Fatah is falling apart, and Hamas is the beneficiary

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party is literally falling apart, and Hamas will likely win upcoming planned elections as a result - if Abbas lets them occur.

As I reported last week, Yasser Arafat's nephew and Fatah Central Committee member Nasser al-Kidwa decided to run in the planned elections. Fatah expelled him from the party as a result, and now Kidwa is attempting to gain more people willing to leave Fatah. He is trying to woo popular terrorist/prisoner Marwan Barghouti and his supporters to run in his party.

Mahmoud Abbas retaliated by instructing the Palestinian National Fund to cut off funding to the Yasser Arafat Foundation, headed by Kidwa. They are claiming that Kidwa might be taking funds meant for the Foundation and using them for his campaign. This might be true but it shows how endemic corruption is across the board in Fatah.

Voters are not likely to reward such a move. 

Abbas also took away Kidwa's official car and his guards that protected him.

Marwan Barghouti, the terrorist who is serving five life sentences in Israeli prison, is said to be ready to run for president of the Palestinian Authority against Mahmoud Abbas. Polls show that the murderer is the most popular Palestinian politician today. 

Also, Mohammed Dahlan - the other Fatah rival to Abbas who was expelled from the party and exiled, has been instrumental in getting the UAE  to donate tens of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines to Gaza, where he is most popular. The fact that he managed to get vaccines to the territories when the entire Palestinian Authority has failed to bring in any is also not lost on Palestinians.

Khaled Abu Toameh tweeted this morning that a Fatah official said Fatah is crumbling and Hamas will win the election. I tend to think that if things continue to go badly for Mahmoud Abbas, he will cancel the elections altogether under some pretext (probably that Israel is not allowing polling places to be set up in Jerusalem) and remain in power. 

What is clear is that the Palestinian Authority and its dominant Fatah party is in disarray and Hamas is giving the appearance of being competent and respectable by contrast.  

If anything, this mess will further embitter Arab nations who have supported the Palestinian cause, and to them, the idea of normalization with Israel becomes more attractive than blind support for a corrupt, petty and/or terrorist Palestinian leadership. 

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