PALESTINE - PALESTINA
F A T A H
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Fatah or Fatah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Fatah
Revolutionary Council also known as Abu Nidal Organization
Fataḥ (Arabic: فتح)
(also known as Fateh)[1]
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 left-wing of the spectrum; it
is mainly nationalist, although not predominantly socialist. Its main
goal, as stated in Article 12 of the official Fatah constitution is the
"complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic,
political, military and cultural existence." [1]
Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in
revolutionary struggle in the past and has maintained a
number of militant/terrorist groups,[2][3][4][5][6]
though unlike its rival Islamist faction Hamas, Fatah
is not currently 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".[7].
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.
The term "Fatah" also has religious significance in that it is the name
of the 48th sura, or chapter, of the Qu'ran, which according to the
major Muslim commentators details the story of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah
whereby Muhammad successfully conquered Mecca by first signing a peace
agreement, and then later seeking to abrogate it when he had forces
sufficient to secure certain victory over the Meccans. This Qu'ranic
precedent was cited by Yasser Arafat as justification for his signing
the Oslo Accords with Israel.[8][9]
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.[10][11]
History
Establishment
Yasser Arafat was the main founder of Fatah and led the
movement until his death in 2004.
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 Persian 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).[12]
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.[citation needed] The
attack was repelled by the Israeli Security
Forces.[citation needed]
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.[12]
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.[13]
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.[12]
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.[12]
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."[14]
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.[12]
On the night of March 21, the IDF attacked Karameh with heavy
weaponry, armored vehicles and fighter jets.[12]
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.[15]
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.[12]
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.[16][17]
The Jordanian government moved to regain control over its territory,
and the next day, King Hussein declared martial
law.[17]
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.[18]
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. The People's Republic of China also
provided munitions.[citation needed]
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.[19]
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.[20]
The PLO and LNM retaliated by attacking the town of Damour, a Phalangist stronghold. Over 330 people were
killed and many more wounded.[19].
As the civil war progressed over 2 years of 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.
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.[21]
Arafat and Abu Jihad blamed themselves for not successfully organizing a
rescue effort.[19]
PLO cross-border raids against Israel grew somewhat during the late
1970s.[citation needed] 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.[22]
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.[23]
Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982. Beirut was
soon besieged and bombarded by the IDF;[19]
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.[19]
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.[citation needed]
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,[24]
which includes both PLO and non-PLO factions, including Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, both listed as
terrorist organizations in the West.[25]
Fatah endorsed 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 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."[26]
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.[27]
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.[28][29]
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.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
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, West
Bank after being repeatedly postponed over conflicts ranging from
who would be represented, to what venue would be acceptable.[30]
More than 2,000 delegates attended the three-day meeting.[31]
The internal dissension was immediately obvious.[citation needed] 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." [32]
Fatah delegates resolved not to resume Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks until preconditions were met. Among the 14
preconditions, included the release of all Palestinian prisoners from
Israeli jails, freezing all Israeli settlement construction, and lifting the Gaza
blockade.[33]
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.[32]
Fatah was appealing to Palestinians who want a more hardline response
to Israel by reaffirming its option for "armed resistance" against
Israel.[34]
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak described the adopted Fatah
platform as not very promising. But he added there was no other way but
to sit down and strike a deal, calling on Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas to enter negotiations.
Officials on the third day of the Fatah convention in Bethlehem
unanimously accepted the proposal, put forth by the chairman of the
Araft Institute, stating that Israel had been behind the "assassination"
of the late Palestinian Authority Chairman and affirmed Fatah's request
for international aid to probe the issue. Deputy Foreign Minister of
Israel, Danny Ayalon, said the conference was a "serious blow to peace"
and "was another lost opportunity for the Palestinian leadership to
adopt moderate views."[citation needed]
Elections
to Central Committee and Revolutionary Councils
Delegates voted to fill 18 seats on the 23-seat Central Committee of Fatah, 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, a 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.
Fadwa
Barghouti, the wife of Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in
Israel for his role "in terrorist attacks" in Israel during the Second Intifada, was one of the representatives elected to
the Fatah Central Council.[35]
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
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 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."[36][37]
Senior Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip demanded an investigation into
the allegations of fraud in the Central Committee elections. Of the 23
seats elected to the Central Committee, only 2 were representatives from
the Gaza Strip: Muhammad Dahlan and Nabil Sha'ath.[38]
Armed factions
Fatah has maintained a number of militant 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,[2][3][4][5][6]
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.[39][40][41][42][43]
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.
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