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<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/amin08142009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/amin08142009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">August 14-16,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>CIA-Trained
Security Chiefs Elected to the Palestinian Leadership <br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By ESAM
AL-AMIN <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>“He is our guy.” <br><br>
<dd>George W. Bush speaking of Palestinian security chief Muhammad
Dahlan, June 4, 2003<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>he U.S. government has been meddling in the
Palestinian internal affairs since at least 2003. Its effort is to
transform the Palestinian national movement for liberation and
independence into a more compliant or quisling government, willing to
accede to Israel’s political and security demands. <br><br>
The tactics employed by the U.S. include military, security, diplomatic,
and political components. With the ascension of Hamas after the 2006
legislative election, U.S. strategy has been fixed on unraveling the
election results. Its aim for a political comeback of the pro-American
camp within the Palestinian body politic has been initiated with the
convening of Fatah’s national conference this last week.<br><br>
During the week of August 4, 2009, the Palestinian National Liberation
Movement Fatah,</i> convened its sixth national conference in its 44-year
history. Fatahhas historically been considered the largest Palestinian
faction, but that perception changed when it lost the legislative
elections to Hamas in January 2006. As the group wrapped up its
conference after eight days, it announced the results of its elections.
The international media, particularly western outlets, framed the
election as “fresh” and “new” faces ascending to power in the movement.
But what actually happened in the vote? <br><br>
Fatah’s internal structure is unlike most political parties or resistance
movements. It is not hierarchical and its members’ loyalty largely
follows a system of patronage and factionalism embodied in a 23-member
Central Committee.<br><br>
The Central Committee is technically supposed to reflect a system of
collective leadership and the political program of a national liberation
movement. Even its founder, the late Yasser Arafat, who led the
organization from its inception in 1965 until his death in 2004, did not
have an official title beyond that of a member of the committee and
commander-in-chief of its military wing. But over time, in the eyes of
many Palestinians, Fatah’s leadership has symbolized, a system of
cronyism, corruption, collaboration with Israel, and political failures,
especially since the Oslo process.<br><br>
Although its internal charter calls for a national conference every four
years to elect its leadership, the major questions at the eve of this
conference were: Why did it take Fatah two decades to convene this one?
Did the election of Fatah’s new leadership reflect the aspirations of the
Palestinian people and a new and fresh approach to the political process?
And finally, who are the backers of the main individuals who were
recently elected to lead it?<br><br>
Fatah’s Central Committee led by Arafat made the strategic decision in
1988 to negotiate a political settlement with Israel, and accept the
United States government as the main broker. For two decades, especially
in the aftermath of the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinian issue
gradually receded from the international agenda, becoming an almost
exclusive affair between the U.S, Israel, and the Palestinian leadership
whether it was the PLO or after 1994, the Palestinian Authority
(PA).<br><br>
Most neutral Middle East analysts such as Robert Malley, the Middle East
Program Director at the International Crisis Group, and a former National
Security Council (NSC) staff member during the Clinton administration,
observe that American negotiators throughout several administrations
(both Democratic and Republican) have mostly adopted the Israeli point of
view and placed most of the pressure on the Palestinian leadership
(whether Bill Clinton with Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, or George W.
Bush with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.) <br><br>
During the first term of the Bush administration, Arafat, as the head of
the PA, was isolated, while Washington promoted those within the
Palestinian leadership such as Mahmoud Abbas (imposed on Arafat as prime
minister in 2003), and former security chief Muhammad Dahlan, both of
whom embraced the American strategy in the region. In 2005, Bush declared
his freedom and democracy agenda, demanding elections in the Palestinian
territories, and hoping for a Fatah victory to implement his
vision.<br><br>
However, the administration soon abandoned its agenda of promoting
democracy in the Arab world when Hamas won a landslide victory in the
January 2006 legislative elections. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
expressed shock about the results saying, “No one saw it coming.” A
Department of Defense official told David Rose of Vanity Fair</i> in
2008, “Everyone blamed everyone else,” “We sat there in the Pentagon and
said, ‘Who the f*@# recommended this?’?”<br><br>
Ever since that election, the American administration employed three
different but overlapping strategies in order to undo the results. These
efforts by the State Department, the White House and the Defense
Department, were scantily planned and poorly coordinated. <br><br>
Throughout 2006 and the first half of 2007, the State Department used its
diplomatic resources and political muscle to topple the
democratically-elected Palestinian government led by Hamas. In an April
2008 report, Vanity Fair</i> disclosed that an American talking point
memo emerged after a U.S. diplomat accidentally left it behind in a
Palestinian Authority building in Ramallah. The document echoed Rice’s
demand that Abbas dissolve the national unity government and take on
Hamas.<br><br>
Meanwhile, as detailed by Vanity Fair</i>, neo-con and NSC deputy
director Elliot Abrams was plotting a coup in Gaza against Hamas with
former Gaza security chief Muhammad Dahlan in the spring of 2007. It
included coordination with Israel, several Arab countries such as UAE and
Jordan, payments to Dahlan of over $30 million, the training of five
hundred security personnel, a campaign to destabilize Gaza, and a torture
program against Hamas members and other Islamists. <br><br>
Dahlan admitted as much to the magazine’s writer, David Rose, saying that
he told his American counterpart who was pushing for a confrontation with
Hamas, “If I am going to confront them, I need substantial resources. As
things stand, we do not have the capability.” <br><br>
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz</i> reported on June 7, 2007, that the
American administration had asked Israel to authorize a large Egyptian
arms shipment, including dozens of armored cars, hundreds of
armor-piercing rockets, thousands of hand grenades, and millions of
rounds of ammunition. Rose explains that Abrams’s plan stressed the need
to bolster Fatah’s forces in order to “deter” Hamas. According to a
senior administration official the “desired outcome” was to give Abbas
“the capability to take the required strategic political decisions (i.e.
fulfilling the Israeli conditions for a political settlement) and
dismissing the (Hamas led) cabinet, establishing an emergency cabinet.”
<br><br>
But Dick Cheney’s Middle East advisor, David Wurmser, admitted the failed
effort when he told the magazine, “It look(ed) to me that what happened
wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was
pre-empted (by Hamas) before it could happen.”<br><br>
The third effort, was mainly overseen by the Pentagon, and led by Lt.
General Keith Dayton. In a speech before the pro-Israel think tank, the
Washington Institute on Near East Policy (WINEP) in May 2009, he said
that the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator, which he has been
leading since December 2005, is “an effort to assist the Palestinians in
reforming their security services.” But according to the notes of a
meeting between Dayton and a Palestinian security chief in Ramallah in
early 2007, the real purpose of the mission was revealed when Dayton
said, “[W]e also need to build up your forces in order to take on Hamas.”
<br><br>
Since 2007, Congress has given Dayton $161 million dollars to implement
his plan. In addition, this year Congress appropriated an additional $209
million dollars to Dayton for the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years, to
accelerate his program after receiving high marks from Israeli security
chiefs. In the past year alone, more than 1,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad
members have been arrested and detained without trials, with many
tortured and killed under interrogation, by U.S.-trained Palestinian
security personnel in the West Bank. Amnesty International and many other
human rights organizations have condemned these actions and called for an
immediate halt to the human rights abuses of Palestinian detainees in PA
prisons.<br><br>
In his WINEP speech Dayton acknowledged this crackdown when he said, “I
don't know how many of you are aware, but over the last year-and-a-half,
the Palestinians have engaged upon a series of what they call security
offensives throughout the West Bank, surprisingly well coordinated with
the Israeli army.” He further admitted that during the 22-day Gaza war
last winter, U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces prevented
Palestinians in the West Bank from organizing mass protests against the
Israeli army, which ironically allowed for the reduction of the Israeli
military presence in the West Bank in order to redeploy those troops to
Gaza. Dayton added, “As a matter of fact, a good portion of the Israeli
army went off to Gaza from the West Bank think about that for a minute,
and the (Israeli military) commander (of the West Bank) was absent for
eight straight days.” <br><br>
After a failed coup and brutal military offensive failed to dislodge
Hamas from Gaza, the Israeli and U.S. strategy sought to intensify its
pressure against Hamas through a suffocating economic siege in Gaza,
massive security detentions in the West Bank, financial squeeze in the
region and political isolation internationally. Meanwhile, according to
several Hamas spokesmen, including the deposed prime minister Ismael
Haniyya in Gaza and political chief Khaled Meshal in Damascus, the main
obstacle to any national reconciliation with Fatah has been the detention
of hundreds of Hamas members and the PA’s security collaboration with the
military occupation overseen by Dayton.<br><br>
The next phase in this effort is to reinvent Fatah and present it as a
viable political alternative to Hamas and other resistance movements by
improving the living conditions in the West Bank in contrast to Gaza’s
devastating siege. But more important, the plan envisions a new Fatah
that is considered a reliable partner willing to accomodate Israel’s
conditions for a political settlement. The sixth Fatah conference and
accompanying elections was thus convened to dispose of its corrupt and
dysfunctional image. <br><br>
For over a year, the Central Committee, the highest body in its
structure, could not agree on many major issues, including where to hold
the conference (the final decision was to hold it in the occupied
Palestinian territories, which means that Israel has a veto on which
delegates from abroad would be allowed to participate). They also
squabbled about which delegates would be appointed to the conference,
which would determine the composition of the new leadership, as well as
the political program and the role of armed resistance against the
occupation. Abbas and his inner circle vetoed the decision of the
committee, and decided to hold the conference in Bethlehem, virtually
hand-picking all the participants to guarantee the election
outcome.<br><br>
Historically, the delegates to Fatah’s national conference were elected
or appointed by the Central Committee, but at least fifty-one percent
came from the military apparatus. Since most of the military wing has
either been disbanded or wanted by the Israelis, a large number of the
delegates to this conference were security personnel substituting for the
military ones. This fact guaranteed that the election results would be
skewed towards the security chiefs and their supporters. <br><br>
The original number of delegates was supposed to be around 700. Then it
increased to 1,250 but eventually mushroomed to 2,355. Less than ten
percent were actually indirectly elected by the virtue of their
positions, while the overwhelming majority was appointed by a small group
in Ramallah led mainly by Abbas and other power brokers such as Dahlan
and former West Bank security chief Jibreel Rujoub, who used to hang the
picture of former CIA director George Tenet above his desk alongside that
of Arafat. <br><br>
The number of Central Committee members was also increased from 21 to 23,
with 19 directly elected by the delegates. Abbas was to appoint four
members later, but he himself was chosen by acclamation, to avoid
embarrassment if he does not garner first place in a direct election. The
18 individuals who were elected at the end of the week-long conference
comprised four from the “old guard” who are considered close to Abbas,
and 14 new members, three of whom are former security chiefs who’ve been
close to the CIA. These include Dahlan, Rujoub, and Tawfiq Tirawi, a
former intelligence chief, who is currently heading a security training
academy in Jericho under the supervision of Gen. Dayton.<br><br>
From the outset, this conference was heavily tilted towards delegates
from the West Bank. Unlike previous conferences, Palestinians in the
Diaspora were hardly represented since Israel allowed only a few people
to enter from abroad. While Gaza’s population is equal to that of the
West Bank, less than 400 people were selected as delegates from Gaza,
while there were over three times as many delegates from the West
Bank.<br><br>
But most of the Gaza delegates did not even attend because Hamas
prevented them from leaving the strip, demanding in return that hundreds
of its detained members in the West Bank be freed by the PA, which it
summarily refused. In short, aside from Dahlan, who no longer lives in
Gaza, not a single elected person is from or lives in Gaza. This prompted
the entire Fatah leadership in Gaza, including former Central Committee
member Zakariya al-Agha, to resign en mass one day after the conference,
protesting not only the results, but also the whole election
process.<br><br>
Similarly, Fatah members abroad did not fare well. Only two people were
elected to the Central Committee, though more than two-thirds of
Palestinians (eight million) live outside of the Palestinian territories,
many in squalid refugee camps, with the “right of return”, considered a
hot- button issue in future negotiations, up in the air. On the other
hand, the overwhelming majority of the new members were either from the
West Bank or already living in Ramallah as part of Abbas’ closest aides,
affirming the American-led ‘West Bank first’ strategy.<br><br>
Some of the historic old guard who oppose Abbas’s political program such
as Central Committee secretary Farouk Kaddoumi or Hani Al-Hassan did not
even attend or run as candidates. Kaddoumi condemned the conference,
questioned its legitimacy, and went as far as accusing Abbas and Dahlan
of plotting with the Israelis to poison Arafat, eventually causing his
death. <br><br>
Other former members who ran as candidates were defeated and cried foul.
Former prime minister and negotiator Ahmad Qurai (Abu Alaa) questioned
the credentials of the delegates and the integrity of the election
procedure. When Abbas chief of staff, Tayeb Abdel-Rahim lost, he demanded
a recount and was eventually declared a winner, after the election
committee claimed he was actually tied for last. Many delegates,
especially female candidates, all of whom lost, criticized this blatant
cronyism. Nevertheless, several popular and “clean” candidates were able
to win a seat such as Marwan Bargouthi, who is serving five life
sentences in Israel, and Mahmoud Al-Aloul, a former mayor of
Nablus.<br><br>
As Palestinians watched this conference unfold, many were hoping that it
would be the beginning of a national reconciliation and the establishment
of a unity government. However, it seems that as a result of this
conference Fatah itself may further disintegrate, as its Gaza leaders and
Abu Alaa are threatening to launch a new faction called “Fatah
Awakening,” further increasing division and tension within the
Palestinian ranks.<br><br>
The next step in the strategy of the pro-American camp is to hold
presidential and legislative elections in the Palestinian territories
next January, hoping to present a rejuvenated Fatah as an alternative to
Hamas and other resistance movements. Jonathan Steele of the
Guardian </i>further exposed on June 22, 2007 the U.S. "hard
coup" of June ’07, as well as its political strategy. He detailed US
officials' conversations with several Arab regimes. These were, among
others, “ ‘to maintain President Abbas and Fatah as the center of gravity
on the Palestinian scene’, ‘avoid wasting time in accommodating Hamas,’
‘undermining Hamas’s political status,’ and ‘calling for early
elections.’” <br><br>
In the words of Gen. Dayton, the Palestinian personnel trained by the U.S
pledge after their graduation that they “were not sent here to learn how
to fight Israel, but were rather sent here to learn how to keep law and
order.” The main purpose of these security battalions is to halt any
resistance to or rejection of the occupation including non-violent means.
He then added that senior Israeli military commanders frequently ask him,
"How many more of these new Palestinians can you generate, and how
quickly?”<br><br>
Many of the questions, posed by ordinary Palestinians before the
conference, remain unanswered. What is Fatah’s political program in light
of the current Israeli intransigence and pre-conditions? What of national
reconciliation with other Palestinian factions and the establishment of a
national unity government? What is the role of resistance against the
occupation, the suffocating siege against Gaza, and most importantly, the
continuous collaboration with the Israeli security agencies and military
against their own citizens? <br><br>
These questions persist while Israel’s occupation and its brutal
policies, the expansion of settlements, the separation wall, the
detention of over 11,000 Palestinians, the expropriation of land, the
depopulation of East Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents, and the denial of
Palestinian refugees’ right of return, continue unabated.<br><br>
Simply put, the U.S. wants a Palestinian leadership that will answer
these questions in a way that is satisfactory to Israel. As one State
Department official said to Vanity Fair</i> regarding American objectives
in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, “[W]e care about results, and [we
support] whatever son of a bitch [w]e have to support. Dahlan was the son
of a bitch we happened to know best.” <br><br>
Esam Al-Amin</b> can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:alamin1919@gmail.com">alamin1919@gmail.com</a><br><br>
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