Fatah elects an Israeli to its governing council
For the first time in its history, the Palestinian Fatah party has elected an Israeli of Jewish background to serve on its governing Revolutionary Council. Uri Davis, a professor at Al-Quds University in the Arab part of Jerusalem, has been a member of Fatah for a quarter-century and insists his seat at the 120-member council proves the Palestinian nationalist party is a “multinational movement.” Though he started life as an Israeli Jew and holds dual Israeli and British passports, Davis now describes his heritage in typically academic fashion. He is, in his own words, “a Palestinian, Hebrew, of Jewish origin, anti-Zionist, a citizen of an apartheid state called the State of Israel and citizen of an alleged constitutional monarchy that goes by the name the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.” A prominent anti-Zionist activist, Davis has railed against Israel in books that refer to it as an “apartheid state” and says the Jewish state is “predicated on either the glorification or justification of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”