Summary
The largest Palestinian grouping, dominated by Yasir Arafat and a set of cadres, whose lines of strength, influence and political thinking involve by far the largest number of Palestinians in exile and in the Gaza-West Bank region; its domination of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a whole follows from its being, in Said’s view, a majority group that speaks for the Palestinian Question.
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Al-Fateh began its existence in 1965 with a small raid into Israel; thereafter the number of militant Palestinian organizations increased (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.178 / printed p.157).
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Fateh’s models are basically Nasserite, although unlike Nasser, Fateh and Arafat made it a practical matter not to get too involved in the local politics of any one Arab state, Lebanon and Jordan being the two costly but inevitable exceptions; by Nasserite politics Said means an always visible symbol of authority, the za’im Arafat, and basically a centrist nationalist philosophy guiding the movement (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.180-181 / printed p.159-160).
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That philosophy is a drawback in that political organization is kept to a minimum except where fighting Zionism is concerned, and a strength in that Fateh tacitly encourages a real democracy in political idea and style and has never been proved not independent of the states it has connections with, Saudi Arabia, Libya, the Soviet Union or the German Democratic Republic among them; most important, Fateh represents the bottom-line fact of being an oppressed Palestinian, without necessarily involving every Palestinian in a theory of people’s war or class analysis (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.181 / printed p.160).
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Fateh has thousands of trained fighters and officers and a relatively optimistic view of the world; it has grafted itself onto the main line of Arab nationalist politics established by Gamal Abdel Nasser and has done little to mask its very progressive Sunni Islamic cultural ethos (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.181 / printed p.160).
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Fateh is less of a refusing, rejectionist party than any other, and, dealing from an increasing sense of mass strength, is the most likely Palestinian political group ever to be able to come to a responsible political settlement with its enemies; Fateh and Arafat are pragmatic, giving much time to maneuvering and tactics, much less to ideology and disciplined strategy (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.182 / printed p.161).
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Its rivals, principally the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Democratic Front, criticize Fateh’s improvisatory, in some cases family-style, politics on ideological, organizational and strategical grounds, posing questions about PLO links with Saudi Arabia and Syria, conduct toward Jordan, the fall 1976 meetings between PLO members and Israeli public figures, the absence of a blanket condemnation of Sadat after his trip to Jerusalem, Fateh’s vision of the future Palestinian society, and its determination on imperialism (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.182-183 / printed p.161-162).
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In Makdisi: the Fateh and Palestinian Authority elite went along with the “peace process” narrative while making personal gains, forfeiting control over language and discourse and abandoning the narratives of self-determination and national liberation Fateh had expressed in the 1960s and 1970s — the abandonment against which Hamas rose in 2006 (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.133-134).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine