Many Israelis and their supporters just love to argue that they "have no partner for peace" on the Palestinian side. (And therefore that, with "deep regret", an Israeli government that wants nothing more to make peace, currently finds itself unable to do so... Cue the violins.)

I have generally given these pleadings short shrift. I mean, if an Israeli government came forward and put a good-faith and reasonable offer to make peace on the table, then there would certainly be a Palestinian party on the other side of the table ready and willing to negotiate.

Now, however, I think there is a non-trivial problem on the other side of the table. And no, at this point this is not mainly-- as many people argue-- Hamas, with its well-known obduracy on the "three preconditions" that's the obstacle, but rather Fateh.

(Regarding Hamas, Paul Scham and Osama Abu-Irshaid have a fascinating report, PDF, that came out recently that probes the evident political/diplomatic flexibility that coexists with ideological rigidity in its practice. I too shall be writing about this in the days ahead.)

Fateh's "problem", from the peacemaker's viewpoint, is not its ideological obduracy but rather its now near-total lack of any internal structure or ability to make decisions.

Fateh has never, really, had any ideology beyond a vague general commitment to "national liberation." And all of that commitment became rapidly wasted away after the majority of the movement's leaders skipped ahead of the queue of the other waiting Palestinian refugees and "returned"-- to Ramallah and Gaza-- in 1994. (I'm just now reading Sara Roy's brilliant 2007 book Failing Peace, in which she describes in exquisite and painful detail how that worked out in post-1994 Gaza.)

But at least, for its first few decades, Fateh still had some sort of an internal structure, as I described it (also in great detail) in my 1984 book on the PLO.

I've had lengthy conversations with Palestinian friends over the years as to whether Fateh still had any internal coherence as an organization after the killings of Abu Jihad (1988) and Abu Iyad (1991), or not. But anyway, after those two powerful Fateh "cardinals" were off the scene, Pope Arafat was soon able to rule the movement's whole political hierarchy like his personal fiefdom. He kept the movement together, kind of, until his death in November 2004.

His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, might be courted, funded, and fulsomely lauded in the west. But in Palestinian circles he is regarded as a figure either of great (Kerenskian) tragedy, or of that kind of piercing comedy that is used to hide deep and painful wounds.

In fact, these days Abbas is barely ever even in Palestine. When I was in Ramallah in March the saying was that the only times he ever goes there is when he has to receive visiting foreign dignitaries there. Day-to-day administration of the PA's uber-bloated--and nearly wholly impotent-- bureaucracy is left to Salam Fayyad, a decent enough man at the personal level (like Abbas), but one who has no political legitimacy at all in the eyes of most Palestinians. Fayyad was recently re-installed as PM by Abbas in a completely unconstitutional way-- and this after Abbas's elected as President had anyway run out.

Fayyad is not a member of either Hamas or Fateh. He has no record as a leader or activist in the Palestinians' decades-long movement for national liberation. He spent many years in the US and is a generally well-regarded financial manager.

Fayyad, however, is not the problem. The problem is, as I've written a number of times recently including here, is that Fateh currently has no functioning internal structure. That is, it has no mechanism for mediating and resolving the many tensions that inevitably arise within any large political movement; and it therefore has no mechanism at all for reaching significant decisions at the leadership level.

This makes diplomatic progress very hard indeed-- for everyone who wants to see such progress happen. It makes it hard for the Americans, Europeans, and Arab countries. It also makes it very hard for the Hamas leadership, whose members know they urgently need to find a way to work with Fateh if their goal of participating in effective peace diplomacy is to be met.

Hamas, by the way, does have a coherent internal decisionmaking mechanism, despite the numerous, extremely taxing logistical problems it has to overcome in maintaining it. Most recently, in April or May, Hamas held internal leadership elections that generated an 18-person (I think, an 18-man) "Political Bureau", six of whose members represent the West Bank, six Gaza, and six the Palestinian diaspora.

Ah, and then there's Fateh.

As Mouin Rabbani laid out with great clarity in this short paper in March last year, Fateh has not held a meeting of it highest decisionmaking body, the General Conference, since 1989. That's right, 1989: two years before the Madrid conference and four years before Oslo.

Um, earth to Abbas! Quite a lot has happened since 1989!

Okay, he and the other people who are generally thought of as composing Fateh's "leadership" do know this. I say, "generally thought of", because of course since 1989 Abu Said, Abu Iyad, Arafat, and a number of other members of Fateh's historic leadership have all died.

So who constitutes "the leadership" now? Who has the power to convene the General Conference-- that is to decide such basic matters as its date, venue, and participation list?

Who knows?

In his March 2008 paper, Rabbani wrote,

If Fatah fails to hold the General Conference--and in the process to make the necessary leadership reforms and formulate a meaningful national program--in 2008, it is probably finished as a movement.

Well, guess what. Here we are, June 2009, and... Some weeks ago, an announcement was made that the 6th GC would definitely be held in Bethlehem on August 4-- but now that plan too has been challenged by significant leadership figures within Fateh.

Ma'an reported today that:

Leading Fatah figure Muhammad Jihad has denied reports that the movement's sixth general congress will take place on 4 August in Bethlehem.

... Jihad rejected holding the long-delayed Fatah conference anywhere in the West Bank, since it would be unreasonable to hold the meeting "under the eyes and the guns of the Israeli occupation." He said there are "no guarantees" that Israel would not assassinate some of the Palestinian officials at the conference.

However, Jihad said, the Fatah officials meeting in Jordan considered Gaza as a possible venue for the conference, if there is a political reconciliation with Hamas. If the Hamas-Fatah talks fail, he said, other options would be considered.

Ma'an also carries this report today, to remind us that even inside the West Bank there are still considerable differences among the different factions of Fateh.

My bottom line in this: Yes, there is a big challenge involved in winning Fateh-Hamas reconciliation. But there's an even bigger challenge in winning any kind of coherence to Fateh's decisionmaking.

Not many people in the west have even identified this problem yet. There seems to be just a quite unchallenged set of lazy assumptions about Fateh, such as:

1. Fateh is a secular, modernizing movement that is in many ways "just like us" and therefore easy to deal with;


2. Fateh's leaders are ready and eager for a diplomatic deal with Israel-- indeed, so ready and eager that they'll be ready to make deep concessions on all or most of the core issues (unlike Hamas);


3. Hamas might still be controlling Gaza, but Fateh remains more popular in the West Bank, which has about twice as many votes as Gaza;


4. Mahmoud Abbas is an able representative of, and leader of, his people; and


5. Fateh actually does exist as a coherent and easily unifiable political movement.

In the west, there has also been a tendency to think that if Fateh and Abbas are in political trouble, then the simple answer is "more money". That has been the thinking behind the big project pursued by Washington since Hamas's 2006 electoral victory, to pump huge chunks of money into the Abbas-led administration in Ramallah while cooperating tightly with Israel in starving Gazans of access to any economic resources at all.

Guess what. The project has seriously backfired. The massive infusion of US-mobilized "aid" money into Ramallah has not increased Fateh's popularity in the West Bank (or Gaza.) Just the opposite.

And at the same time, by directly feeding Fateh's long-existing tendencies to nepotism, clientilism, and other forms of corruption this large-scale aid flow has contributed directly to the further disintegration of the movement's internal decisionmaking structures.

(Sara Roy previewed in her book how some of that happened during the 1990s infusion of western aid into the PA, too. Definitely, a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how this stuff works on the ground.)

Well, anyway, there you have the problem: Fateh's internal disintegration and the very deleterious effects this is now having on the prospects for forward movement in the peace process. I can't immediately propose a solution. Fateh does still represent something, though it's impossible to find out what that might be beyond an elaborate and creaky patronage machine. (At this point I'm not prepared to easily concur with the judgment Mouin made last year, that Fateh is still "the spinal cord of the Palestinian national movement." Maybe he and I should discuss that some more.)

But this is a problem for everyone, that is far from adequately addressed even in this otherwise reasonable recent commentary from Nathan Brown.

Obviously no outsiders-- and certainly not Americans-- can "solve" Fateh's massive internal problems for them. I think what outsiders who want to see the current peace diplomacy succeed can do is create the kind of diplomatic context in which Fateh's problems either become minimized, or become somewhat sidelined. Preferably both.

This might, for example, be yet another great argument for holding a new, completely authoritative all-parties peace conference, like the one the US and the Soviet Union (remember them?) co-hosted in Madrid in 1991.

At Madrid, remember, it was still a big problem for the US (and Israel) to deal with the PLO... But through adept pre-conference diplomacy Secretary of State Jim Baker won agreement for the Palestinians to be represented by individual, politically unaffiliated Palestinians of excellent reputation, and within the context of a "joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation" that was constructed as a bow to Yitzhak Shamir's refusal to deal directly with any "Palestinians".

I think some such formula could work now. There's no point in wasting much more time on trying to fine-tune the terms of a Fateh-Hamas reconciliation, let alone untangle the morass of problems that beset Fateh's internal structures. Focus instead on convening the authoritative conference, with a representation of ideologically unaffiliated Palestinians of excellent reputation. (I could even suggest some names.) Get the forward momentum... then see who comes along and see what else might flow from a forward-moving peace negotiation.

That future might or might not include a Fateh movement. (Or three, or a dozen Fateh movements, who knows?) But what we need now, five months into Obama's presidency and Mitchell's mission, is some real, problem-solving forward diplomatic movement.

**
Read 'Just World News' with Helena Cobban here.