Strip from the veteran movement in 2007, to let the delegates go.
Abbas said neither Hamas nor any other faction had the right to choose on its own what resistance should entail.
"No one can decide alone. No one can lead the homeland to catastrophe. No one can take the decision and take us to where we do not want to be," he said, echoing his past criticism of Hamas suicide attacks which he had described as hurting the Palestinian cause.
But he also cautioned that Palestinians would not give up a right to meet violence with violence, saying: "We will not stand helpless in the face of Israeli incursions."
National struggle
Speaking to delegates on the eve of the congress, Abbas said: "We hope that our neighbors will allow us to reach peace to build the future of our state that lives next to their state in security and peace."
Nabil Shaath, a veteran member of Fatah’s ruling Central Committee, told Reuters that the charter "cannot be changed."
Azzam al-Ahmad, another senior Fatah leader, said: "It will remain as is. It won’t be subject to discussion."
"We have the right to practice all forms of national struggle," Ahmad said. "We are in the phase of national liberation and we have the right to use all means in the fight to end the occupation until we establish the state."
Palestinian analysts said Fatah, seeking to infuse its top ranks with new blood, would find it hard to compete with Hamas if it amended its charter before reaching any deal with Israel to establish an independent Palestinian state.
Fatah has been struggling to regain the dominancy it enjoyed for decades before losing a 2006 parliamentary election to Hamas which seized control of coastal Gaza by force a year later, effectively splitting Palestinian loyalties.
Some 400 Fatah delegates from Gaza may not be able to attend the congress if Iranian-backed Hamas makes good on threats not to let them leave Gaza for the West Bank.
Fatah’s congress aims to elect a new central committee and ruling council, in the hopes of giving more of a say to a younger generation that grew up fighting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank since it captured the territory in a 1967 war.