The Palestinians Must Get Their Act Together

As if they needed another reason to wage political battle, the two leading Palestinian political groups, Fatah and Hamas, are now locked in a tug-of-war around whether Hamas will allow Fatah members in Gaza to travel to Bethlehem to attend their party’s sixth congress next Tuesday. Hamas accuses Fatah of imprisoning Hamas members unjustly, and wants them released before it allows Fatah members to go to Bethlehem. The dominant Palestinian political movements, having hit a momentary brick wall in their struggle to regain their lands and rights, now seem to be engaged instead in a disgraceful game of intra-Palestinian hostage-taking.

This pitiful state of affairs accurately illustrates the depths of incompetence, mediocrity and irresponsibility to which the Palestinian national movement has plunged in recent years. This is a far cry from its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Palestinian resistance movement resonated loudly throughout the region, even as it also triggered the anger and opposition of many others, including Arab governments. Progress in regaining occupied lands and national rights, culminating in a sovereign state and a fair resolution of the refugee problem, requires Palestinian unity, which seems very distant nowadays.

The sixth Fatah congress taking place next week is an apt reminder of what ails the Palestinian national movement. For starters, this is the first congress since 1989, meaning that Fatah’s political doctrine and leadership have remained unchanged, structurally immune from popular accountability – very much as is the case with political leadership throughout the rest of the Arab world. Any political movement that meets once every 20 years cannot be taken very seriously by its members, friends or adversaries. That is exactly Fatah’s situation today.