Fatah

Etymology

The full name of the movement is Ḥarakat al-Taḥrīr al-Waṭanī l-Filasṭīnī, meaning the 'Palestinian National Liberation Movement'. From this was crafted the inverted acronym Fatḥ (generally rendered in English as Fatah), meaning 'opening', 'conquering', or 'victory'. The word fatḥ is used in religious discourse to signify the Islamic expansion in the first centuries of Islamic history – as in Fatḥ al-Shām, the 'conquering of the Levant'. Fatḥ is also religiously significant as the name of the 48th sura (chapter) of the Quran which, according to major Muslim commentators, details the story of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. During the peaceful two years after the Hudaybiyyah treaty, many converted to Islam, increasing the strength of the Muslim side. It was the breach of this treaty by the Quraysh that triggered the conquest of Mecca. This Islamic precedent was cited by Arafat as justification for his signing the Oslo Accords with Israel.

History

Establishment

The Fatah movement was founded in 1959 by members of the Palestinian diaspora, principally by professionals working in the Persian Gulf States, especially Kuwait (then a British protectorate) where the founders Salah Khalaf, Khalil al-Wazir, and Yasser Arafat resided. The founders had studied in Cairo or Beirut and had been refugees in Gaza. Salah Khalaf and Khalil al-Wazir were official members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Arafat had previously been head of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) at the Cairo University (1952–1956), whilst another co-founder, Khaled Yashruti, then a 22-year-old student, was the GUPS head in Beirut. Upon founding, Arafat summoned Mahmoud Abbas (who was residing in Qatar, then a British protectorate) to join. The group of Gulf-based young Palestinian professionals were the core of Fatah in its early days of existence. Fatah espoused a Palestinian nationalist ideology in which Palestinian Arabs would be liberated by their own actions.

Immediately after its establishment the name of the movement was first used in Falastinuna which was the official media organ of Fatah.

1967–1993

Fatah became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the Six-Day War in 1967.

Fatah joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1967, and was allocated 33 of 105 seats in the PLO Executive Committee. Fatah's Arafat became Chairman of the PLO in 1969, after the position was ceded to him by Yahya Hammuda. According to the BBC, "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."

Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian armed groups were the target of a major Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation in the Jordanian village of Karameh, where 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 rocket 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 21 March, 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.

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.

After 1993

In the 1993–1995 Oslo Accords, Fatah, as part of the PLO, made some interim agreements with Israel, including recognition of Israel by the PLO. Until his 2004 death, Arafat headed the Palestinian National Authority, the provisional entity created as a result of those Oslo Accords. Soon after Arafat's death, Faruq al-Qaddumi was elected to the post.

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

In 2005, Hamas won in nearly all the municipalities it contested. Political analyst Salah Abdel-Shafi told the 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." 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."

In December 2005, jailed Intifada leader Marwan Barghouti broke ranks with the party and announced that he had formed a new political list to run in the elections called the 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 2006 Palestinian legislative election, presenting a list including Mohammed Dahlan, Kadoura Fares, Samir Mashharawi and Jibril Rajoub. However, on 28 December 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 have 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 era of Palestinian politics. Several of them gained their positions through the patronage of 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. There is concern over the succession once Abbas leaves power.

Ideology

Fatah has member status at the Socialist International and observer status within the Party of European Socialists.

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... [T]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.

Armed struggle – as manifested in the 1936–39 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 initial ideology of how to liberate Palestine.

Structure

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

Armed factions

Fatah has maintained a number of militant groups since its founding. Its mainstream military branch is al-'Asifah. Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in terrorism in the past, though unlike its rival Islamist faction Hamas, Fatah is no longer 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-'Asifah ('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, which played a role akin to the Presidential Guard for senior Fatah leaders. Created by Arafat.

Black September Organization, a group formed by leading Fatah members in 1971, following the events of Black September in Jordan, to organize clandestine attacks with which Fatah did not want to be openly associated. 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" (e.g. the Munich Olympics massacre), intended to put pressure on the US, Europe and Israel, 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, an armed militia active mainly until the mid-1990s.

Constitution

In August 2009, at Fatah's Sixth General Conference in Bethlehem, Fatah delegates drew up a new "internal charter".

Leaders' electoral performance