Fateh conference update #2

Al-Quds al-Arabi has some good, substantial news articles about the continuing saga of preparations for Fateh’s 6th general conference, due to open tomorrow in Bethlehem.
It seems the conference is still on track to proceed, despite continuing problems regarding both the attendance and the credentialing of the delegates from Gaza.
This QA report tells us that the meeting of the Revolutionary Council (the medium-level body that stands between the Conference and the Central Committee was postponed from yesterday evening to this evening. It also has a host of other details about conference preparations.
Regarding the attendance of the Gaza delegates, there have been reports that both Hamas and Israel have (separately) prevented the travel of these delegates from Gaza to Bethlehem. I don’t think this would actually be a deal-breaking issue on its own– modern videochat/videoconference technology could certainly enable the delegates to take part remotely, though of course all these communications would be visible to everyone in the spy business, including of course the Israelis. But who is Fateh kidding? Of course their conference, like their movement, is already deeply penetrated by the Shin Beth.
Anyway, they already have provision for the ‘involvement’ in some form or another, of more than 200 of Fateh’s longstanding group of prisoners inside Israel’s (smaller) jails, who won’t actually be making it to Bethlehem. So what’s the big deal about whether the Gaza delegates can physically travel to Bethlehem or not?
That same QA report says that reliable Fateh sources in Bethlehem say there are some Gaza-origined Fateh people now in Bethlehem/ the West Bank who are credentialed for the conference– and they spell out that this is a reference to Muhammad Dahlan and his supporters– but who are afraid that if the conference goes ahead they could be called to account for the disastrous failure Fateh suffered at the hands of Hamas in Gaza in June 2007… and that if this looks likely to happen, the Dahlan group would prefer to call the conference off on the pretext of the non-attendance of the delegates who are still resident in Gaza, rather than go ahead with it…
Yes, wheels within wheels within wheels there. I guess that’s what happens when you try to run a political “movement” that has no functioning mechanisms of internal accountability except the sloshing around of huge amounts of US-mobilized money.
Xinhua, meanwhile, reported out of Gaza a short while ago that, Ibraheem Abu al-Najja, described as a Fatah leader in Gaza, told their reporter that,

“We have agreed to go ahead with holding the general conference without Fatah members of Gaza and to append them to the central committee and the revolutionary council after two months,” he told Xinhua.
Abu al-Najja had been in the West Bank but has just returned to the Gaza Strip “to join the Fatah people who were banned from heading for the West Bank.”

I don’t know if that means they’ll go ahead with the video-conference option, or not.
This whole business about who is prevented by Hamas from going to Bethlehem, who is prevented by Israel from going, and of course the continuing Israeli bans on just about everyone else’s travel into or out of Gaza, and on the travel to East Jerusalem of any West Bank Palestinians (or those visiting the West Bank for the conference) is a sort of very vivid and physicalized representation of the degree to which ll three of these parties can hold each other hostage….
Ah, but I don’t notice that anyone is holding any Israelis hostage in that picture, except for the one young Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was captured while he was on a military operation just over three years ago.
So: one Israeli held hostage by Palestinians versus millions of Palestinians held hostage by Israel. That is a good representation of the balance of power on the ground… And therefore, a strong reminder, if such be needed, that just “leaving the two parties to work out the details of a final peace agreement on their own,” as so many people have suggested could only ever lead to an outcome that is highly coercive, unjust, and unstable, and thus an absolute non-starter…
Luckily, there is another basis for securing the peace agreement. That is international law, the resolutions and principles of the United Nations, and the full weight of the international community. So let’s get ahead and use all those tools as soon as possible!
It would help a lot, of course, if Fateh and Hamas could meanwhile speedily reach some kind of an agreement on how they’re going to work together, including in authorizing and monitoring the performance of a Palestinian negotiating team.
(Update #1, in case you missed it, was here.)