Abu Mazen's successor?
Barry Rubin points out that one of the key results of last week's Fatah conference is that a successor to Abu Mazen has been named. His name is Muhammad Ghaneim and the odds of him making peace with Israel may be even worse than the same odds regarding Abu Mazen. Fatah has apparently chosen as its next leader a man who rejects the 1993 Israel-PLO (Oslo) agreement and the ensuing peace process. Muhammad Ghaneim was so passionately opposed even to negotiating with Israel that he refused to go to the Gaza Strip and West Bank with Arafat in 1994.Change anyone?
He also refused to participate in the PA as long as it was involved in the peace process.
So can Ghaneim participate now because he has changed his mind, or rather - as seems more likely - that Fatah no longer takes the peace process seriously? This situation is equivalent to Russia picking a hard-line Stalinist as its next leader.
Why did two-thirds of the delegates vote for him? Ghaneim got 33 percent more votes than Barghouti, who not only has a personal base of support but the chic of being a prisoner.
GHANEIM IS not that personally popular. I speculate that he's the chosen candidate of hard-line Fatah chief Farouk Kaddoumi, a man close to Syria's radical dictatorship, who is popular but too old to run himself.
The key reason is that Abbas and his colleagues told delegates to vote for Ghaneim. Why? Part of the answer might be that he has a good personal relationship with Ghaneim. In addition, Ghaneim seems able to bridge the two groups which make up the Fatah leadership: radicals who thought Arafat too moderate, and hardliners who supported Arafat and now back Abbas.
Finally, the West Bank warlords and political barons find it hard, as so often happens in politics, to give up their own ambitions and accept one of their rivals as chief. It's easier to accept an outsider who hasn't been in the West Bank at all and with whom one hasn't personally quarreled or competed. Abbas may well retire in the next year, and Ghaneim would then become leader of the PA, PLO and Fatah, too. This is incredibly important, far more so than the minor changes which are monopolizing debate over the meeting.
No wonder Abu Mazen says that it's inevitable that Fatah will talk to Hamas but not inevitable that they will talk to Israel.
Will the West continue to shower Fatah with money if Ghaneim becomes the head of Fatah? Bet on it.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:49 PM
1 Comments:
Fatah has no need to change... the West will reward it anyway.
What could go wrong indeed
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