Residents of Bethlehem, where a key Fatah conference is taking place, are not optimistic that the outcome of the conference will bring them prosperity and improve their economic situation.
Many harbor resentment towards Fatah, accusing the movement of nepotism, corruption, and neglecting their fellow Palestinians.
In this West Bank town just south of Jerusalem whose economy relies largely on tourism by Christian pilgrims, locals complain of soaring unemployment and lack of prospects. They are pinning little hope on the Fatah conference.
“There’s no business and the economy here is destroyed,” says Saber A-Lahham, who sells chickens and rabbits at a makeshift stall in the center of town. Asked if the conference had boosted his business at all, he said there were a lot more people than usual in the city, “but nobody is buying.”
“We wish that peace will come here and we wish that business will be better,” he said.
“As a person living with the situation, I don’t think anything big will happen,” says John Shahin, owner of a souvenir shop. “This meeting will not free Palestine,” he says.
One taxi driver in the city said from his perspective, the only ones benefitting from the meeting were the Fatah members themselves who had come here to network.
The compound of the conference and the adjacent media center is heavily guarded and teeming with men in suits and journalists thumping away at their laptops.
But a mere 200 meters up the hill, in Bethlehem’s Old Market, the scene is very different.
Here, the streets are strewn with second-hand clothing laid out in a messy pile on the ground and hard-up salesmen aggressively hunt for potential customers.
Locals present their wares, a hodgepodge of electrical equipment, clothing, blankets, household goods and cheap plastic toys. One game, a red and green plastic tube, has an Israeli name scribbled on it in Hebrew with a black felt-tip pen. Another is a cracked plastic cup with a Jewish prayer inscribed on it in Hebrew.
A loudspeaker blares out the voice of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud ‘Abbas delivering his keynote address at the conference.
“This conference is a failure,” said an elderly man at the market, who asked not to be named.
“We won’t benefit from it. If anyone benefits it will be Israel. It will serve Israel’s interests, not the interests of the Arabs or of the Palestinian Authority. In politics, every one takes care of their own business,” he says.
A salesman at the market says Israel was the only one calling the shots.
“Israel is in charge of everything here. Talk of a peace conference, this is all nonsense. Israel doesn’t want peace.”
As to prospects of Arab states stepping in to help, the salesman does not believe it will happen.
“In the Arab states, no one there is interested in us. That’s nonsense. Each nation takes care of itself, its people, its children, its army and its state. But no one takes care of us, the Palestinians. We are workers but we’re sitting here without work, and some people don’t have food,” he says gloomily.
The Fatah gathering has inconvenienced the residents of Bethlehem, who say they are paying the price in hosting more than 2,000 participants and guests at the gathering.
On Tuesday, parts of the city were reportedly deprived of water because the neighborhoods share the water flow and it was all allotted to the area of the conference.
A local resident said the problem was resolved by Thursday.
The manager of a souvenir shop at the entrance to the Church of the Nativity compound was furious that the alleyway where his shop is located had been cordoned off.
“The tourists are being directed to the back of the church because of the conference, so I have no business,” he told The Media Line. He did not even bother putting his wares outside the shop, because there was no point, he said.
The conference in Bethlehem is Fatah’s first gathering in two decades and is putting to the test Fatah’s standing as the largest and most influential faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization.
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