51 years after its founding, where is Fatah heading?
The Fatah movement is torn between the moderate forces and those who wish to reignite a violent confrontation with Israel, 51 years after its establishment.
Two posters that were prepared by Fatah to mark the movement's 51st anniversary precisely convey the bitter controversy taking place in the movement today.
One of the posters, designed by supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, displays the pictures of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Abbas alongside the number 51 while a white dove hovers above the Palestinian flag and Al-Aqsa Mosque. At the bottom of the poster it reads, “A promise is a promise and a vow is a vow.”
The second poster, disseminated by another Fatah faction, uses different images and language to appeal to activists who have been disappointed by Fatah’s direction in recent years. The white dove symbolizing a peace agreement with Israel is replaced on this poster by a map of Palestine that includes the entire territory of the State of Israel. Just in case there is any doubt regarding the direction in which the movement is headed, the poster reads, “Long live the day of the founding of the Fatah power [movement].”
The first terror attack that a Fatah cell tried — unsuccessfully — to perpetrate was on Jan. 1, 1965, on Israel’s National Water Carrier. In fact, Jan. 1 is the anniversary date that Fatah chose to celebrate the founding of the movement, even though the movement had already been established on Oct. 10, 1959, in Kuwait. Fifty-one years later, 2016 will be the movement’s watershed year. Fatah founded Palestinian nationalism and led it almost to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders.
