[Marxism] The Angry Arab on the Palestinian election

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Counterpunch Weekend Edition
January 28 / 29, 2006

And What is Hamas?
The Demise of the Fatah Movement

By ASAD ABU KHALIL

This was destined to happen. The Fatah movement (nobody knows when it was
founded and Lebanese writer Michel Abu Jawdah found, when interviewing the
founders, that they gave different dates as to when it was actually
founded--sometimes in late 1950s), was destined to fall. It was so closely
linked to the personality and leadership of Arafat; it fell with him, it
seems. Arafat did not want a movement that would institutionalize
Palestinian struggle for independence, or to husband their popular
resources. Instead, he institutionalized corruption through the PLO and
Fatah structures.

I never ever admired Fatah as a movement, or its rhetoric, particularly its
rhetoric, not to mention what it did under Arafat, who ordered the murder
of a cartoonist, Naji Al-Ali, I shall never forget, and who agreed to the
humiliating conditions of Oslo, and who, with Sadat and Saudi Arabia did
the most to undermine Palestinian struggle for liberation.

But there were many decent and honest members of Fatah that I liked and
admired. One of them remains a friend to this day. He tried to recruit me
back when I was in high school: he recruited a few at my high school, and
he was frustrated at my strong opposition to Fatah. He now lives in the US,
and maintained a friendship. He was a clean Fatah member, and not like the
dirty Dahlan, Rajjub, and Abu Mazen.

In Lebanon, we would refer to Fatah as a collection of dakakin (shops); you
would find many shops in Fatah under `Arafat: a Soviet Marxist shop (headed
by Abu Salih); a Saudi shop (headed by Al-Hasan brothers); a Maoist shop
(headed by Munir Shafiq-he now is a Muslim fundamentalist); a Ba`thist shop
(headed by Faruq Al-Qaddumi); a Muslim Brotherhood Shop (headed by Abu
Jihad); an Iraqi regime shop (headed until his defection by Abu Nidal); a
Jordanian mukhabarat shop (headed by Abu Az-Za`im); an American shop
(headed by Abu Hasan Salamah); and on and on. Abu Mazin did not have a shop
of his own; he just did not command a following to warrant a shop. He was
close to the Saudi shop though. He just followed Arafat, took orders, and
got money from Gulf countries. Arafat (especially through Khalid Al-Hasan)
succeeded in corrupting Fatah, and consequently corrupted the PLO, all for
the purspose of preserving his powers.

The infusion of Gulf oil money brought millions to the movement, and Arafat
gave monthly stipends to various PLO groups not only to keep them around,
but to use them against one another, and to use the leverage of money to
get his way. He saved the DFLP (after its defection from PFLP) only to
curtail the rising powers of the PFLP at the time.

full: http://www.counterpunch.com/khalil01292006.html


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