Fatah Rules - Through the Tanzim By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 22 December 1998 The Al Fatah movement has been organizing most of the violent demonstrations held recently in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Performing the dirty work of getting thousands of activists into the street is the well-oiled political machine widely known as the "Tanzim," literally 'the organization,' which has become increasingly popular of late. Its members participated in the protest demonstrations against the American and British attacks on Iraq, and prior to that, the "Intifada of the Prisoners," as residents of the territories called the riots that erupted on the eve of President Bill Clinton's visit.Most of the public demonstrations against the settlements are also being orchestrated by Fatah's Tanzim, which is beginning to assume an increasingly consequential political role in the Palestinian street. Fatah is the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, and the Tanzim is a party-affiliated organization. It has branches in nearly every village and refugee camp in the territories, not to mention the larger cities. In Ramallah, for example, the Tanzim has ten neighborhood branches, as well as its main headquarters. The organization is headed by secretary-general Marwan Barghouti. The nominal heads of Al Fatah in the territories are Faisal Husseini (West Bank) and Zachriah el-Ara (Gaza), but both also hold positions as members of the PLO executive, and Marwan Barghouti carries out the lion's share of work in the various branches. Barghouti is from a large, well known family in the Ramallah region, which has been widely represented in politics as far back as the British Mandate. Barghouti cut his political teeth as head of the students' committee at Bir Zeit University. As one of the organizers of the Intifada, he was expelled by Israel, and spent several years in Tunis working at Arafat's side. Upon his return to the West Bank, he ran as a candidate for the Palestinian parliament and was elected as a delegate from the Ramallah region. In recent months, Barghouti has been viewed as challenging the authority of the Palestinian Authority's security mechanisms, thereby winning a special status for himself among the public at large. The organizations he has chosen to confront carry a great deal of weight in the Palestinian administration - including the police, military intelligence, general intelligence, preventive security, Force 17, and several other smaller units. The senior officers of these security organizations, and many of their rank-and-file members, are PLO veterans who returned with Arafat to the territories after long years of wandering through the Arab world. Many were born and raised in the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and, this is often their first time ever in the homeland. To a great extent, they are considered foreigners by native residents of the West Bank and Gaza, and the regime they have instituted here is the source of much anger and opposition among the public. In recent years, the leaders of the security organizations and Arafat's long-time associates, known as "the outsiders", have been accused of setting up a regime without regard for the law. Accusations are leveled by "the insiders" that they are using the same strong-arm tactics they learned in the neighborhoods of Beirut during Lebanon's chaotic 70's, known by Palestinian historiographers as "the Fakahani period" - a reference to the Beirut neighborhood where the PLO headquarters were situated. Fakahani was a focal point for ferocious, violent struggles between the rival militias. Against this background, one is able to appreciate the sense of frustration and bitterness felt by a large segment of the Palestinian public in the West Bank and Gaza - the "insiders" - and the tension between them and the "outsiders" Generally speaking, one can say that the Tanzim is the "insider" body that has formed in the territories, ostensibly to thwart the tyranny and corruption of the "outsider" bodies. Last year, the Tanzim membership arranged a series of weapons training sessions, thereby sparking much anger by ranking members of the Palestinian security establishment, who are concerned that the Tanzim plans to set up a partisan military arm that would contend with the existing security apparatus. Marwan Barghouti became the hero of the Tanzim two months ago, after leading a group of demonstrators in Ramallah against the military intelligence men headed by Musa Arafat, a relative of the Chairman and an out-and-out "outsider." His men had raided a Tanzim office in Ramallah, claiming that weapons were being hidden there. The military intelligence men opened fire on the demonstrators, killing a youth named Wasim Al-Tarifi, which in turn sparked a storm of discontent in the city. A commission of inquiry was quickly set up, but as usual in the Palestinian Authority, its findings have not been made public. This week, graffiti slogans were again being painted on Ramallah walls, denouncing the "filthy collaborators" in military intelligence. Last week, one of the most serious security incidents in the brief history of the Palestinian Authority took place. Mobs of demonstrators, mostly from the Balata refugee camp - a stronghold of Al Fatah and the Tanzim - stormed Palestinian police headquarters in Nablus, and tried to set it afire. They caused serious damage to police cars and other equipment, and pulled back only after being fired upon with live ammunition and suffering dozens of casualties. The Nablus riots were caused when Palestinian police prevented the demonstrators from charging on the settlers at Joseph's Tomb (in the framework of the "Intifada of the Prisoners" demonstrations). These are but two examples of incidents that reflect the increasingly bitter tension in the territories between the Palestinian governing bodies (headed by the military establishment) and the popular institutions, of which Al Fatah's Tanzim is the strongest and most important. Yasser Arafat knows full well how to exploit this tension to rein in the oppressive arbitrariness of his security establishment, but Arafat is assigning the Tanzim another role, as well. It is obvious that given the current status of the struggle with Israel, Arafat has no interest in terrorist incidents. These incidents echo the methods of "armed conflict" supported by Hamas, and they reinforce the Palestinian opposition and weaken the Authority's rule. Arafat and his men have also assured the entire world that they are making a 100 percent effort to prevent terror attacks. In terms of the Palestinian Authority, direct clashes between the IDF and the Palestinian policemen-soldiers are out of the question. These clashes can cause prodigious harm to the Palestinian security establishment, which would suffer heavy human and territorial losses. The only option left, then, is the organization of civil demonstrations against Israel, a la Intifada. The most appropriate body for organizing this sort of violent demonstration is the Tanzim; it has a broad popular base, and is simultaneously a trustworthy outlet for hostility to Israel and the anger of the Palestinian governing bodies |
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