Editing Fatah (section)

==Structure==
Fatah's two most important decision-making bodies are the [[Central Committee of Fatah|Central Committee]] and Revolutionary Council. The Central Committee is mainly an executive body, while the Revolutionary Council is Fatah's [[Legislature|legislative]] body.<ref name=al-mon_growing_issues/><ref>[http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-08/12/content_11871601.htm Xinhua News Agency. ''Fatah begins vote count for revolutionary council after delays''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121107205131/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-08/12/content_11871601.htm |date=7 November 2012 }} by Saud Abu Ramadan. Last accessed: 14 August 2009.</ref><ref>[https://archive.today/20130706010716/http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418557097&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull JPost. Fatah moves 'to remove, defeat occupation'] by KHALED ABU TOAMEH. Last accessed: 14 August 2009.</ref>

===Armed factions===
Fatah has maintained a number of militant groups since its founding. Its mainstream military branch is [[al-'Asifah]]. Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in terrorism in the past,<ref name="Terrorism">{{cite encyclopedia |title=terrorism |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/588371/terrorism/217764/History |access-date=3 July 2015}}</ref><ref name="britannica.com">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Palestine |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/439645/Palestine/45082/Resurgence-of-Palestinian-identity |access-date=3 July 2015}}</ref><ref name="Terrorism in Tel Aviv"/><ref name="Arafat's means' failed in the end">{{cite web |last=Phares |first=Walid |date=1974-11-13 |title=Arafat's 'means' failed in the end |url=http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6436578 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150705144346/http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6436578/ |archive-date=5 July 2015 |access-date=2013-04-25 |work=NBC News}}</ref> though unlike its rival [[Islamism|Islamist]] faction [[Hamas]], Fatah is no longer regarded as a terrorist organization by any government. Fatah used to be designated terrorist under [[Israel]]i law and was considered terrorist by the [[United States Department of State]] and [[United States Congress]] until it renounced terrorism in 1988.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mod.gov.il/pages/general/teror.asp|title=Israel ministry of Defense|publisher=Mod.gov.il|access-date=2013-04-25}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Kushner |first=Harvey W. |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780761924081/page/13 |title=Encyclopedia of Terrorism |publisher=SAGE |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-7619-2408-1 |edition=illustrated |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780761924081/page/13 13–15, 281–83] |oclc=50725450 |author-link=Harvey Kushner}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Judge Rules PLO Can Retain Office|last=Lubasch|first=Arnold H.|date=30 June 1988|work=The New York Times}}</ref><ref>''Palestine Information Office v. Shultz'', 853 F.2d 932 (D.C.Cir. 1988).</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_n2128_v87/ai_6198831 |title=United States Department of State Bulletin |publisher=[[United States Department of State]] |date=15 September 1987 |access-date=23 February 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090808192756/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_n2128_v87/ai_6198831/ |archive-date=8 August 2009 }}</ref>

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]]. Plays a role akin to the Presidential Guard for senior Fatah leaders.{{Citation needed|date=April 2011}} Created by Yasser Arafat.
*[[Black September Organization]]. A group formed by leading Fatah members in 1971, following the events of the "[[Black 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. the [[Munich massacre|Munich 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 the [[Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine|PFLP]]. 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 the [[First 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.

During the Second Intifada, the group was a member of the [[Palestinian National and Islamic Forces]].<ref>[http://www.jmcc.org/banner/banner1/bayan/aqsbayan14.htm Statement issued by the National and Islamic Forces] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060425165617/http://www.jmcc.org/banner/banner1/bayan/aqsbayan14.htm |date=25 April 2006 }} 10 February 2001</ref>

===Constitution===
In August 2009, at Fatah's Sixth General Conference in [[Bethlehem]], Fatah delegates drew up a new "internal charter".<ref>{{cite web |title=Palestine National Liberation Movement Fatah Internal Charter |url=https://irp.fas.org/dni/osc/fatah-charter.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211019111346/https://irp.fas.org/dni/osc/fatah-charter.pdf |archive-date=2021-10-19 |url-status=live}}</ref>