Afrasianet - Oraib Al Rantawi - The time difference between the announcement of the Fatah movement at its eighth congress of the unanimous election of Mahmoud Abbas as its president, and the decision of Hamas to go to a second round to elect a head of its political bureau, does not exceed forty-eight hours according to the calculations of time.
However, the calculations of politics and organization have a different say.
An election here, the results of which are known in advance, are closer to the concept of allegiance and loyalty than to the meaning of the election and its contents.
The election there, on the other hand, takes on the character of a fierce competition, which dictates resorting to a run-off round, after it was not decided from the first round, and it is more likely that the increase in the heat of the competition is due – perhaps – to the difference in readings and orientations, albeit of course loaded with personal calculations and ambitions as well.
Fatah, which is stable and safe in its "transitory" haven in Ramallah and the West Bank, does not hold its conferences regularly, while Hamas, which is persecuted and persecuted, tends to hold its conferences and renew its leadership regularly, and the exception here, as in the decision to postpone its last conference, confirms al-Qaeda, rather than denies it.
"At one point", when Fatah was a great locomotive dragging the Palestinian national liberation movement in all its various branches, and in most cases, with its various factions, the Fatah leadership was renewed by martyrdom often and sometimes by "rejuvenation", and its leader and founder even died in his prison in the province as a "martyr... Martyr Since that day, the movement has known no president except Mahmoud Abbas, the second two to hold this position for six decades or more.
Hamas, although it came two decades later than the first bullets were fired, took over the carrying of the flags of martyrdom, and the bullets, bombs and rockets of the assassination played a decisive role in the elimination of two generations of its leaders, and those who survived, smoothly submitted to the effects of the "exchange of leadership" law within the organization and through the ballot boxes, without witnessing the outbreak of "small civil wars", as in several factions and parties in the Arab and Islamic arenas.
In a clear expression of unparalleled organizational vitality and structural flexibility, its chapters were particularly evident in the three-year war on Gaza and Palestine: the war of cleansing, extermination and systematic systematic assassinations that have not yet come to an end.
I recall a meeting after the October 7 attack with the Hamas leadership in Doha, that three of the heads of the movement's political bureau were among those gathered at the headquarters of the late Ismail Haniyeh, two of whom were current (at the time) and former and former. We are the children of an experience in leadership and leadership, which extends from the "cradle to the grave".
Because this is something to be remembered, I call on researchers to stand in front of the excellence of the experiences of Islamists in the Arab world in this field, as the phenomenon is not limited to enthusiasm alone, but extends to many Islamic factions, and almost refrains from factions that describe themselves as democrats without the need to prove it.
The end of the fire extinguisher and the beginning of another
Much has been said and written about the Eighth Fatah Conference, in terms of its "low-fat" political dose, or in terms of considering it a step on the path of identifying with the existing authority in Ramallah, and more has been said and written about its results in connection with the "caliphate" file, and as a prelude to the "post-Abbas era", the man who is entering his tenth contract with the conference.
Many observers questioned the delay in announcing the results of the counting of only 2,500 votes, and whether it required all this time, before it appeared in its final and official form, or if there was something behind the sleeve, especially after the statements of Kaddoura Fares questioning the results of the counting.
However, what is particularly troubling to us is that the conference did not conduct any comprehensive, serious and radical critical reviews of an experiment that faltered and reached a dead end, one of the most important of which was the signing of the Oslo Accords, and the subsequent transformations and developments that led to the erosion of the limited autonomy authority instead of being the nucleus of an independent and sovereign state.
However, as it turned out, the movement's leadership chose to make do with "ridiculing" the Al-Aqsa flood, ignoring the flood of settlements that are stealing the land from under its feet (including Areas A and B), dispersing its people, killing its people, and displacing tens of thousands of people in the West Bank, in addition to the catastrophe beheading Gaza and its people.
We would have liked to learn about the vision of the leadership of the people, for its future and how to preserve its national project, at an unprecedented historical moment in the 100-year struggle with the Zionist invasion supported by tyrannical and hegemonic global imperialism.
We would have liked to read a "self-criticism" or, at the very least, a single convincing explanation of the enormous gap between the PA and its leadership on the one hand, and Palestinian public opinion on the other, in terms of every poll that has been published for many years, without exception.
We would have liked one of the participants in the "four centers of the conference" to ask the significance of the paradox in the unanimous election of a president whose popularity has not exceeded the 10% barrier for years.
How can this Fatah consensus be explained about the person of the president and his leadership, at a time when the popular consensus is going in a different direction? No one cares about these questions, as we were in front of a "festival of allegiance and loyalty" and a tireless search for sharing the remaining power and the rest of the wealth.
The honorable members of Fatah and the Palestinian people bet that the conference would be the beginning of a fire and a moment of awakening for Fatah, the national movement and the Palestinian people behind them, but it seems that the results of the conference disappointed these people and prompted some of them to say: "This is where the movement we knew lies."
In their eighth congress, the congressmen succeeded in renewing half of their central committee, which is a very forbidden percentage under the normal conditions of party and organizational work.
But what worries us and others is that this renewal came from "the same cloth", and as a result of careful electoral engineering, politicians and intellectuals have been absent from the first leadership position, and the security forces, old and new, and all those who are trusted and personally loyal, and perhaps, can be turned to when they are most needed, in the game of "succession" and "succession".
The "outside" and the diaspora were absent, and some of the interior remained, as if Fatah had entered the game of reducing the Palestinian people to the "people" of the West Bank and Gaza, and reducing the Palestinian land to what was left of them.
The daughter whose parents were born
At the eighth "Patience" conference, Fatah went far in the process of adapting to the outcomes and constraints of the solution imposed on the Palestinians by the United States and Israel.
It is rare to find among the members of the conference, especially those who have been chosen to lead the movement, those outside the PA and its institutions, and in senior leadership positions responsible for policies, major choices and "sacred security coordination", so that today it can be said that the PA swallowed Fatah with the conference's testimony, its facts, outputs and membership, just as it swallowed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and referred it to a secondary annex in its departments, which is invoked only when the "sole legitimate representative's seal" is needed, as if we are contrary to nature and against the Its laws.
Here the daughter is the one who gave birth to her parents, and she reshapes them in her image and likeness, as a functional entity, in the service of the occupation, which lifts the heavy costs from its shoulders, while the illusion of the path of politics, negotiation and the "two-state solution", to the rest of the vocabulary of the same smashed instrument.
Fatah was the one who established the PA, unlike Arab generals who came to power on the backs of their tanks, only to return after they "took the throne," to form party decorations to cover their nakedness and beautify their ugly images.
Unfortunately, even in the experience of parties made in the size of generals, it is rare to find a similarity between the ruling party and its authority, as is the case between the Palestinian ruling party and its powerless authority.
This explains, at least in part, how security and political leaders in advanced positions in the PA were able to top the list of winners in the eighth Fatah Conference, as the PA has fangs and claws, and it has a lot of islands and giveaways in return, and the competition between unequals is predetermined, and the use of persuasion, intimidation, and "political money" becomes a matter of decision, let alone the "coles" system that has characterized Palestinian political work the most.
Inheritance after extension and renewal
It is an unholy trinity that characterized Arab political life throughout the decades before the Arab Spring, and it still rears its ugly head, even in countries that have witnessed sharp revolutions and coups in the national scene. We thought that the Palestinian arena was immune from its influences and effects, and we were wrong.
The election campaign of President Mahmoud Abbas's son, his candidacy arrangements for the regions of Syria and Lebanon, and his landing on the Fatah leadership with a parachute, attracted exceptional political and media attention, which almost covered the rest of the conference's outcomes.
It has been clear for several years that the president is preparing his son, a businessman, who was not known in the fields of politics, organization, and struggle, for later political roles, the limits and ceilings of which we do not yet know, and whether he will succeed in achieving his goal or not.
However, what happened in the Eighth Congress is that Abbas Jr. has crossed an important threshold on this path, and we have to wait to see how he will climb the rest of the ladders of power and organization, especially since there are "vacancies" that may be opened by the failures of some "historical" leaders who fell inadvertently or deliberately fell to pave the way for succession and succession.
President Abbas is the "legitimate" president of Fatah, the PA, the PLO, and the commander-in-chief, and we do not know of any other positions he holds, even though the elections have been stalled in Fatah for ten years, and in the PA for twenty years, and in the PLO, there are no elections or those who are elected. A presidency by extension and renewal, by presidential decrees, and without even the need for formal procedures, of the kind that we witnessed at the opening of the last conference:
Unanimity, pledge of allegiance, and a standing warm applause.
This is not befitting of the people of the "mighty" people, nor of their continuous struggle and enormous sacrifices, this is not befitting of Fatah and the organization, or even of the weak authority.
Doesn't the "people" preach the disastrous consequences of the effects of this trinity, in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and others, and in the past it was said:
The sane is the one who preaches by the experience of others, while the insane is the one who preaches only by his own experience and makes himself a field of experiments.. Have we left the square of the mind to settle in the square of madness?
