Fatah was historically involved in armed struggle against the state of Israel (as well as Jordan during theBlack September conflict in 1970–1971) and maintaineda number of militant groups,[44] which carried out attacks against military targets as well as Israeli civilians, notably including the 1978coastal road massacre, though the group disengaged from armed conflict against Israel around the time of theOslo Accords (1993–1995), when it recognised Israel, which gave it limited control over theoccupied Palestinian territories. During theSecond Intifada (2000–2005), Fatah intensified armed conflict against Israel, claiming responsibility fora number of suicide attacks. Fatah had been closely identified with the leadership of its founder and chairman,Yasser Arafat, until his death in 2004, whenFarouk 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.
The full name of the movement isḤarakat al-Taḥrīr al-Waṭanī l-Filasṭīnī, meaning the 'Palestinian National Liberation Movement'. From this was crafted the inverted andreverse acronymFatḥ (generally rendered in English asFatah), meaning 'opening', 'conquering', or 'victory'.[47] The wordfatḥ is used in religious discourse to signify theIslamic expansion in the first centuries of Islamic history – as inFatḥal-Shām, the 'conquering of theLevant'.Fatḥ is also religiously significant as the name of the48thsura (chapter) of theQuran which, according to major Muslim commentators, details the story of theTreaty 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 theQuraysh[48] that triggered theconquest of Mecca. This Islamic precedent was cited by Arafat as justification for his signing theOslo Accords with Israel.[49][50]
History
Establishment
Yasser Arafat was the primary founder of Fatah and its leader until his 2004 death
The Fatah movement was founded in 1959 by members of thePalestinian diaspora, principally by professionals working in thePersian Gulf States, especiallyKuwait (then a British protectorate) where the foundersSalah Khalaf,Khalil al-Wazir, andYasser Arafat resided. The founders had studied inCairo orBeirut and had been refugees inGaza. Salah Khalaf and Khalil al-Wazir were official members of theMuslim Brotherhood. Arafat had previously been head of theGeneral Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) at theCairo University (1952–1956), whilst another co-founder,Khaled Yashruti, then a 22-year-old student, was the GUPS head in Beirut.[51] Upon founding, Arafat summonedMahmoud Abbas (who was residing inQatar, then a British protectorate) to join.[52] The group of Gulf-based young Palestinian professionals were the core of Fatah in its early days of existence.[52] Fatah espoused a Palestinian nationalist ideology in whichPalestinian Arabs would be liberated by their own actions.
Immediately after its establishment the name of the movement was first used inFalastinuna which was the official media organ of Fatah.[53]
1967–1993
Fatah became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after theSix-Day War in 1967.
Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian armed groups were the target of a majorIsraeli Defense Forces (IDF) operation in the Jordanian village ofKarameh, where Fatah headquarters – as well as a mid-sizedPalestinian refugee camp – were located. The town's name is theArabic word fordignity, which elevated itssymbolism 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, includingGeorge Habash's newly formed group thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) andNayef Hawatmeh's breakaway organization theDemocratic 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 theJordanian Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.[51]
On the night of 21 March, the IDF attacked Karameh with heavy weaponry, armored vehicles and fighter jets.[51] 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.[55] 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.[51]
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.[56][57]
In 1970, the Jordanian government moved to regain control over its territory, and the next day,[dubious –discuss]King Hussein declaredmartial law.[57] By 25 September, 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 enterSyria. They crossed the border into Lebanon to join Fatah forces in that country, where they set up their new headquarters. A large group of guerrilla fighters led by Fatah field commanderAbu Ali Iyad held out the Jordanian Army's offensive in the northern city ofAjlun until they were decisively defeated in July 1971. Abu Ali Iyad was executed and surviving members of his commando force formed theBlack September Organization, a splinter group of Fatah. In November 1971, the group assassinated Jordanian prime ministerWasfi al-Tal as retaliation to Abu Ali Iyad's execution.[58]
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 thefedayeen within Fatah itself, carried out civilian-aircraft hijackings and terrorist attacks, attributing them to Black September,Abu Nidal'sFatah-Revolutionary Council,Abu Musa's group, the PFLP, and the PFLP-GC.[dubious –discuss] Fatah received weapons, explosives and training from theSoviet Union and some of thecommunist states ofEast Europe.China andAlgeria also provided munitions.[citation needed] In 1979, Fatah aidedUganda during theUganda–Tanzania War. Members of the organization fought alongside theUganda Army and Libyan troops against theTanzania People's Defence Force during theBattle of Lukaya and theFall of Kampala, but were eventually forced to retreat from the country.[59]
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 ofKarantina killing over 1,000 civilians.[61] The PLO and LNM retaliated by attacking the town ofDamour, a Phalangist andFree Tigers (Numūr al-Aḥrar) stronghold, killing 684 civilians.[60] 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 theNational Liberal Party of former PresidentCamille Chamoun's militant branch, the Free 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 theTel al-Zaatar massacre in which hundreds perished.[63] Arafat and Abu Jihad blamed themselves for not successfully organizing a rescue effort.[60]
PLO cross-border raids against Israel grew somewhat during the late 1970s.[citation needed] One of the most severe – known as theCoastal road massacre – occurred on 11 March 1978. A force of nearly a dozen Fatah fighters landed their boats near a major coastal road connecting the city ofHaifa withTel Aviv-Yafo. There they hijacked a bus and sprayed gunfire inside and at passing vehicles, killing thirty-seven civilians.[64] In response, the IDF launchedOperation Litani three days later, with the goal of taking control of Southern Lebanon up to theLitani River. The IDF achieved this goal, and Fatah withdrew to the north into Beirut.[65]
Israelinvaded Lebanon again in 1982. Beirut was soon besieged and bombarded by the IDF;[60] 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 inTunis. Despite the exile, many Fatah commanders and fighters remained in Lebanon, and they faced theWar of the Camps in the 1980s in their fight with the ShiaAmal Movement and also in connection with internal schisms within the Palestinian factions.[60]
In the 1993–1995Oslo Accords, Fatah, as part of thePLO, made some interim agreements with Israel, including recognition of Israel by the PLO. Until his 2004 death, Arafat headed thePalestinian 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.[citation needed]
In 2005,Hamas won in nearly allthe municipalities it contested. Political analystSalah 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."[66]
Internal discord
In December 2005, jailedIntifada leaderMarwan Barghouti broke ranks with the party and announced that he had formed a new political list to run in the elections called theal-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 inTunisia following the Oslo Accords. Al-Mustaqbal was to campaign against Fatah in the2006 Palestinian legislative election, presenting a list includingMohammed Dahlan,Kadoura Fares,Samir Mashharawi andJibril Rajoub.[67] 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.[68][69]
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.[70]
There have been no open splits within the older generation of Fatah politicians since the 1980s, though there is occasional friction between members of the top leadership. One founding member, Faruq al-Qaddumi (Abu Lutf), openly opposed the post-Oslo arrangements and led a campaign for a more hardline position from exile inTunis, until his death in 2024.[71] 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 andMohammed Dahlan, but despite threats to splinter the movement, he remains in his position, and his challenges have so far been fruitless. 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, e.g., 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, e.g., with the United States generally seen as supportive of Abbas's overall leadership and of Dahlan's security influence, and Syria alleged to promote al-Qaddumi's challenge to the present leadership. The younger generations of Fatah, especially within the militantal-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]
2009: Sixth General Assembly
The Sixth General Assembly of the Fatah Movement began on 4 August 2009 inBethlehem, nearly 16 years after theOslo I Accord and 20 years since the last Fatah convention, after being repeatedly postponed over conflicts ranging from representation to venue.[72] More than 2,000 delegates attended the meeting,[73] while another 400 from theGaza Strip were unable to attend the conference after Hamas barred them from traveling to theWest Bank.[74]
The internal dissension was immediately obvious.[citation needed]SaudiKing Abdullah told the delegates that divisions among the Palestinians were more damaging to their cause of an independent state than the Israeli "enemy".[74]
Delegates resolved not to resumeIsraeli–Palestinian peace talks until 14 preconditions were met. Among these preconditions were the release of all Israel-held Palestinian prisoners, a freeze on allIsraeli settlement construction, and an end to theGaza blockade.[75]
By affirming its option for "armed resistance" against Israel, Fatah appealed to Palestinians who wanted a more hardline response to Israel.[76]
Israeli deputy foreign ministerDanny Ayalon said the conference was a "serious blow to peace" and "was another lost opportunity for the Palestinian leadership to adopt moderate views."[77]
Elections to Central Committee and Revolutionary Council
On 9 August 2009, new members of theCentral Committee of Fatah and the Revolutionary Council were chosen.[78] Delegates voted to fill 18 seats on the 23-seat Central Committee, and 81 seats on 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 Jewish-born convert to Islam,Uri Davis, the first Jewish-born person to be elected to the Revolutionary Council since its founding in 1958. Fatah activists from thePalestinian diaspora were also represented and includedSamir Rifai, Fatah's secretary in Syria, and Khaled Abu Usba.
A demonstration in support of Fatah inGaza City in January 2013
Elected to the central council was Fadwa Barghouti, the wife ofMarwan Barghouti who was serving five life sentences in Israel for his role in terrorist attacks on civilians in Israel during theSecond Intifada.
A meeting of the Revolutionary Council was held in Ramallah from 18 to 19 October 2014. Many important questions were discussed, including reconciliation with Hamas. Opinion was divided on the issue.[79]
2016: Seventh Congress
In December 2016, more than 1400 members of Fatah's 7th Congress elected 18 members of the Central Committee and 80 for the Revolutionary Council. Six new members were added to the Central Committee while 12 were reelected. Outgoing members included Nabil Shaath, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Zakaria al-Agha and Tayib Abdul Rahim.[80]
Its leader Abu Ashraf Al-Armoushi and his comrades were killed in the Al-Basateen neighborhood of Ain Al-Helweh camp on 30 July 2023 during fighting.[81][82][83]
The November 1959 edition of Fatah's underground journalFilastinuna 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.[86]
Fatah's two most important decision-making bodies are theCentral Committee and Revolutionary Council. The Central Committee is mainly an executive body, while the Revolutionary Council is Fatah'slegislative body.[79][87][88]
Armed factions
Fatah has maintained a number of militant groups since its founding. Its mainstream military branch isal-'Asifah. Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in terrorism in the past,[89][90][44][91] though unlike its rivalIslamist factionHamas, Fatah is no longer regarded as a terrorist organization by any government. Fatah used to be designated terrorist underIsraeli law and was considered terrorist by theUnited States Department of State andUnited States Congress until it renounced terrorism in 1988.[92][93][94][95][96]
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.[citation needed] Created by Arafat.
Black September Organization, a group formed by leading Fatah members in 1971, following the events ofBlack 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. theMunich 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 thePFLP. 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.
Tanzim, a branch of Fatah under the leadership of Marwan Barghouti, with roots in the activism of theFirst Intifada, which carried out armed attacks in the early days of the Second Intifada. It was later subsumed or sidelined by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, created during 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.
^Wienthal, Benjamin."German Jews slam party for working with Fatah".The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved2 May 2016.[Sigmar Gabriel] added that Fatah was part of the values of social democracy and was represented in the European coalition of social democrats as an observer partner.
^Ulrika Möller, Isabell Schierenbeck, ed. (2014).Political Leadership, Nascent Statehood and Democracy: A comparative study.Routledge. p. 139.ISBN9781317673101.Hamas' rejection of secularism and implicit contempt of 'territorial' nationalism challenged the Palestinian narrative as defined by Fatah and PLO [...] Thus, Arafat kept the secular, albeit expressed rhetorically with Islamic (and occasionally Christian) connotations, vision of the state project.
^Yonah Alexander, ed. (2021).Palestinian Secular Terrorism: Profiles of Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. BRILL.
^Ora Szekely, ed. (2016).The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East: Resources, Relationships, and Resistance. Springer International Publishing. p. 54.To balance against their rivals, the Gulf states tended to back the comparatively conservative Fatah.
^"The Left Has Played a Key Role in the Palestinian Struggle".Jacobin. 2 July 2024. Retrieved18 October 2025.Today's absence of a progressive option between two conservative nationalist parties, Fatah and Hamas, contributes to the impasse that Palestinians face in terms of political initiative.
^Robert O Freedman, ed. (9 July 2019).The Middle East Since Camp David.Taylor & Francis.By 1969 (the year Arafat assumed chairmanship of the PLO/EC and Fatah moved to unite the PLO) the corporate identities of the various groups were already becoming established. Groups like the PFLP and DFLP emerged as independent organizations with revolutionary/internationalist outlooks in contrast to Fatah's more conservative nationalism.
^Colin P. Clarke, ed. (2018).Terrorism.The PLO is comprised of centrist-nationalist groups (such as al-Fatah), rightist groups, leftist groups (including communists), militant groups, and nonmilitant groups.
^Christina, Rachel (2006).Tend the Olive, Water the Vine: Globalization and the Negotiation of Early Childhood in Palestine. IAP-Information. p. xxi.ISBN9781607525592.A Palestinian organization, affiliated with the centrist Fatah movement, which filtered funds from the Palestinian diaspora back into social services in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
^Marshall Breger; Yitzhak Reiter; Leonard Hammer, eds. (2013).Sacred Space in Israel and Palestine: Religion and Politics. Taylor & Francis.ISBN9781136490330.Even Fatah (the centrist party of the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat), which had supported Hamas's Gazan campaign against the Communist Party and the Popular and Democratic Fronts, suffered the onslaughts of the movement just prior to the outbreak of the Intifada.
^Halabi, Yakub (2016).Democratic Peace Across the Middle East: Islam and Political Modernisation. London:I.B. Tauris.ISBN9780857728821.The failure of the Palestinian left in consolidating a counterweight to the right-wing Islamic Hamas or to the centrist Fatah, furthermore, left Palestinian voters with no viable alternative to Hamas or Fatah.
^Avi Tuschman, ed. (3 September 2013).Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us.Prometheus Books. p. 53.ISBN9781616148249.On the Muslim Palestinian side, respondents with the lowest scores sup- ported left-wing parties; intermediate scorers supported the centrist Fatah party; and those who scored highest supported Hamas and Islamic Jihad (which have "destroy Israel" ideologies).
^Youssef H., Aboul-Enein, ed. (2011).Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat. Naval Institute Press. p. 230.ISBN9781317755098.Fatah is a major Palestinian political party and the largest faction of the Palestine liberation Organization (PlO), a multiparty confederation. in Palestinian politics, it is on the center-left of the spectrum.
^Youssef Aboul-Enein; Youssef H.; Aboul-Enein, eds. (15 January 2011).Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat. Naval Institute Press. p. 230.ISBN9781612510156.Fatah is a major Palestinian political party and the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a multiparty confederation. In Palestinian politics, it is on the center-left of the spectrum.
^Muqtedar Khan (12 November 2004)."Yasser Arafat's Unfinished Saga".Brookings Institution. Retrieved26 July 2025.The emergence of the Islamic movement as an alternative to his more or less center-left secular Fatah movement has divided the Palestinian people and their aspirations.
^"Fatah".Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived fromthe original on 29 November 2007.Fatah [...] inverted acronym of Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini [...]
^Martijn Theodoor Houtsma, P.J. Bearman; et al. (2000).Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume X (Tā'-U[..]). Brill. p. 539.
^Sayigh, Yezid (1997). Armed Struggle and the Search for State, the Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-829643-0.OCLC185547145.
^Janan Osama al-Salwadi (27 February 2017)."مهمة "فتح" في أوغندا" [Fatah's mission in Uganda].Al Akhbar (Lebanon) (in Arabic). Retrieved6 October 2019.
^Disputed; inFaces of Lebanon. Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions pp. 162–165, William Harris states "Perhaps 3,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died in the siege and its aftermath." The Lebanese-American Association[62] suggests several thousand.
Baumgarten, Helga (2005). "The three faces/phases of Palestinian nationalism, 1948–2005".Journal of Palestine Studies.34 (4):25–48.doi:10.1525/jps.2005.34.4.25.
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