Political Parties (Palestine)

Last modified: 2004-05-22 by santiago dotor
Keywords: palestine | politics | fatah | palestine liberation movement | harakat tahrir filistin |
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• Introduction
• Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP) Hawatmeh)
• Fatah (Palestine Liberation Movement / Harakat Tahrir Filistin)
• Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement / Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya)
• Islamic Jihad Movement (Harakat al-Jihad al-Islami)
• Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Palestinian Flag with Shahada
• Unidentified Political Flags

See also:

• Palestine

Logos of the PLO, Fatah (the largest PLO group, almost synonimous with it), the PFLP, PFLP-GC, and DFLP appear at the Information Regarding Israel's Security (IRIS) website. I know the PFLP's symbol appears as white on a red flag.

Nathan Lamm, 26 August 2001

The problem with Palestinian organizations is that there are quite a lot of them, sometimes with more than one name, and sometimes there is no real distinction or ad-hoc unifications. The lack of a real central government and the distinction between the area of the Palestinian Authority, brought to a situation that sometimes local branches handles an independent policy, making the movements a kind of a loose federation.

The use of the flag of one movement (eg. Hamas) in the funeral for a member of other movement (eg. Islamic Jihad) therefore not surprising.

Today, a local Israeli newspaper tried to find some logic in the mess and had a list of the active organizations in Palestine. These were:

"Establishment Organizations"

1. Palestinian Police
2. Force 17 (president Arafat's personal bodyguard)
3. Fatah (or Shuada el-Aqsa Brigades)
4. Tanzim (youth organization)
5. Thwarting Intelligence System

"Non-Establishment Organizations"

1. Hamas (or Iz a-Din el-Qasam Brigades)
2. Islamic Jihad
3. Democratic Front
4. Popular Front

Anonymous, 26 December 2001

Most of the "Establishment" groups, especially b, c, and d, are part of Fatah, Arafat's faction (the dominant one) of the PLO. Of course, he controls the other two as well. The PLO consisted of numerous other groups, and there were other Palestinian groups that were not members, but outside of the Democratic and Popular Fronts (which also has a "General Command," a separate group), I am not sure any of them (or even some of these last) are st