What is at stake as Fatah holds its 8th general congress?

EXPLAINER

Delayed for years, the legislature is seen arsenic a pivotal infinitesimal for Palestinian enactment consolidation amid warfare and succession talk.

The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) is convening its eighth wide legislature connected Thursday, May 14. While officially a regular organisational event, the gathering is taking spot astatine 1 of the astir volatile junctures successful Palestinian history.

Here is what you request to cognize astir the legislature and wherefore it is being described arsenic a “quiet battle” for the movement’s future.

What is the Fatah General Congress?

The legislature is Fatah’s highest decision-making body. According to its interior bylaws, it should conscionable each 4 years to elite its apical leadership: the 18-member Central Committee and the 80-member Revolutionary Council.

This 8th legislature was primitively owed successful 2021 but has been delayed for 5 years. The erstwhile meeting, the 7th congress, took spot successful 2016. Approximately 2,580 members are participating crossed 4 locations – Ramallah, Gaza, Cairo, and Beirut – to flooded the geographical fragmentation of the movement.

Why is determination speech of ‘engineering’ the outcomes?

Critics and analysts suggest that the enactment has cautiously curated the database of delegates to guarantee a pre-determined result. By “flooding” the legislature with much than 2,500 members – galore of whom are elder officials successful the Palestinian Authority (PA) information and civilian services – the enactment is accused of prioritising loyalty implicit antiauthoritarian debate.

“There is unprecedented contention regarding the enactment criteria,” Ahmed Rafiq Awad, president of the al-Quds Center for Political Studies, told Al Jazeera. “The extremity seems to beryllium controlling the results to debar immoderate ‘leaps into the unknown’ and establishing a caller signifier escaped of provocative voices.”

Is this astir succession for President Mahmoud Abbas?

While not explicitly connected the agenda, the question of who volition yet win 90-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas looms large. Analysts spot the legislature arsenic a determination to weaken antiauthoritarian mechanisms and instal a ellipse of loyalists successful cardinal positions to negociate the transition.

However, Nabil Amr, a seasoned Fatah person and erstwhile minister, told Al Jazeera that specified “engineering” whitethorn person a constricted interaction connected the broader Palestinian stage. “The epoch wherever Fatah decides who its campaigner is, and that idiosyncratic automatically becomes president, is over,” Amr said. “The movement’s lasting among the nationalist has declined, and immoderate aboriginal person indispensable look from a wide nationalist election, not conscionable a factional meeting.”

How does the warfare successful Gaza power the congress?

The legislature meets arsenic the Gaza Strip remains nether onslaught successful Israel’s devastating warfare and the West Bank faces systematic annexation. There is simply a increasing planetary request for a “revitalised” PA to negociate the “day after” successful Gaza.

Experts are sceptical that the legislature volition nutrient a breakthrough governmental strategy. “The recently elected enactment volition look a severely hard governmental situation,” Awad noted. “Gaza is besieged, PA funds are drying up and the two-state solution is being dismantled connected the ground. Can this caller enactment renew its legitimacy done the field? The world suggests otherwise.”

Has Fatah transformed from a liberation question into a bureaucracy?

A cardinal taxable among critics is that Fatah has been “swallowed” by the Palestinian Authority. Because the question has managed a monolithic bureaucratic strategy for 30 years, its enactment criteria person shifted from revolutionary activism to “functional loyalty.”

“Everyone attending this congress, without exception, receives a wage from the authority,” Amr pointed out. Awad added that the candidates present correspond a “bureaucratic mentality” alternatively than the field-oriented tone of the movement’s founders, making it hard for Fatah to reinvent its nationalist liberation role.

What lies up for Fatah’s youth?

For the younger procreation of Fatah, the spread betwixt the ageing enactment and the grassroots is widening. The connection from reformers is that the movement’s endurance depends connected returning to the people.

“Instead of exhausting itself successful an interior conflict for positions, Fatah indispensable look toward the ballot box,” Amr concluded. “The existent measurement of powerfulness is winning the spot of the Palestinian radical successful a wide election, not securing a spot successful a closed-room assembly.”