Palestinian Spin Cycle

Fatah held elections today to fill slots in its 21-member Central Committee.

The Palestinian Fatah movement elected a group of younger leaders to its top council on Tuesday, bolstering its credentials as the West's best hope for Mideast peace, according to preliminary voting results.

Fatah's first conference in two decades, while plagued by the movement's characteristic wrangling and intrigue, appeared to rejuvenate the pre-eminent Palestinian organization at a critical moment, weeks before President Barack Obama is to unveil a comprehensive plan to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Unofficial results indicated that Fatah's younger generation won a majority of seats on the Central Committee, said polling officials, who declined to be named ahead of the official announcement.

Rejuvenate Fatah? Really? The photo accompanying the AP report shows none other than mass murderer Marwan Barghouti. He's responsible for the deaths of many Israelis and an Israeli civil court found him guilty of murder of five Israelis, while finding insufficient evidence to tie him to 33 other attacks resulting in deaths of Israelis.

This is who Palestinians in Fatah honor. This is the leadership that they ascribe to?

He was one of those winning a seat on the Committee, even as he does his time in Israeli jails for his murderous ways.

Jibril Rajoub also won a seat. He's a former aide to the late Yasser Arafat who led several crackdowns against Hamas.

These are the new faces? Mohammed Dahlan isn't a new name either. He's been behind the scenes in pushing US strategy, working to get Arafathttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif to the negotiating table for Oslo and Camp David in 2000, but most recently to displace Hamas in Gaza. That worked out real well, as Hamas threw Fatah out in a matter of days in 2006's Palestinian civil war.

In other words, this new group doesn't have much of a new outlook either. These high profile thugs have a history of dealing harshly with Hamas, but haven't given up the ghost of Israel's destruction either. This is the group of thugs that Fatah thinks can win back Gaza, or at least stem the tide of Hamas influence in the West Bank.

This group isn't so much interested in peace with Israel as revolution. That's going to come as a harsh reality for the Obama Administration, which hopes to resuscitate the peace process, even as it's all too evident that Israel lacks a partner in peace with which to negotiate.

As for Hamas, they're up to their old tricks, including taking three ambulances provided by UNRWA. Hamas claims that UNRWA lacked sufficient documentation. One should recall that Hamas has repeatedly used UN facilities as shields from which to launch attacks - firing rockets and mortars in close proximity to UN schools and facilities so as to get Israel to return fire hitting those facilities and causing Israel grief with the UN.

UNRWA ambulances have been shanghaied in the past, and Hamas and other terrorists, including Hizbullah, have used UN vehicles to mask their operations and launch sneak attacks against Israel.

For its part, the UNRWA claims that the Hamas and IDF reports are untrue.

UPDATE:
Gee, I can't possibly imagine why Israelis might think that the "calm" isn't going to last. Let's ignore the mortar attacks at Kissufim Junction yesterday, and the incessant calls from Fatah and Hamas for Israel's destruction.