HOW YOUNG PALESTINIANS LOST THEIR FAITH IN FATAH
The party of Arafat is now despised by a generation who see it as indifferent to poverty and impotent in the face of Israel’s occupation. Ben Lynfield reports from Ramallah
The monument to martyrs in the main square of Jelazoun refugee camp is impressive in size and scope. It honours camp residents from Fatah who died fighting the Israeli occupation and the movement’s leaders, including co-founders Khalil Al Wazir, who was assassinated by Israel in 1988, and Yasser Arafat, who Palestinians widely believe was poisoned by Israel in 2004.
But the yellow Fatah flags decorating the monument do not flutter proudly in the wind; rather they lie wilted or caught up in powerlines.
The neglected state of the flags hints at the widespread disillusionment in this camp north of Ramallah – and beyond it in the wider West Bank – with the ruling movement established by Arafat, Al Wazir and associates in 1959.
Headed since 2005 by Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah traditionally led the Palestinian struggle but is now stagnating, its leadership increasingly despised by a younger generation who fought Israel as part of the movement during the Second Intifada (2000-2005) and afterwards.
“They are irrelevant,” says Shadi Abdul-Samad, 22, of Fatah’s leaders. “They do not care about us and the people in the camp do not care about them.”
This sense of alienation from the Fatah leadership is palpable in interviews with residents of the camp, and with political activists in nearby Ramallah, who find themselves excluded from positions of power in favour of generally older Abbas loyalists.
It points to weakness and decay in the movement, raising questions about its future just as the Abbas era may be approaching its end.
Questions about the health of Mr Abbas, 82, intensified after he was admitted to hospital in Ramallah for checks last month. Although he was released the same day and a doctor at the hospital spoke of reassuring results, Mr Abbas, who is overweight and a chronic smoker, has a history of health problems.
Last October, he underwent emergency cardiac catheterisation after suffering chest pain and exhaustion.
Mr Abdul-Samad joined Fatah’s Shabiba youth movement at age 13 and while still a teenager spent a combined two and a half years in an Israeli prison for throwing stones. But he has little to show for this loyalty to Fatah.
“I cannot get married because I do not have a shekel to my name,” he said.
Mr Abdul-Samad feels the 19-member Fatah central committee – the movement’s highest decision-making body, led by Mr Abbas – is indifferent to and uninterested in the grave economic problems facing Palestinian youths today.
“We are dying from poverty and the prices. The leadership care about their projects, their cars, their interests. They do not feel our pain,” he said. “The central committee does not represent us. They are doing nothing good for us. They are not helping us, not providing any service.
“We do not see them. If someone is killed by the Israelis two of them might show up and make speeches for propaganda, that is it.”
Musa Masarwa, 27, a barber who was recently released from prison after serving two years for what he vaguely termed “security things against Israel”, agreed with many of Mr Abdul-Samad’s criticisms. He joined Fatah at the age of 12 but has no respect for its current leaders.
“Those who made Fatah meaningless are the ones who lead it. They made people hate it,” Mr Masarwa said.
Analysts say a major reason for Mr Abbas and the central committee losing so much support from youth is the absence of independent young voices and differing views.
They also contend that this is because the election of the committee during the seventh Fatah congress in Ramallah in November was orchestrated and controlled by Mr Abbas’s people. Delegates were chosen based on their loyalty to him rather than by popular vote at regional level.
Mr Abbas may have gained a central committee that suits him, but the result for the movement is stagnation, says Ghassan Khatib, a former minister and currently vice president of Bir Zeit University.
“The youth are less and less loyal to Fatah and Fatah is less and less powerful among youth because of its leadership’s ages, policy and the lack of democracy and proper representation.”
Abdullah Abdullah, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who supports Mr Abbas and was a delegate at the Fatah congress, called the elections there “democratic, open and transparent”.
He said the voting was by secret ballot and the counting done in front of television cameras. He conceded, however, that not all of the delegates were elected in the districts, saying “some were appointed according to their positions”.
In Jelazoun, Mr Masarwa took issue with Mr Abbas’s unflinching support – at least until recently – for the security co-ordination between Palestinian Authority forces and the Israeli army, which has thwarted attacks on Israeli targets and led to arrests of Palestinians.
“This hurts us and is against our interests,” he said. Those arrested, he said, “are defending their homeland and people”.
Across the street, in another barber shop, was Tahrir Zayd, who had been released a day earlier from a two-year Israeli prison sentence that he said was for incitement.
“This is not a real leadership,” Mr Zayd said. “The only leaders I respect are Marwan Barghouti and Mohammed Dahlan,” – referring first to a leader of the Second Intifada who is serving several life sentences in Israel after being convicted of five murders, and to Gaza’s former security chief who was expelled from Fatah in 2011 for criticising Mr Abbas.
Mr Dahlan is now based in the UAE, but lately has built up support in the Gaza Strip and in West Bank refugee camps.
“They care about the people. The others I consider traitors,” Mr Zayd said.
Abed Abu Sharifa, 27, who spent four years in jail for trying to kidnap a soldier, also expressed his support for Mr Dahlan. He said things were better in Fatah under Arafat. “He was our compassionate father who helped people. The real wise leaders are either in prison, abroad or dead,” he said.
Fifteen minutes’ drive away, in Amari refugee camp, close to downtown Ramallah, lives Jehad Tomaley, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
He was also dismissed from Fatah by Mr Abbas last year for calling a meeting of supporters of Mr Dahlan, and says excluding him and his backers from Fatah is harming the movement.
“There is a big negative impact,” said Mr Tomaley, 52, who joined Fatah when he was 15 and two years later began an eight-year prison sentence for “resisting the occupation”.
In 2003 he was imprisoned for another 18 months for alleged links to Fatah’s armed wing, Al Aqsa Brigade.
“If Fatah is hurt, the national project will be harmed. Fatah is the backbone of the PLO and any imperfection in Fatah reflects on the national project.
“Fatah today is not in the best situation. It is fragmented and divided and this effects its role and its future.
“The youth are not in the leading institutions of Fatah. They do not get their role and their rights. They also do not have a presence in the Palestinian Authority. They cannot express their opinions. There is a state of frustration and hardship among the youth.”
Mr Abbas’s supporters blame the rift on Mr Dahlan, whom the Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina has accused of conspiring against the movement’s legitimate leadership.
In the nearby Umm Sharayat neighbourhood of Ramallah, Qadura Fares, director of the Palestinian Prisoner Club, which helps former detainees, takes issue with the Fatah leadership for “lacking initiative” and failing to heal the division in Palestinian politics since Hamas seized control of Gaza 10 years ago.
Fatah’s strategy for liberating territory from occupation and establishing a state is non-existent, Mr Fares said.
“The leadership has a strategy that is not a strategy at all – to wait until these things fall from the heavens or are brought about by international intervention.”
A former minister and associate of Mr Barghouthi, Mr Fares, 55, is an example of a critical and independent voice that cannot rise within Fatah under the present system.
He stood for election to the central committee in Fatah’s problematic elections, but lost, despite having impeccable nationalist credentials.
He joined Fatah at 17 and spent 1980 to 1994 in an Israeli prison for being part of a cell that killed alleged collaborators with Israel and planted explosive devices.
“I believed the way to liberate Palestine was through armed struggle,” he says. Now, however, he is something of a pioneering thinker in the Palestinian context. He believes Fatah should adopt a strategy of non-violent resistance against the occupation.
“Enough illusions, enough fooling ourselves and the nation. When you continue to speak of American or international intervention it does n0t lead anywhere, it is just being stuck in the mud,” he says.
Mr Fares wants to see men, women, children, the old and the young turn out en masse
The youth are less and less loyal to Fatah and Fatah is less and less powerful among youth because of its leadership’s ages, policy and the lack of democracy and proper representation GHASSAN KHATIB Former minister and vice president, Bir Zeit University
and occupy the bypass roads Israelis use to move in and out of settlements.
“No throwing of stones, no beating, no burning, no doing of anything except sitting on the bypass roads that are the lifelines of the settlements.
“Non-violent struggle has tremendous power, which on the basis of unity of the people will bring Israeli society to different conclusions.
“If we move in a new direction and return to having initiative and being dynamic, the new dynamic will also lead to a change in the leadership of the movement. The old generation will never say of its own accord, ‘I’m vacating my place, please take over from us’.”
He concedes the current leadership has some legitimacy. “They did not carry out a coup. If there is a feeling we are moving forward to independence that will give them legitimacy. But if they continue to be stuck in the mud it leads to a deterioration of legitimacy,” he said.
Jamal Muhaisen, who was re-elected to the central committee at the congress and is responsible for recruitment and organisation in Fatah, blames Israel rather than internal factors for the troubled state of the Palestinian cause.
Mr Muhaisen, 68, says: “We are dealing with a government that denies agreements and insists on expanding settlements and denies our right to a state.”
He blames the US for being “completely biased in supporting Israel”.
He recognises the hopelessness felt by the Palestinian youth, who can see no end to the occupation.
“Yes, there is a state of frustration among the youth and all sectors of the Palestinian people everywhere.
“Seventy years have passed, still the refugees have not returned and 50 years have passed with the occupation [of the West Bank and Gaza Strip] still here without any hope of ending it.
“Add to this poverty, unemployment and that the windows of hope for the success of a peace have been blocked.”
The Palestinian cause is also undermined by doubts about the strength of the support from other Arab states, he said.
“The Arabs have their own shortcomings towards the Palestinian cause and in support for the Zionist scheme. Iraq has been destroyed, Syria ruined, also Libya. Egypt suffers from terrorism. The Arabs have left their enemy and destroyed their capabilities.”
But he denies that the younger generation are excluded from Fatah.
“I do not think the youth have been marginalised. We have elections for the student councils, for the unions and the students elect their representatives.
“One-fourth of the Palestine National Council are young men representing unions.
“We are under occupation. All should struggle for the end of the occupation whether they occupy high or low posts. All generations should fight the occupation. Nobody can retire from fighting the occupation.”
Mr Khatib, the former minister, however, highlights the internal strife within Fatah.
“I don’t think Fatah is collapsing, I think it is decaying and this will take time. But there are no other powerful groups who can compete and take advantage of its decline in popularity and no election would expose this decline.
“The challenge that might expose its weakness and lead to, if not collapse, then serious difficulty, is the possible absence of the president, because parties so dependent on one person and so undemocratic will suffer when this individual leader is absent. The departure of Abbas would be a challenge that would expose Fatah in a serious way.”