Fatah looks to younger leaders in bid for Palestine

RAMALLAH, West Bank-The once-dominant Fatah faction is looking for new blood as it struggles to draw popular support away from its Islamist rival Hamas and overcome diplomatic deadlock in Palestinian peace efforts with Israel.President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah is widely expected to convene select members this year, for the first time since 1989, for internal votes at which a "young guard" of grassroots leaders will try to win posts in two key decision-making bodies.Though no date or venue has been set, the conference is seen by Fatah stalwarts as a last chance to restore political viability to a faction in disarray since its shock loss of legislative elections to Hamas Islamists in January 2006."It could be either Fatah's wake, or the beginning of a Fatah renaissance," said Jibril Rajoub, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council (FRC), where, along with the Fatah Central Committee (FCC), younger activists are seeking a greater say.The conference would pit Rajoub and other Fatah firebrands who grew up fighting and then talking to Israeli occupiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip against veterans who founded the faction in 1965 but stayed in the privileged diaspora until the advent of limited Palestinian self-rule three decades later.The membership rolls say much. The FCC and FRC originally had 21 and 146 members respectively. Now there are 16 and 124, owing to the absence of a mechanism to replace those who died.Surviving FCC members are all over 65 years old. Two of them are bedridden. The "young guard", waiting for years in the wings, are getting no younger-many are in their 50s."We don't want members whose pockets are filled with medications. We want an infusion of new blood," said Qaddoura Fares, another Fatah reformist.
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As in the days of Noah....