Give peace talks a try, Abbas urges Fatah group

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday urged members of his aging and rivalry-ridden Fatah movement — meeting for the first time in two decades — to give peace talks with Israel a chance, despite many setbacks and few achievements.

Abbas hopes formal endorsement of his policies by Fatah will strengthen his hand against his Islamic militant Hamas rivals and Israel's hard-line prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Many of the nearly 2,000 delegates seemed ready to back Abbas, since his proposed political program is vague enough to get even hard-liners on board. "Armed struggle" against Israel, once a central Fatah tenet, was not formally dropped as an option, but emphasis shifted to negotiations and civil disobedience.

"There are no big differences within Fatah over the political platform," said Jamal Hwail, 38, who served seven years in an Israeli prison for membership in Fatah's violent offshoot, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

"The overwhelming majority of delegates is supporting the choice of peace and negotiations," he said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Fatah's program mattered less than its actions.

"The test will be after the conference, when a leadership with proper legitimacy is chosen," Barak said Tuesday, "and then we will see what that leadership brings to the negotiating table."

In the smoke-filled convention hall in Bethlehem, the buzz was about leadership elections, to be held Thursday. Abbas' job as party chief is not up for a vote, but hundreds are vying for 140 seats in two leadership bodies.

Yet the voting may not produce the sweeping change seen as necessary for cleaning up Fatah's corruption-tainted image and making the party more competitive with the more disciplined Hamas. Only about one-fourth of the Fatah delegates were elected by the rank and file, while the rest were picked by Abbas and a small committee.

Some 400 Gaza delegates couldn't attend at all, barred from travel by the territory's Hamas rulers.

In disarray typical of Fatah, organizers were still struggling Tuesday to find a way to let the Gazans participate in the voting.

The absence of the Gaza delegates highlighted the deepening Palestinian split between Hamas, which seized Gaza in 2007, and the Western-backed Abbas. A Palestinian unity deal is seen as a prerequisite for any peace agreement with Israel.