FATAH

also called Al-fatah, also spelled Fat'h, or Al-fat'h, inverted acronym of Harakat Al-tahrir Al-watani Al-filastini (Palestine National Liberation Movement), political and military organization of Arab Palestinians, founded in the late 1950s by Yasir 'Arafat and Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir) with the aim of liberating Palestine from Israeli control by waging low-intensity warfare against the latter. The new organization obtained Syrian support and thus became based in Damascus. By 1963 Fatah had developed a commando-type organizational structure. On Dec. 31, 1964, it carried out its first military operation, the blowing up of an Israeli water-pump installation; Fatah's first military communiqu was issued the following day. By 1968 it had emerged as a major Palestinian force, being the major target of the Israeli attack on the Jordanian village of Karameh in March in which 150 guerrillas and 29 Israelis were killed before Jordanian tanks drove off the Israeli troops. The strong showing of Fatah at Karamehespecially after the Arab humiliation in the Six-Day War of 1967boosted Fatah politically and psychologically. By the end of the 1960s it was the largest and richest of all the Palestinian organizations and had taken over effective control of the Palestine Liberation Organization (q.v.), or PLO. Following the civil war in Jordan on Sept. 1627, 1969, the Jordanian army forced the PLO and Fatah fighters out of Jordan and into Lebanon, and in July 1971 Jordanian authorities killed a respected Fatah leader, Abu 'Ali Iyyad. The result was the emergence of an extremist, militant corps of Fatah called Black September (Ailulal Aswad, or September al-Aswad), first proclaimed in November 1971 and drawing its first international notoriety in September 1972 from the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich. Both Black September and the regular forces of Fatah were thereafter involved in a number of terrorist activities, primarily against Israel. In 1982 the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, where Fatah had been headquartered, presented a further crisis. The PLO and Fatah were ousted from areas not controlled by Syria. Rival, battling factions developed within Fatah during 1983, and a divisive leadership struggle developed. By the 1990s, however, 'Arafat had reclaimed his leadership of Fatah, which remained the largest PLO member.