FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

Fateh at the Crossroads:
Opportunities and Possibilities
• •
Dr. Luay Shabaneh
Director ofthe Palestinian Central Bureau ofStatistics, Rama/Jah
1. Introduction
Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fateh), which espoused
a Palestinian nationalist ideology in which Palestine
would be liberated by the actions of Palestinian Arabs became
the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the 1967 Six­
Day War. It joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization
(PLO) and won the leadership role in 1969, and represented
since then the mainstream of the Palestinian politics.
Fateh, like any other political and revolutional movement, has
gone through stages. But this movement and due to many reasons
has ended up with a crisis or a deadlock at different organizational,
structural and political levels. This crisis reflected
itself in the 2006 elections when Fateh lost the elections and
consequently its role as the dominant political movement. In
fact, there is a feeling among many of its members that Fateh
is at a crossroads.
In this contribution, we attempt to seek opportunities and possibilities
for Fateh. We explore this issue from different angles,
and discuss the deep political and generational crisis. Fateh's
cadre feel the need for reform and renovation at financial, organizational,
political and strategic levels. This has been ex­
133