Thursday, June 28, 2007

Fath official, Husayn Ash-Shaykh, was holding a press conference--Al-Arabiya TV carried it live of course. He went on babbling and I did not know what he wanted to say. After talking for a while, it got to the point: it was an attempt to respond to Hani Al-Hasan. He is one of the main founders of the movement, and his statements on AlJazeera (to the effect that Hamas went to war against collaborators) were quite damaging, as you can tell from the angry statement by Ash-Shaykh. Al-Hasan has not been tainted by corruption: a rarity among Fath leaders, and he has been quite displeased with Oslo. (For the role of Al-Hasan in Fath, read Helena Cobban's The PLO).