''Note: This article title may be easily confused with Fatah Revolutionary Council.

Fatah فت?
Fatah emblem
Leader	Mahmoud Abbas, Farouk Kaddoumi
Founded	1958 or 1959
Headquarters	Ramallah
Official ideology/ political position	Secular Nationalism
International affiliation	Socialist International (observer)
Website	www.fateh.net

Fatah (Arabic: فتح), literally opening, is a reverse acronym from the Arabic name Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini (Arabic: حركة التحرير الوطني الفلسطيني, literally: "Palestinian National Liberation Movement"). Fatah is a major Palestinian political party and the largest organization in 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 has maintained a number of militant groups since its founding. Unlike Hamas, Fatah is not recognized as a terrorist organization by any government, and it is also supported by the United States^[1] and the European Union^[2].

The reverse acronym was chosen because it is similar to the word fath, "opening" (after the first Arab-Muslim conquests, or "openings"). Al-Assifa is the military arm of the Fatah.

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.

Meaning of name

The acronym "FATAH" is created from the complete Arabic name: HArakat al-TAhrir al-Watani al-Filastini, becoming "HATAF", which, since it means "sudden death" in Arabic, was reversed to become "FATAH".^[3] This word (Fatah) is prominently used for the Islamic expansion in the first centuries of Islamic history, and so has strongly positive connotations for Muslims.

History

The Fatah movement, which espoused a Palestinian nationalist ideology in which Palestine 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. Yasser Arafat was head of the Palestinian student movement in Cairo from 1952 to 1956; Khaled Yashruti was head of the Palestinian student movement in Beirut from 1958 to 1962.

Fatah became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the 1967 Six-Day War dealt the coup de grâce to the pre-Baathist romantic Arab nationalism that had inspired George Habash's Arab Nationalist Movement. The November 1959 edition of Fatah's underground journal, Filastinuna, 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... [T]o die for our beloved Fatherland 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. (quoted in Baumgarten, 2005, p. 32).

From the beginning the armed struggle, as manifested in the Great Uprising of 1936-1939 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.

Fatah joined the PLO and won the leadership role in 1969 with the backing of the recently installed Baathist regime in Bagdad, after which the PLO's pro-Soviet constituent members the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine were marginalized.

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."^[4]

Fatah's first ever guerrilla attack came on January 3, 1965, when they attempted to sabotage the Israeli National Water Carrier, which had recently started operation. The attack was thwarted by the Israeli Security Forces.

Fatah's commanders were expelled to Lebanon from Jordan following violent confrontations with Jordanian forces during the period 1970–1971, beginning with Black September in 1970.

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.

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.

Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles with Israel in 1993 and exchanged mutual renunciations of terrorism with Israel and a mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel, and was allowed to return to the Palestinian territories from exile in Tunisia. The PNC met in a special session on 26 April 1996 to consider the issue of amending the Charter and assigned its legal committee the task of redrafting the Palestinian National Charter consistent with the Arafat letters in order to present it for approval. [1] A redrafted charter that does not call for the destruction of Israel has yet to be presented or approved and the official PNA website displays the original, unamended text of the PNC Charter. According to the US Department of State, "The Palestinian National Charter... [was] amended by canceling the articles that are contrary to the letters exchanged between the P.L.O. and the Government of Israel 9-10 September 1993." [2]

Until his death, Arafat was the head of the Palestinian Authority. 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 is a member of the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces^[5], which includes both PLO and non-PLO factions, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, listed as terrorist organizations in the West. ^[6]

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

In 2005, Hamas won landslide victories 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." ^[7]

On December 14, 2005, jailed intifada leader Marwan Barghouti announced that he had formed a new political party, 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 compete 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.^[8] 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.

Reactions to the news have been split. Some have suggested that the move could be a positive step towards peace, as Barghouti's new party could help reform major problems in Palestinian government. Others have raised concern that it could wind up splitting the Fatah vote, inadvertently helping Hamas. Barghouti's supporters argue that al-Mustaqbal will split the votes of both parties, both from disenchanted Fatah members as well as moderate Hamas voters who do not agree with Hamas' political goals, but rather its social work and hard position on corruption. Some observers have also hypothesized that the formation of Mustaqbal is mostly a negotiating tactic to get members of the young guard into higher positions of power within Fatah and its electoral list. A variant theory, highly plausible, is that after the elections, Mustaqbal will either be partially re-incorporated into Fatah, or will function as part of a Parliamentary coalition with it in opposition to Hamas and other political rivals.^[9]

Some editorialists have drawn a parallel between Barghouti's split from Fatah and the upheaval in Israeli party politics resulting from Ariel Sharon's leaving the Likud to form Kadima. [3][4]

Fatah armed factions

• Quwwat Al-Sa'eqa
• Black September (operated mainly in the 1970s)
• Hawari Special Operations Group
• Tanzim
• Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
• Abu Reish Brigades
• Fatah Hawks
• Force 17

While Quwwat Al-Sa'eqa is the official armed body of Fatah movement, many of the other factions have never been officially recognized by Fatah's major leading bodies: The Revolutionary Council and The Central Committee. At many instances, some of those factions were considered rebellious and outlawed by the Fatah official bodies, especially the Black September group.

See also

• Ahmed Qurei
• Farouk Kaddoumi
• Khaled Yashruti
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• List of political parties in the Palestinian National Authority
• List of Fatah members
• Mahmoud Abbas
• Marwan Barghouti
• Palestinian Civil War
• Palestinian domestic weapons production
• PLO
• Sakher Habash
• Yasser Arafat
• Jamal Tirawi

References

• 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)
• The Two Faces of Fatah (from www.omedia.org)

•  • [ e] Political parties in the Palestinian territories
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine - Fatah - Hamas - Palestine Democratic Union - Palestinian National Initiative - Palestinian People's Party - Palestinian Popular Struggle Front - Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - The Future - Third Way