The Fatah meeting turns into farce...

Drivers, secretaries and neighbour added to the voting rolls!

The conference was nearly suspended following a heated exchange between several delegates. Tensions escalated to a point where organizers ordered all journalists to stay away from the conference hall.

The main dispute erupted after Fatah delegates discovered that their leadership had no intention of presenting them with a detailed report about the faction's financial, political and administrative status.

Another argument broke out over the representation of Fatah members from the Gaza Strip in the two key decision-making bodies, the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council.

Some 400 Fatah members from the Strip were unable to attend the conference in Bethlehem after Hamas barred them from traveling to the West Bank. A handful of Gazan Fatah operatives who did make it to the conference accused the Fatah leadership of trying to keep them away from the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council.

Had it not been for the intervention of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the conference would have "exploded into violence and anarchy," delegates told The Jerusalem Post.

One delegate said that prominent Fatah representatives from the Gaza Strip, including top operative Samir Mashharawi, had stormed out of the meeting after discovering that elections for the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council would be held despite the absence of their stranded colleagues.

Many delegates also expressed discontent over the way the Fatah leadership had chosen participants in the conference. Dozens of people attending the conference were not real members of Fatah, they said.

"In some cases, we discovered that veteran and wealthy Fatah officials had appointed their drivers, secretaries and neighbors as delegates to the conference so that they could vote for them in internal elections," one delegate from the West Bank told the Post. "This shows that Fatah is not serious about reforming itself or injecting young and fresh blood into its institutions."