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Fatah congress to keep "armed struggle" option
Mon Aug 3, 2009 9:23pm EDT
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By Mohammed Assadi
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah will endorse a two-state solution but keep the option of "armed struggle" with Israel, when the movement holds a congress on Tuesday, officials said.
More than 2,000 delegates convening for the first time in 20 years will seek in three days of talks to adopt a program that distinguishes Fatah from Islamist Hamas which has rejected Western demands to renounce violence and recognize Israel.
But in its bid to rejuvenate and restructure, Fatah members meeting in the West Bank town of Bethlehem have no plans to revise a founding charter which, like that of Hamas, calls for the Jewish state's destruction, Fatah officials said.
The charter of Fatah, a movement founded under by the late Yasser Arafat in 1965, calls for armed struggle "until the Zionist entity is wiped out and Palestine is liberated."
Fatah's rules say it has to hold a congress every five years. But Arafat, who avoided challenges to his authority, kept postponing the convention, citing changing circumstances such as the signing of the Oslo accords with Israel in the 1990s.
A draft of Fatah's new program calls for new forms of resistance such as civil disobedience against the expansion of Jewish settlements and a barrier Israel says is for security, but which Palestinians denounce as a land grab.
Crucially, the draft leaves open the option of "armed struggle" if peace talks with Israel fail and does not rule out a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if peace negotiations remain stalemated.
Talks with Israel have stalled for months and Abbas has said they may resume only if Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu freezes settlement building as called for by a U.S., European and United Nations-backed peace plan.
Speaking to delegates on the eve of the congress, Abbas said: "We hope that our neighbors will allow us to reach to peace to build the future of our state that lives next to their state in security and peace."
NO DISCUSSION
Nabil Shaath, a veteran member of Fatah's ruling Central Committee, told Reuters that the charter "cannot be changed."
Azzam al-Ahmad, another senior Fatah leader, said: "It will remain as is. It won't be subject to discussion."
"We have the right to practice all forms of national struggle," Ahmad said. "We are in the phase of national liberation and we have the right to use all means in the fight to end the occupation until we establish the state."
Palestinian analysts said Fatah, seeking to infuse its top ranks with new blood, would find it hard to compete with Hamas if it amended its charter before reaching any deal with Israel to establish an independent Palestinian state.
Fatah has been struggling to regain the dominancy it enjoyed for decades before losing a 2006 parliamentary election to Hamas which seized control of coastal Gaza by force a year later, effectively splitting Palestinian loyalties. Continued...
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