Palestinian National Council gets new life in Amman

AMMAN — The man sitting outside the plush villa in west Amman looks like an old fighter. Security does not appear to be of much concern in Deir Ghbar, a stable Amman suburb and location of several embassies and diplomatic residences. The chain-smoking guard waves visitors through, into the house of Salim Zanoun, speaker of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the highest parliamentary body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and then directs them to Zanoun's office on the second floor. There's no metal detector, no body search.

The office is full of black-and-white photographs of Zanoun with founders of the Fatah movement, among them Khalil Wazir (Abu Jihad), Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) and especially the late Yasser Arafat. A Palestinian flag is perched behind the large office desk, and a huge photo of Jerusalem’s golden Dome of the Rock covers the wall behind it. 

Zanoun, a lawyer by training, had on Aug. 26 expressed his unhappiness with the tactics of his fellow founder of Fatah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is trying to push through an emergency meeting of the PLO's highest body, the Executive Committee, to reshuffle it to his advantage. Zanoun made his position known to the newly selected secretary-general of the PLO's Executive Committee, Saeb Erekat, and later to Abbas. Zanoun and Abbas met alone in Amman Aug. 26.

In an Aug. 25 interview with Radio al-Balad in Amman, Palestinian commentator Lamis Andoni said that Abbas' maneuvering primarily involves his recent personal rivalry with Yasser Abed Rabbo, the secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee, replaced by Abbas in late June. Andoni said that although Abbas removed Rabbo as secretary-general, he has been unable to legally push him off the committee. Andoni believes that the mass tactical resignation of 10 Executive Committee members Aug. 22 was aimed at forcing a vote in an attempt to oust Abed Rabbo from the committee.