Fatah (Arabic: فتح, Fatḥ), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the second-largest party in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, is the chairman of Fatah.

Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in revolutionary struggle in the past and has maintained a number of militant groups. Fatah had been closely identified with the leadership of its founder and chairman, Yasser Arafat, until his death in 2004, when Farouk Kaddoumi constitutionally succeeded him to the position of Fatah Chairman and continued in the position until 2009, when Abbas was elected chairman. Since Arafat’s death, factionalism within the ideologically diverse movement has become more apparent.

In the 2006 election for the PLC, the party lost its majority in the PLC to Hamas. The Hamas legislative victory led to a conflict between Fatah and Hamas, with Fatah retaining control of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank through its president. Fatah is also active in the control of Palestinian refugee camps.

Founding

The core group of Fatah was most likely founded in Kuwait in autumn 1957 by five or six Palestinians, among them Yasir Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir. This core group agreed on the movement’s name, drafted its manifesto, and planned its “Revolutionary Organizational Structure.”

The name Fatah, the Arabic acronym in reverse for Harakat al-tahrir al-watani al-Filastini (The Palestinian National Liberation Movement), came to attention in the first issue of the magazine Filastinuna–nida’ al-hayat (Our Palestine–The Call of Life), in Beirut in October 1959, and cells of the group began to be formed in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

As a movement of refugees, Fatah needed support from the Arab world, which it initially found in Algeria starting in 1962, then in Syria starting from 1963. Relying on this support, the movement leadership began preparations to set up a clandestine military wing named al-ʿAsifa (storm).

In July 1968, during its second conference held in the Syrian town of Zabadani (the first conference took place in Damascus in Summer 1964), Fatah finalized its organizational structure. Its composition was based on two decision-making committees that constituted its leadership: the Central Committee, which included ten members who represented the movement’s senior leadership, and the broader Revolutionary Council, considered an intermediary body between the Central Committee and the party’s general membership.

Guiding Principles

Fatah was the first national liberation movement since 1948 to be started by Palestinians themselves and that brought together Palestinian activists from different ideological and intellectual backgrounds. It called on all politically active Palestinians to abandon their party affiliations and to be united under its banner as a movement to “organize a vanguard that would rise above factionalism, whims and leanings to include the entire people.”

The movement’s leadership saw armed struggle as its primary means of liberating Palestine. It modeled itself after the revolutionary struggles in Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam.

PLO: History of a Revolution

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