THE concluding statement of Fatah’s seventh congress on Sunday night declared the Palestinian people have the right to popular resistance to end the Israeli occupation of their land and determine their future.
The statement, read at the conclusion of six days of Fatah congress held at the Muqata, the presidential headquarters in Ramallah, also underscored the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, to sovereignty, and to having an independent state of their own with East Jerusalem as its capital.
It called for ending internal division, and for achieving national unity. The communique also called for the convening of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian parliament in exile, within three months in order to reactivate the role of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the representative of all Palestinians at home and in the Diaspora.
The conference declared there will be no Palestinian state without the Gaza Strip. It also called for further Arab and international support to facilitate the national consensus government’s efforts to rebuild thousands of Palestinian homes destroyed during the several Israeli military wars against Gaza.
The conference also stressed the strategy of Fatah and the PLO to expand channels of dialogue with various sectors of Israeli society in a way that serves national liberation and chances of achieving just peace based on international resolutions, as well as a just solution for the refugees’ issue as per United Nations resolution 194 and as stated in the Arab Peace Initiative.
The conference also reiterated Fatah position of non- intervention in the internal affairs of any country, as well as strongly rejecting any interference in Palestinian internal affairs in order to safeguard the independent Palestinian decision. President Mahmoud Abbas told members at the closing session of the seventh Fatah congress on Sunday night that the greater struggle is still ahead.
‘When you go back to your towns, villages and camps tomorrow or the day after, remember at every moment that what you have accomplished in this conference is the lesser struggle and now we have a mission ahead of us and that is to fight the greater struggle.’
Fatah opened its conference on Tuesday in Ramallah in the presence of more than 1,400 members from all over the Palestinian areas and the Diaspora. On Saturday, the members elected 18 members to the Central Council and 80 to the Revolutionary Council.
Abbas said that the programme of the seventh congress included ‘detailed guidelines for the struggle of our movement and people in the next stage’. He said the comprehensive programme shows that Fatah is capable of leading the struggle and the national project for liberation and independence, explaining that the success of Fatah is ‘a victory for Palestine, its people, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and its factions and forces, and an important contributor to the Palestinian national struggle’.
The Palestinian leader stressed the importance of empowering youth and women and their inclusion in the movement’s decision making process. ‘I have promised you and I am keeping this promise that I will act along with my brothers and sisters in the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council and in the nearest time possible to adopt the needed and necessary changes to the movement’s internal bylaws in order to allow for the creative participation of women and the innovative performance of the younger generations.
‘Let us be specific and firm. The empowerment of the youth in our movement is not just a slogan or a requirement imposed by the situation, nor a necessity required in life or a task for our generation. Rather it is a fundamental requirement and an assurance that we cannot bypass for the sustainability of the movement, its tasks and the durability of its leadership role and victories,’ added Abbas.
l Nabil Abu Rudaynah, spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, said on Monday that a call by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, for a regional solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is an attempt to impose new preconditions and to invert the Arab Peace Initiative.
Rudaynah said in a statement that Israel’s preconditions, including demands for a Jewish state or continuing with illegal settlement activities, are only an attempt to evade requirements of the peace process and to undermine international efforts to salvage the political process and the two-state solution. He added that the two-state solution is in real danger due to Israeli practices and preconditions.
‘Any talk of inverting the Arab Peace Initiative means free normalisation with the Arab world without an Israeli pullout from all the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, and the rest of the occupied Arab territories’ he said. The presidential spokesman also stressed that the Palestinian leadership considers such an attempt to be a continuation of Israeli policies hostile to the two-state solution or to any other fair political process that would lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian with East Jerusalem and its holy places as its capital.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces detained at least 24 Palestinians overnight Sunday and early Monday morning during military and police raids carried out across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. A number of those arrested were targeted over alleged ‘incitement’ on social media, as well as several minors as young as nine years old, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.
At least six Palestinians were detained during overnight raids in occupied East Jerusalem, according to the head of the Jerusalem Committee for Prisoners’ Families, Amjad Abu Asab. The detainees were identified as Udayy Abu al-Saad and Muhammad Salah from Shufat refugee camp, Dawood al-Ghoul from Silwan, Jihad Amira, Amin Hamid from Sur Bahir, and Salih Mheisin from Issawiya.
According to Asab, the six young men were detained over allegations of ‘incitement’ on social media, joining scores of Palestinians who have been detained for social media activity, as Israeli authorities have alleged that a wave of unrest that swept the occupied Palestinian territory last October was encouraged largely by ‘incitement’.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) also noted that Israeli forces detained six children from East Jerusalem on Sunday, identified as Qusai Dirbas, 12, Anas Mahmoud, 12, Yaqoub Dabagh, 15, Yazan Nouri, 13, Jihad Hadad, 9, and Sulaiman Kanaan, 9.
Hadad and Kanaan were released following interrogation by Israeli intelligence. However, the rest remained in Israeli detention centres. In the West Bank district of Bethlehem, Israeli forces detained Saher Nafeth Mahmoud Thawabta.
Meanwhile, according to PPS, Israeli forces detained 27 year-old Abd al-Hakim Hamed from Ramallah at the Allenby Bridge crossing while he was attempting to return to the West Bank. In the southern West Bank, Israeli forces detained three Palestinians from the Hebron district.
According to the PPS, Israeli forces detained Atiya al-Zour al-Tamimi, 42, and his son Atiya, 20, while also detaining a minor, 16-year-old Anas Bilal Shaker al-Natsheh. According to Israeli media, al-Tamimi and his son were detained for allegedly possessing weapons, noting that Israeli forces, escorted by Israeli border officials, raided al-Tamimi’s home, and took him and his son to an unknown location.
In the West Bank district of Jericho, Israeli forces detained four brothers from al-Jiftlik village in the Jordan Valley. Three of the brothers were later released by Israeli authorities, identified by the PPS as Firas, Fadi, and Faris Jahalin, while the fourth brother Jomaa Jahalin was still being held in Israeli custody.
Meanwhile, in the north of the West Bank, Israeli forces detained three Palestinians from Jenin, according to the PPS, identified as Loay Ziyad Zajarna, Mahmoud Abu Ein Abu al-Rb, and Mousa Abdulsalam Kameel. Israeli forces conduct near nightly raids across the occupied Palestinian territory. According to UN documentation, the Israeli army carried out 252 military detention raids between November 15 and 28.
According to prisoners rights group Addameer, 7,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons as of October. The organisation estimates that 40 per cent of Palestinian men have been detained by Israel at some point in their lives.
