Atta Abu Rmeileh has been languishing in an Israeli prison for two weeks now. The local Fatah secretary of the Jenin area was arrested on November 1. A few hours before, this senior member of the party governing the occupied West Bank had called on Palestinians to go on a general strike. In a video posted online, he was standing alongside two local leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Israeli army did not tolerate their show of unity, following the attack carried out by the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7.
Abu Rmeileh is a combat veteran who laid down his arms after the second Intifada in 2005. He sincerely believes in peaceful resistance and a negotiated solution to the conflict, the two guiding principles of his old friend Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). For over two years, he had been trying to bridge the gap between armed Fatah insurgents in Jenin and Abbas, whose security services collaborate with Israel. But after October 7, Abu Rmeileh gave up. "Peaceful resistance has failed. The war has started and it won't stop," he confided bitterly before his arrest. He feared that Abbas would soon have no choice but to "dissolve the Palestinian Authority."
'You can't eradicate an idea'
These words have been echoing through every Fatah branch over the past month. A groundswell has begun to engulf this rudderless party, undermined by corruption and power struggles, and torn between those scraps of sovereignty that Israel still concedes it and the temptation to take up arms. In response, Abbas imposed silence on the party. He alone has spoken out to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and a political solution to the crisis: the creation of a Palestinian state in the enclave and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The Arab world's oldest leader, Abbas, 87, was elected in 2005 for what was intended to be a four-year term. He has earned US President Joe Biden's attention for the first time. While Washington supports the Israeli war effort, it has called on its ally to entrust Gaza – once freed from the Hamas yoke – to a reinforced PA, and then to renew negotiations for the creation of a Palestinian state. Yet these plans seem like a pipe dream to many Fatah leaders, who fear the total destruction of the enclave as the Israeli operation drags on for unending months.
These officials are aware of Hamas's immense popularity. They don't believe that Israel can annihilate the Islamist movement, as it has promised, or prevent it from being reborn. "You can't eradicate an idea," noted one worried minister, who wished to remain anonymous. They conclude that Fatah has no choice but to renew ties with its fraternal rival, following the 2007 civil war that tore the two parties apart.
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