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Gunmen disrupt Abbas' ceasefire

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas faced a new internal challenge when gunmen from his Fatah Party broke up a meeting of activists just as Abbas was expressing optimism about a formal ceasefire declaration to end attacks against Israelis.

The gunmen drove Fatah activists out of a meeting room in a Ramallah hotel on Thursday, charging that the Fatah leadership is corrupt. Abbas didn't appear to be the direct target, but the turmoil in his party could come back to haunt him if it is reflected in poor results in summer parliamentary elections.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared an end to more than four years of bloodshed a month ago at a gala summit in Egypt, but Abbas has yet to get the violent Hamas and Islamic Jihad to formally join the truce.

Events in Ramallah on Thursday showed that Abbas faces problems just as serious in his own Fatah, as younger, militant cadres continue to demand a piece of the leadership pie.

More than a thousand Fatah grassroots activists were meeting in a Ramallah hotel when two dozen gunmen dressed in military-style fatigues, their faces covered, burst into the room.

The gunmen, from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent group affiliated with Fatah, rampaged through the room and shouted slogans charging the Fatah leadership with complicity in widespread corruption.

Shocked participants ducked and scrambled for the exits as the intruders, brandishing their assault rifles, began throwing chairs around, ordering everyone to leave.

The meeting broke up in disarray, and as the Fatah members fled, the gunmen fired in the air outside the hall for several minutes. No one was hurt, but the gunmen made their point -- the session did not reconvene.

"Our demands are for change and reform," said Menwer al-Aqraa, an Al Aqsa commander in Ramallah. He said his group would not disarm, though it remains loyal to the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas and his top aides were nowhere near the meeting, but the message was loud and clear -- Abbas may have the old-time Fatah institutions behind him, but at the lower, younger levels, the picture is one of turmoil and competition. During the past four years of violence, the gunman, not the bespectacled, gray-haired politician, has become the icon of Palestinian leadership.

Some observers predict that Fatah will take a beating in parliamentary elections scheduled for July because of popular disgust over the way the Palestinian Authority has been run in recent years -- persistent reports of corruption, nepotism and inefficiency.

Also, growing numbers of Palestinians are upset over the terrible price exacted by the conflict -- the economy decimated, poverty spreading rapidly, casualties piling up -- with no visible benefits.

Fatah ruled Palestinian politics practically unchallenged for four decades, with the late Yasser Arafat, who died on Nov. 11, at the helm. Polls now show that the party might lose the contest to independents and Hamas, which is to contest the election for the first time without leaving behind its main goal -- the eventual destruction of Israel.

Abbas would lose considerable prestige if Fatah fares poorly, reducing his leverage over Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
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