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Fataḥ (Template:Lang-ar) is a major Palestinian political party and the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a multi-party confederation. In Palestinian politics it is on the center-left of the spectrum. It is mainly nationalist although not predominantly socialist.

Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in terrorism in the past and had maintained a number of militant/terrorist groups. though unlike its rival Islamist faction Hamas, Fatah is not regarded as a terrorist organization by any government.

In the January 25, 2006 parliamentary election, the party lost its majority in the Palestinian parliament to Hamas, and resigned all cabinet positions, instead assuming the role as the main opposition party.

Etymology

The full name of the movement is حركة التحرير الوطني الفلسطيني ḥarakat al-taḥrīr al-waṭanī al-filasṭīnī, meaning the "Palestinian National Liberation Movement". From this was crafted the reverse acronym Fatḥ (or Fatah), meaning "opening", "conquering", or "victory". (Ḥataf حتف, the non-reverse acronym, would mean "death", and has not been used by the movement.) The word Fatah is used in religious discourse to signify the Islamic expansion in the first centuries of Islamic history -- as in Fath al-Sham, the "opening of the Levant" -- and so has positive connotations for Muslims.

Structure

Two most important decision-making bodies is Central Committee of Fatah and the Fatah Revolutionary Council. Central Committee is mainly an executive body, while the Revolutionary Council is Fatah's legislative body.

History

Establishment

The Fatah movement, which espoused a Palestinian nationalist ideology in which Palestinian Arabs would be liberated by the actions of Palestinian Arabs, was founded in 1954 by members of the Palestinian diaspora — principally professionals working in the Gulf States who had been refugees in Gaza and had gone on to study in Cairo or Beirut. The founders included Yasser Arafat who was head of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) (1952–56) in Cairo University, Salah Khalaf, Khalil al-Wazir, Khaled Yashruti was head of the GUPS in Beirut (1958–62).

Fatah's first major guerrilla attack came on January 3, 1965, when they attempted to sabotage the Israeli National Water Carrier, which had recently started operation and diverted vast amounts of water from the Jordan River which mostly bordered Jordan. The attack was thwarted by the Israeli Security Forces.

Fatah became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the Six-Day War in 1967. It dealt the coup de grâce to the pre-Baathist Arab nationalism that had inspired George Habash's Arab Nationalist Movement, the former dominant mainly Palestinian political party. The November 1959 edition of Fatah's underground journal, Filastinuna Nida al-Hayat, indicated that the movement was motivated by the status of the Palestinian refugees in the Arab world:

The youth of the catastrophe (shibab al-nakba) are dispersed... Life in the tent has become as miserable as death... o die for our beloved Motherland is better and more honorable than life, which forces us to eat our daily bread under humiliations or to receive it as charity at the cost of our honour... We, the sons of the catastrophe, are no longer willing to live this dirty, despicable life, this life which has destroyed our cultural, moral and political existence and destroyed our human dignity.

From the beginning the armed struggle, as manifested in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and the military role of Palestinian fighters under the leadership of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, was central to Fatah's ideology of liberating Palestine by a Palestinian armed struggle.

Fatah joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1967. It was immediately allocated 33 of 105 seats in the PLO Executive Committee. Founder Yasser Arafat became Chairman of the PLO in 1969, after the position was ceded to him by Yahya Hammuda. According to the BBC, "Mr Arafat took over as chairman of the executive committee of the PLO in 1969, a year that Fatah is recorded to have carried out 2,432 guerrilla attacks on Israel."

Battle of Karameh

Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian armed groups were the target of a major Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) operation in the Jordanian village of Karameh, where the Fatah headquarters – as well as a mid-sized Palestinian refugee camp – were located. The town's name is the Arabic word for "dignity", which elevated its symbolism to the Arab people, especially after the Arab defeat in 1967. The operation was in response to attacks against Israel, including rockets strikes from Fatah and other Palestinian militias into the occupied West Bank. Knowledge of the operation was available well ahead of time, and the government of Jordan (as well as a number of Fatah commandos) informed Arafat of Israel's large-scale military preparations. Upon hearing the news, many guerrilla groups in the area, including George Habash's newly formed group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Nayef Hawatmeh's breakaway organization the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), withdrew their forces from the town. Fatah leaders were advised by a pro-Fatah Jordanian divisional commander to withdraw their men and headquarters to nearby hills, but on Arafat's orders, Fatah remained, and the Jordanian Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.

On the night of March 21, the IDF attacked Karameh with heavy weaponry, armored vehicles and fighter jets. Fatah held its ground, surprising the Israeli military. As Israel's forces intensified their campaign, the Jordanian Army became involved, causing the Israelis to retreat in order to avoid a full-scale war. By the end of the battle, nearly 150 Fatah militants had been killed, as well as twenty Jordanian soldiers and twenty-eight Israeli soldiers. Despite the higher Arab death toll, Fatah considered themselves victorious because of the Israeli army's rapid withdrawal.

Black September

In the late 1960s, tensions between Palestinians and the Jordanian government increased greatly; heavily armed Arab resistance elements had created a virtual "state within a state" in Jordan, eventually controlling several strategic positions in that country. After their victory in the Battle of Karameh, Fatah and other Palestinian militias began taking control of civil life in Jordan. They set up roadblocks, publicly humiliated Jordanian police forces, molested women and levied illegal taxes – all of which Arafat either condoned or ignored.

The Jordanian government moved to regain control over its territory, and the next day, King Hussein declared martial law. By September 25, the Jordanian army achieved dominance in the fighting, and two days later Arafat and Hussein agreed to a series of ceasefires. The Jordanian army inflicted heavy casualties upon the Palestinians – including civilians – who suffered approximately 3,500 fatalities. Two thousand Fatah fighters managed to enter Syria. They crossed the border into Lebanon to join Fatah forces in that country, where they set up their new headquarters.

In the 1960s and the 1970s, Fatah provided training to a wide range of European, Middle Eastern, Asian, and African militant and insurgent groups, and carried out numerous attacks against Israeli targets in Western Europe and the Middle East during the 1970s. Some militant groups that affiliated themselves to Fatah, and some of the fedayeen within Fatah itself, carried out civilian plane hijackings and terrorist attacks, attributing them to Black September, Abu Nidal's Fatah-Revolutionary Council, Abu Musa's group, the PFLP, and the PFLP-GC. Fatah received weapons, explosives and training from the USSR and some Communist regimes of East European states. China also provided some weapons.

Lebanon

Although hesitant at first to take sides in the conflict, Arafat and Fatah played an important role in the Lebanese Civil War. Succumbing to pressure from PLO sub-groups such as the PFLP, DFLP and the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), Fatah aligned itself with the Communist and Nasserist Lebanese National Movement (LNM). Although originally aligned with Fatah, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad feared a loss of influence in Lebanon and switched sides. He sent his army, along with the Syrian-backed Palestinian factions of as-Sa'iqa and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) led by Ahmad Jibril to fight alongside the radical right-wing Christian forces against the PLO and the LNM. The primary component of the Christian militias was the Maronite Phalangists.

Phalangist forces killed twenty-six Fatah trainees on a bus in April 1975, marking the official start of the 15 year long Lebanese civil war. Later that year, an alliance of Christian militias overran the Palestinian refugee camp of Quarantina. The PLO and LNM retaliated by attacking the town of Damour, a Phalangist stronghold. Over 330 people were killed and many more wounded.. As the civil war progressed over 2 years of savage urban warfare, both parties resorted to massive artillery duels and heavy use of sniper nests, while atrocities and war crimes were committed by both sides. The war appeared to be headed for defeat by the Christian parties after the fighting shifted focus from Beirut to the mountains overlying it. Having secured Syrian Army intervention and seeing their enemies fold, the Christian militias hurried to secure a more favorable strategic footing for the war's aftermath and accelerated the siege of one of the Palestinian camps, pivotal to Fatah's war effort. In 1976, with strategic planning help from the Lebanese Army, the alliance of Christian militias, spearheaded by the National Liberal Party of former President Cammille Chamoun militant branch, the noumour el ahrar (NLP Tigers), took a pivotal refugee camp in the Eastern part of Beirut, the Tel al-Zaatar camp, after a six-month siege, also known as Tel al-Zaatar massacre in which hundreds perished. Arafat and Abu Jihad blamed themselves for not successfully organizing a rescue effort.

PLO cross-border raids against Israel grew somewhat during the late 1970s. One of the most severe - known as the Coastal Road Massacre - occurred on March 11, 1978. A force of nearly a dozen Fatah fighters landed their boats near a major coastal road connecting the city of Haifa with Tel Aviv-Yafo. There they hijacked a bus and sprayed gunfire inside and at passing vehicles, killing thirty-seven civilians. In response, the IDF launched Operation Litani three days later, with the goal of taking control of Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The IDF achieved this goal, and Fatah withdrew to the north into Beirut.

After Israel withdrew from Lebanon, Fatah forces resumed firing rockets into the Galilee region of Israel, prompting another invasion in 1982. Beirut was soon besieged and bombarded by the IDF; To end the siege, the US and European governments brokered an agreement guaranteeing safe passage for Arafat and Fatah – guarded by a multinational force – to exile in Tunis. Despite the exile many Fatah commanders and fighters remained in Lebanon.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the faction was dispersed to several Middle Eastern countries with the help of US and other Western governments: Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq and others. In the period 1982–1993, Fatah's leadership resided in Tunisia.

Presidential and legislative elections

Until his death, Arafat was the head of the Palestinian National Authority - the provisional entity that was created as a result of Oslo. Farouk Kaddoumi is the current Fatah chairman, elected to the post soon after Arafat's death in 2004.

Fatah has "Observer Party" status at the Socialist International.

Since 2000, the group has been a member of the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces, which includes both PLO and non-PLO factions, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both listed as terrorist organizations in the West.

Fatah endorsed Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestinian presidential election of 2005.

In 2005, Hamas won in nearly all the municipalities it contested. Fatah is "widely seen as being in desperate need of reform", as "the PA's performance has been a story of corruption and incompetence - and Fatah has been tainted." Political analyst Salah Abdel-Shafi told BBC about the difficulties of Fatah leadership: "I think it's very, very serious - it's becoming obvious that they can't agree on anything."

Internal dissension

On 14, 2005, jailed Intifada leader Marwan Barghouti announced that he had formed a new political list to run in the elections, al-Mustaqbal ("The Future"), mainly composed of members of Fatah's "Young Guard." These younger leaders have repeatedly expressed frustration with the entrenched corruption in the party, which has been run by the "Old Guard" who returned from exile in Tunisia following the Oslo Accords. Al-Mustaqbal was to campaign against Fatah in the January 2006 Palestinian legislative election, presenting a list including Mohammed Dahlan, Kadoura Fares, Samir Mashharawi and Jibril Rajoub on December 14. However, on December 28, 2005, the leadership of the two factions agreed to submit a single list to voters, headed by Barghouti, who began actively campaigning for Fatah from his jail cell.

There has been numerous other expressions of discontent within Fatah, which is just holding its first general congress in two decades. Because of this, the movement remains largely dominated by aging cadres from the pre-Oslo area of Palestinian politics. Several of them gained their positions thanks to personal followings or support from Arafat, who balanced above the different factions, and the era after his death in 2004 has seen increased infighting among these groups, who jockey for influence over future development, the political line, funds, and constituencies. The prospect of Abbas leaving power in the coming years has also exacerbated tensions.

There have been no significant overt splits within the older generation of Fatah politicians since the 1980s, however. One founding member, Faruq al-Qaddumi (Abu Lutf), continues to openly oppose the post-Oslo arrangements and has intensified his campaign for a more hardline positions from exile in Tunis. Since Arafat's death, he is formally head of Fatah's political bureau and chairman, but his actual political following within Fatah appears limited. He has at times openly challenged the legitimacy of Abbas and harshly criticized both him and Mohammed Dahlan, but despite threats to splinter the movement, he remains in his position, and his challenges have so far come to nothing. Another influential veteran, Hani al-Hassan, has also openly criticized the present leadership. Fatah's internal conflicts have also, due to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, merged with the turf wars between different PA security services, eg. a longstanding rivalry between the West Bank (Jibril Rajoub) and Gaza (Muhammad Dahlan) branches of the powerful Preventive Security Service. Foreign backing for different factions contribute to conflict, eg. with the USA generally seen as supportive of Abbas's overall leadership and of Dahlan's security influence, and Syria alleged to promote Faruq al-Qaddumi's challenge to the present leadership. The younger generations of Fatah, especially within the militant al-Aqsa martyrs' brigades, have been more prone to splits, and a number of lesser networks in Gaza and the West Bank have established themselves as either independent organizations or joined Hamas. However, such overt breaks with the movement have still been rather uncommon, despite numerous rivalries inside and between competing local Fatah groups.

The 2009 Fatah Movement Assembly

Sixth General Assembly of Fatah Movement, nearly 16 years after the advent of the Oslo Conference and 20 years since the last Fatah convention, the long-overdue general congress began on 4 August 2009, in Bethlehem, Israel after being repeatedly postponed over conflicts ranging from who would be represented, to what venue would be acceptable. More than 2,000 delegates attended the three-day meeting.

The internal dissension was immediately obvious. Saudi King Abdullah told Fatah delegates meeting in Bethlehem that divisions among the Palestinians were more damaging to their cause of an independent state than the Israeli "enemy."

Fatah delegates also reiterates its refusal to resume peace talks until preconditions were met. Among the 14 preconditions, included the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, freezing all settlement construction, and lifting the Gaza blockade.

Some 400 Fatah members from the Gaza Strip were unable to attend the conference in Bethlehem after Hamas barred them from traveling to the West Bank.

Elections to Central and Revolutionary Councils

Delegates voted to fill 18 seats on the 23-seat Central Council, and 81 seats of the 128-seat Revolutionary Council after a week of deliberations. At least 70 new members entered the latter, with 20 seats going to Fatah representatives from the Gaza Strip, 11 seats filled by women (the highest number of votes went to one woman who spent years in Israeli jails for her role in the resistance), four seats went to Christians, and one was filled by a Jerusalem-born Jew, Uri Davis. Davis, who gave up his Israeli citizenship in the 1980s and was granted Palestinian citizenship thereafter, is the first Jew to be elected to the Revolutionary Council since its founding in 1958. Fatah activists from the Palestinian diaspora were also represented and included Samir Rifai, Fatah's secretary in Syria, and Khaled Abu Usba, who participated in a militant attack in the 1980s in which at least 30 Israelis were killed.

Fadwa Barghouti, the wife of Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in Israel for his role in the Second Intifada, was one of the representatives elected to the Fatah Central Council.

Allegations of voting fraud

Former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei accused Fatah leadership of voting fraud during the Central Committee elections. A large number of representatives have questioned the credibility of the election results and there is growing discontent within the party. Qurei stated, "There are many big question marks about the election, the way it was conducted and the way the votes were counted." He accused Mahmoud Abbas and "some of his supporters" of influencing the ballots to secure support for their allies in the Central Committee. Every member of Fatah's Higher Committee in the Gaza Strip resigned in protest against what one of the officials described as "massive fraud," and Many Fatah members claimed that "dozens" of representatives were prevented from casting their vote during the election. However, Mahmoud Abbas "hailed" the elections as "democratic and successful."

Armed factions

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Fatah has maintained a number of militant/terrorist groups since its founding. Its mainstream military branch is al-Assifa. Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in terrorism in the past, though unlike its rival Islamist faction Hamas, Fatah is not regarded as a terrorist organization by any government. Fatah used to be designated terrorist under Israeli law and was considered terrorist by the United States Department of State and United States Congress until it renounced terrorism in 1988.

Fatah has since its inception created, led or sponsored a number of armed groups and militias, some of which have had an official standing as the movement's armed wing, and some of which have not been publicly or even internally recognized as such. The group has also dominated various PLO and Palestinian Authority forces and security services which were/are not officially tied to Fatah, but in practice have served as wholly pro-Fatah armed units, and been staffed largely by members. The original name for Fatah's armed wing was al-Assifa (The Storm), and this was also the name Fatah first used in its communiques, trying for some time to conceal its identity. This name has since been applied more generally to Fatah armed forces, and does not correspond to a single unit today. Other militant groups associated with Fatah include:

• Force 17 - Force 17 was created by Yassir Arafat, and plays a role akin to the Presidential Guard for senior Fatah leaders, but it has also carried out other assignments.
• Black September - Black September was a group formed by leading Fatah members in 1971, following the "Black September" events in Jordan, to clandestinely organize attacks that Fatah did not want to be openly associated with. These included strikes against leading Jordanian politicians, as a means of exacting vengeance and raising the price for attacking the Palestinian movement; and also, most controversially, for "international operations" (eg. the Munich Olympics attack), intended both to put pressure on the US, European countries and Israel, and to raise the visibility of the Palestinian cause, and to upstage radical rivals such as the PFLP. Fatah publicly disassociated itself from the group, but it is widely believed that it enjoyed Arafat's direct or tacit backing. It was discontinued in 1973-1974, as Fatah's political line shifted again, and the Black September operations and the strategy behind them were seen as having become a political liability, rather than an asset.
• Fatah Hawks - The Fatah Hawks was an armed militia active mainly until the mid-90s.
• Tanzim - The Tanzim (Organization) was a branch of Fatah under the leadership of Marwan Barghouti, with roots in the activism of the First Intifada, which carried out armed attacks in the early days of the Second Intifada. It has later been subsumed by or sidlined by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.
• Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were created in the Second Intifada to bolster the organization's militant standing vis-à-vis the rival Hamas movement, which had taken the lead in attacks on Israel after 1993, and was gaining rapidly in popularity with the advent of the Intifada. The Brigades are locally organized and have been said to suffer from poor cohesion and internal discipline, at times ignoring ceasefires and other initiatives announced by the central Fatah leadership. They are generally seen as tied to the "young guard" of Fatah politics, organizing young members on the street level, but it is not clear that they form a faction in themselves inside Fatah politics; rather, different Brigades units may be tied to different Fatah factional leaders. They have carried out suicide bombings against Israel and Israeli civilians, often despite public condemnation from the Fatah leadership. The Brigades, but not Fatah proper, are listed as a terrorist organization by the United States.

See also

• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• List of political parties in the Palestinian National Authority
• List of Fatah members
• Palestinian Civil War
• West Bank

References

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• Baumgarten, Helga (2005). The three faces/phases of Palestinian nationalism, 1948–2005. Journal of Palestine Studies, 34(4), 25–48.

External links

• Fatah's Intellectual office website
• Al-Krama Newspaper (Fatah's PR Office) (in Arabic)
• Definition of Fatah
• Interview on Radio France International Fatah Central Committee member Abdallah Al Frangi

• Fatah
• Palestine Liberation Organization
• Palestinian political parties
• Socialist International
• Palestinian militant groups
• Organizations formerly designated as terrorist
• Political parties established in the 1950s
• Palestinian terrorism
• Palestinian nationalism
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict