(CNSNews.com) – The “moderate,” U.S.-backed Palestinian faction Fatah on Tuesday was awaiting the results of an election of a new generation of leaders, after adopting a platform that retains the right to use violence to achieve its ends and endorses a terrorist organization as the party’s “military wing.”
 
The position of Mahmoud Abbas, who is both Fatah leader and chairman of the Palestinian Authority, was left intact, with party members approving his continued leadership with a show of hands.
 
Critics say the platform emerging from Fatah’s first congress in two decades spells the end of any hopes that an agreement ending the long running Israeli-Arab conflict may be reached in the years ahead.
 
Israeli government ministers from across the coalition’s political spectrum expressed concern.
 
On the right, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told visiting U.S. lawmakers that the platform, along with the split between Fatah and its Islamist rival, Hamas, buried “any possibility of reaching a comprehensive agreement with the Palestinians in the coming years.”
 
On the left, defense minister and Labor leader Ehud Barak called the conference rhetoric “disturbing and not promising.”
 
And the Likud’s Yuli Edelstein, who is minister of information, said if the platform is to be believed, “Fatah is just as extremist as Hamas – and that’s worrying because it damages the prospects of reaching a compromise with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.”
 
Meeting in P.A.-ruled Bethlehem at a time when their organization has lost significant ground to Hamas, Fatah members sought to shore up Fatah’s reputation as the vanguard of the struggle and to refute Hamas’ charges that it was compromising on key Palestinian demands.
 
While the organization said it was committed to pursuing a comprehensive peace deal, it also reiterated “the Palestinian people’s right to resistance to occupation in all its forms.” (Another translation put it, “the right to resist the Israeli occupation by all possible means.”) A number of delegates confirmed to Arab media that this meant the option of armed struggle remained open.
 
Far from repudiate the use of terrorism, the congress applauded a delegate who took part in an infamous 1978 bus hijacking which cost the lives of 38 Israelis, 13 of them children, and praised as a “martyr” a female terrorist slain during the attack, Dalal Mughrabi.
 
“We have in our midst the hero Khaled Abu Usba, hero of the operation led by the shahida [martyr] Dalal Mughrabi,” senior Fatah member and former P.A. prime minister Ahmed Qurei told the gathering, to applause. “We salute him and welcome him – and the hero, the shahida Dalal. All the glory! All the glory! All the glory! All the sisters here are Dalal’s sisters.”

The episode was broadcast on P.A. television on August 4, the opening day of the congress, and translated by Palestinian Media Watch.
 
The congress also endorsed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – a militant gang which some Fatah and P.A. members in the past sought to distance from Fatah – as the organization’s military wing.
 
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, operating alone or in collaboration with other factions, has been responsible for the deaths of more than 130 Israelis, most of them civilians, in at least 25 attacks, including suicide bombings, since 2001.
 
“There is a shift in Fatah toward confrontation with the occupation [Israel], which is producing time-limited strategies for peace,” senior Fatah member and P.A. envoy to Lebanon Abbas Zaki told the Palestinian news agency Maan.
 
Jerusalem, refugees
 
The platform adopted in Bethlehem upheld the “right of return” of Arab refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants.
 
(During the conflict in the run up to and following Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Arabs left the area – an estimated 580,000 according to Israel; an estimated 914,000 according to Palestinian and U.N. figures. Today, the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees says there are 4.6 million, almost two million in Jordan.)
 
Israeli governments have long argued that the arrival of so many Palestinians would permanently alter the demographics of the Jewish state.
 
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in a speech in June the refugees could be accommodated in a future Palestinian state and/or neighboring Arab countries, pointing out that the newly independent state of Israel had successfully absorbed “hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were uprooted from their homes” around and after 1948.
 
Fatah’s new platform declared Jerusalem the “eternal capital of Palestine” and said “Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem returns [to the Palestinians], devoid of settlements and settlers.” It did not distinguish between eastern and western parts of the city, which Israeli governments on the left and right have stated will remain Israel’s undivided capital.
 
In his speech in June, Netanyahu said Jerusalem would remain Israel’s unified capital, and that Palestinian refugees could not be settled within the final borders of Israel.
 
He also laid out two main conditions for a future Palestinian state – “public, binding and sincere” Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national homeland for the Jewish people; and a requirement that the envisaged state be demilitarized.
 
“The fact is that in hopes of drawing support away from Hamas, Fatah is increasingly and publicly drawn to its radical roots,” the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Policy said in reaction to the Fatah platform.
 
“And the reality for American and European policy makers who think they have the answer to the conflict, is that Fatah, no less than Hamas, believes in Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea and ‘void’ of Jews,” it said.
 
U.S. House Majority leader Steny Hoyer, who is leading the group of lawmakers who met with Lieberman, said some of the rhetoric at the Fatah conference “was very unfortunate in the sense that it re-instilled a sense of confrontation and resistance, instead of being more positive and talking about what steps were needed to move forward.”
 
Hoyer was due to meet with Abbas this week, and said he would urge him change the rhetoric and drop preconditions for negotiations.
 
Arafat’s death
 
Another congress decision that caused dismay in Israel was one accusing the Israeli government of being responsible for the death of Yasser Arafat, the Fatah, PLO and P.A. leader and terrorist who died in a French hospital, aged 75, on November 11, 2004.
 
Among the many rumors have circulated since then are claims that he died of AIDS, and that Israel poisoned him. The congress adopted a proposal calling for the establishment of a committee to investigate his death.
 
A French foreign ministry spokesman confirmed on Monday said Arafat’s medical family had been turned over to his family after his death in a military hospital in a suburb of Paris.
 
The spokesman declined to comment on the Fatah congress’ allegations.
 
Edelstein, Israel’s information minister, called the resolution “weird” and said it was aimed at justifying the ongoing armed struggle against Israel.
 
Elections
 
Abbas, who succeeded Arafat as Fatah leader and P.A. chairman, was not challenged for the top position during the congress.
 
On Tuesday, the more than 2,300 delegates were awaiting the result of an election for the organization’s two main governing bodies. Ninety-six candidates were running for 18 positions up for election in the 21-member decision-making Central Committee, and 617 members were vying for 80 places on the 120-member Revolutionary Council, a body which includes Palestinians living abroad.
 
Counting of the votes was delayed, reportedly to allow several hundred Fatah members who had been unable to attend – because Hamas refused to allow them to leave the Gaza Strip – to cast ballots by phone.
 
There were signs early Tuesday that younger members had swept the election for the Central Committee positions.