The Palestinian National Movement As We've Known It Is Dying

Jonathan Spyer..
PJ Media..
28 July '12..

There is a strong case for a claim that the Fatah-led Palestinian national movement, as we have known it from the late 1960s onward, is fading from the scene.

While in practical terms the Palestinian national movement is an increasing irrelevance, the symbolic cause of Palestine nevertheless retains great emotional appeal both for the Muslim world as a whole and for a wide spectrum of Western leftists. The result: a new, loose, global, Islamist-led movement is emerging in its stead to carry the Palestinian banner.

The failed peace process of the 1990s indicated the central dilemma for the Palestinian national movement. It was not strong enough to achieve its maximum goal of destroying what it regarded as the illegitimate state of Israel. At the same time, with the defeat of Zionism at the very center of its worldview, it proved incapable of making the compromises necessary for a peaceful partition of the disputed area.
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Following Yasir Arafat’s death in 2004, the Palestinian unity which he had created and bequeathed to his people did not long survive. The 2007 split between Arafat’s Fatah and the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas now has the look of permanence about it.

Hamas is entrenched in its semi-sovereign Gaza fiefdom. As a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, its natural partner in the neighborhood is the Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy in adjacent Egypt, rather than its Ramallah-based secular rivals.

As for Fatah, it is the local representative of the rotting secular Arab nationalist movements and regimes which are currently being eclipsed.

A Bump in the Road to Palestinian Democracy

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
11 June '10

Posted before Shabbat

Reuters reports that the Palestinian Authority has indefinitely postponed next month’s local elections “due to divisions in the Fatah party over who would run.”

In a brief statement, the cabinet, which is stacked with Fatah members, did not say why it had decided to put off the election that had been scheduled for July 17, but the officials said it was because Fatah could not agree a unified list. … Hamas Islamists, who seized control of the Gaza Strip from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, had already said they would boycott the vote. …

A senior Fatah member added: “What’s happening inside Fatah is that there are people who are running against each other. We need some time in order to solve these internal problems.”

Elections are tough to organize when there are people who are running against each other. The good news, however, is that once you solve the internal problems with a unified list, it is relatively easy to re-schedule the election, since there will be only one party in it. So this is probably simply a bump in the road to the vibrant democracy a Palestinian state would bring to the Middle East (along with peace), as Western-backed Mahmoud Abbas enters the 66th month of his 48-month term.

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AP: Terrorists Who Murdered Father Of 7 Are "Activists"

Omri
Mere Rhetoric
26 December 09

The full headline - describing the counterterrorism raid against the murderers of Meir Chai - is "3 Fatah activists killed in Israeli raid." It got picked up by Washington Post with exactly that wording and by FOX News as "Israeli Troops Kill 3 Palestinian Activists." FOX has since changed their headline - Google cache has the original - to highlight the three additional Palestinians killed trying to infiltrate from Gaza.

Original AP story:

Israeli soldiers on Saturday shot dead three Palestinians who the military says were involved in a roadside ambush that killed an Israeli settler earlier in the week. The operation in the West Bank city of Nablus targeted three activists of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Palestinian witnesses said troops, many of them masked, opened fire while storming the homes of the men.

"Many of them masked," of course, is exactly the kind of detail that experienced anti-Israel agitators like Mohammed Daraghmeh - 5 years and running - know to include. Mere anti-Israel hobbyists take note.

(Full post)

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