The Anticipated Fatah Movement Conference and Its Expected Role for Palestine..

1- In fact, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement "Fatah" has, since its inception in the mid-1960s, managed to be the indisputable center of the Palestinian national liberation movement. Fatah, with its unique structure, was not a traditional political organization built on a specific ideology or theory, such as being a nationalist or leftist organization. Rather, it was a national framework that included all Palestinians yearning for liberation and freedom, regardless of their ideological or political affiliations or geographical origins, including many Arabs who were not Palestinians.

In its early formation, Fatah included leftists/communists and nationalists, Syrian nationalists, and Islamists as well. It was a complex blend of ideas, some of which may have been contradictory, yet it represented all the shades of the Palestinian people, all under a national framework striving to achieve noble major goals that no two Palestinians would disagree on. That was Fatah; we used to humorously say among our Palestinian colleagues at the university, "the Palestinian citizen is 'necessarily' a Fatah member until proven otherwise".

Thus, Fatah was merely an effective national tool that shifted the struggle of the Arab Palestinian people from fragmentation and division and multiple loyalties, immersing them in Arab disputes. It gathered all the Palestinian people in a large national vessel that embraced the other on the basis of disagreement within the framework of unity. Consequently, Fatah formed the weight of the Palestinian national action, around which all other leftist and nationalist organizations, regardless of their differences, rallied. Fatah effectively gave the Palestine Liberation Organization its status and momentum as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

Fatah has been and remains the actual mother of the Palestinian liberation movement, and its true birth came after previous births that died in infancy. Even after Hamas emerged onto the Palestinian scene, Fatah remained the essence of Palestinian loyalty and belonging to its noble goals. Fatah continued to be the mainstay in the Palestinian Liberation Organization and later within the Palestinian Authority, and the backbone of the anticipated future Palestinian state that dozens of countries around the world recognize. President Mahmoud Abbas remains a Palestinian symbol despite the division witnessed in the Palestinian arena, serving as the encompassing cloak for all Palestinians, as the martyr Ismail Haniya described him in our meeting with him in the Arab Peace Group about five years ago. President Abbas is the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the President of the hoped-for State of Palestine, and the President of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

2- What prompted me to discuss the Fatah Movement and its status in the reality of life and the conscience of the Palestinian people is the fact that a conference for it is set to take place in mid this month in Ramallah. Fatah conferences, which are held at varying intervals and not annually, are greatly relied upon to produce outcomes that serve the pivotal phase the Arab Palestinian people are experiencing. Presently, Palestine and the Palestinian cause, in my estimation, are in their worst state. The current Gulf War, represented by the American-Israeli aggression against Iran, has relegated the Palestinian issue to the second or third place in international, regional, or even Arab attention. Gaza, as is known, is completely devastated and has been subjected to genocide at the hands of the Zionist criminals, and half of Gaza is practically occupied today. The West Bank is not faring any better, with daily land seizures for new settlements being established, and there is even a declared settlement plan to geographically isolate Jerusalem completely from the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. In Zionist understandings, Jerusalem effectively controls about 40% of the lands of the West Bank, and work continues relentlessly to tear apart the West Bank, making any future possibility for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza impossible. It is known that every Palestinian village today has a gate and Zionist guards preventing citizens from entering or exiting without permission, and the distance between Hebron and Ramallah, for example, which does not exceed 30 km, took me more than three hours to travel via the Palestinian route due to the occupation practicing discriminatory racism in the roads between the occupiers and the Palestinian citizens.

Moreover, the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron is now under Zionist control and is managed by the Ministry of Religions. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is effectively divided both temporally and spatially. Should things continue on this retreat, God forbid, we may someday hear that the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been demolished. In addition to the harassment that Palestinian Christians face in practicing their religious rituals.

3- On the ground, the Oslo Accords' division of the West Bank into (A/B/C) territories has been completely violated by the occupation, and Area C has become a targeted zone for fierce Zionist settlement and expulsion of its Arab residents. The same applies to Areas A and B, although they are administratively under the Palestinian Authority, where new settlements are announced daily and Arab residents are expelled, and their homes are bombed and demolished. The Oslo Accords have practically been abrogated by the occupation as if they did not exist, even though Oslo was an international agreement overseen by the United States itself. In summary, the Palestinian situation calls for an unprecedented qualitative movement to confront a fierce occupation with its unprecedented criminality.

4- This is the situation inside Palestine as I see it from the outside, where we cannot say that there is serious practical support for the Palestinian cause, except for the broad international diplomatic support. However, with the United States' overt and blind support for Israel, the resolutions of international legitimacy are practically stalled, and condemnation and denunciation statements come from a world that sees the crime but is powerless to act!

In light of this, the upcoming Fatah conference is required to take a historic stand, one that should first diagnose the current moment, its requirements, and challenges. This necessarily requires assembling the fragments of Fatah as individuals, institutions, and gatherings that have their own uniqueness yet consider themselves, in the broader framework, to be within the Fatah movement and possibly hold views outside the thinking of the National Authority and the currently existing institutions. This should be done without affecting the major strategies and goals of the Fatah movement; they are merely observations on the performance.

It is an invitation from a brother who is inhabited by love for Palestine, urging President Abbas specifically, along with Fatah leaders—particularly the historical ones—on the importance of inviting all Fatah members, whether inside or outside, to participate in the works of this conference, pushing towards the restoration of unity to the Fatah Movement, considering it, as it was before, the national vessel that embraces all Fatah members and all the sons of the Arab Palestinian people.

I believe that if this is accomplished, it will be a historic major step towards restoring Palestinian national unity, for the strong, cohesive, and united Fatah is capable of attracting all other Palestinian currents and organizations, including Hamas, to the Palestinian home, thereby formulating a phased Palestinian national project that responds to the challenges of the phase and halts the state of deterioration.

I believe that the subjective factor is fundamentally the influencing factor, and if the subjective factor demonstrates strength in any political project, then the objective external factor must respond to that. The situation would take on seriousness, making the image less grim and pessimistic, allowing the official Palestinian institution, whether the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Palestinian Authority, to regain its international and regional status, including its right to represent the Arab Palestinian people in President Trump's peace conference or in any future negotiations regarding a two-state solution.

Afterwards, Palestinians are required to be in one trench, formulating their strategy—be it in peace or in war—together within one strategic framework. Because the multiplicity of strategies and the variance of political orientations scatter efforts, akin to that long-lived sense of loss we have felt.
And may God, and the interest of Palestine and its future, guide our intentions.