Palestine Factions

From http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS21235.pdf Updated June 8, 2005

1 In the 19th & 20th century that is starting from 1800 to 1999 yeah, there were clans of people fighting for domination. No king like person.

2 The new system of splitting into factions started around 20's and 30's, due to British rule and the influx of Jews.

3 throughout the 1950s led to the creation of the Palestinian National Liberation
Movement in 1957, headed by Yasir Arafat.

4 The 1950’s and 1960’s have been characterized as an era of increased Palestinian “radicalization,” which favored the establishment of national liberation movements like Arafat’s Fatah party.

5 In 1964, in partial response to the wider trend of militant radicalism, the Arab League founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Fatah subsequently became dominant in the PLO in 1968-1969 and since that time the PLO and Fatah have monopolized nearly all aspects of politics in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

6 In the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the PLO’s dual program of violence and
political action caused the organization to splinter into several factions, some of which retained a loose affiliation with the PLO.

7 Between 1967 and 1989, groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Palestine’s People Party, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), either grew up within, or split off from, the PLO to pursue their own factional interests and political goals.

8 Also, during the 1970’s and 1980’s Palestinians experienced a rise in political Islam, embodied in Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which couch the national “struggle” in jihadist terms.

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