Dahlan became politically active as a teenager and in 1981 helped to establish the Gaza branch of the Fatah Youth Movement Fatah Hawks in the Gaza Strip.

The Fatah Hawks is the name of two Palestinian militant groups.

The Fatah Hawks ' last activity was in 2005 when Fatah Hawk gunmen blockaded a Palestinian road and prevented Palestinian National Authority ( PA ) officials from passing in protest at not being assigned to the PA security system.

* International Middle East Media Center: Fatah Hawks reopen road leading to Rafah crossing

# REDIRECT Fatah Hawks

* Force 17 – Force 17 was created by Yassir Arafat, and plays a role akin to the Presidential Guard for senior Fatah leaders.

* Black September – Black September was a group formed by leading Fatah members in 1971, following the " Black September " events in Jordan, to clandestinely organize attacks that Fatah did not want to be openly associated with.

* Tanzim – The Tanzim ( Organization ) was 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.

* 1978 – Coastal Road massacre: At least 37 are killed and more than 70 are wounded when Al Fatah hijack an Israeli bus, prompting Israel's Operation Litani.

* 1968 – Battle of Karameh in Jordan between Israeli Defense Forces and Fatah.

* 1966 – In response to Fatah raids against Israelis near the West Bank border, Israel launches an attack on the village of As-Samu.

* 1935 – Abu Jihad, Founder of the Palestinian group Fatah ( d. 1988 )

# Redirect Fatah – Hamas conflict

* Fatah – Largest faction, Left-wing Nationalism, Palestinian nationalist.

* Fatah – Hamas conflict ( 2006 – 2009 ) – an armed conflict fought between the two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas with each vying to assume political control of the Palestinian territories.

* July 28 – Abdul Fatah Younis, Libyan army commander ( b. 1944 )

As a result of pressure from militants, writes Morris, a Fatah congress in Damascus in August – September 1971 agreed to establish Black September.

The PSP military wing, the People ’ s Liberation Army – PLA ( Arabic: Jayish al-Tahrir al-Sha ’ aby ) or Armée de Libération Populaire ( ALP ) in French was raised early in 1976 with the help of Fatah and initially comprised 3, 000 lightly armed fighters drawn from the Druze and Shia Muslim communities of the Shouf.

This concession, though discussed in Hamas circles, did not come about soon enough to prevent a serious breakdown in services under Hamas government, and Western ( especially American ) support of Fatah paramilitaries eventually led to the breakout of the Fatah – Hamas conflict ( termed a " Palestinian Civil War " by some ) in December 2006.

To end the siege, the US and European governments brokered an agreement guaranteeing safe passage for Arafat and Fatah – guarded by a multinational force – to exile in Tunis.

This document, which was accepted by the Palestinian National Council ( PNC ) after lobbying by Fatah and DFLP, cautiously introduced the concept of a two-state solution in the PLO, and caused a split in the organization leading to the formation of the Rejectionist Front, where radical organizations such as the PFLP, PFLP-GC, Palestine Liberation Front and others gathered with the backing of Syria, Libya and Iraq to oppose Arafat and the mainstream PLO stance.

Al-Mustaqbal was to campaign against Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, presenting a list including Mohammed Dahlan, Kadoura Fares, Samir Mashharawi and Jibril Rajoub.

Fatah was appealing to Palestinians who want a more hardline response to Israel by reaffirming its option for " armed resistance " against Israel.

At least 70 new members entered the latter, with 20 seats going to Fatah representatives from the Gaza Strip, 11 seats filled by women ( the highest number of votes went to one woman who spent years in Israeli jails for her role in the resistance ), four seats went to Christians, and one was filled by a Jewish-born convert to Islam, Uri Davis, the first Jewish-born person to be elected to the Revolutionary Council since its founding in 1958.

Fatah used to be designated terrorist under Israeli law and was considered terrorist by the United States Department of State and United States Congress until it renounced terrorism in 1988.

The original name for Fatah's armed wing was al-Assifa ( The Storm ), and this was also the name Fatah first used in its communiques, trying for some time to conceal its identity.

Though he claims he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack.

He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ), President of the Palestinian National Authority ( PNA ), and leader of the Fatah political party and former paramilitary group, which he founded in 1959.

" Fatah " is also a word that was used in early Islamic times to refer to " conquest.

Hours before he was killed, Arafat was discussing with him ways to unite their factions and to request Orabi's support for Arafat against his rivals within the Fatah leadership.

Although Nasser and his Arab allies had been defeated, Arafat and Fatah could claim a victory, in that the majority of Palestinians, who had up to that time tended to align and sympathize with individual Arab governments, now began to agree that a ' Palestinian ' solution to their dilemma was indispensable.

Fatah was allocated 33 of 105 seats of the PLO Executive Committee while 57 seats were left for several other guerrilla factions.

The operation was in response to attacks, including rockets strikes from Fatah and other Palestinian militias, within the occupied West Bank.

" Aburish writes that it was on Arafat's orders that Fatah remained, and that the Jordanian Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.

Despite the higher Arab death toll and the fact that the battle was decided in Israel's favor, Fatah considered themselves victorious because of the Israeli army's withdrawal.

A number of sources, including Mohammed Oudeh ( Abu Daoud ), one of the masterminds of the Munich massacre, and Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli historian, have stated that Black September was an armed branch of Fatah used for paramilitary operations.

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.

This name has since been applied more generally to Fatah armed forces, and does not correspond to a single unit today.

In addition to killing Israeli civilians and armed forces, Hamas has also attacked suspected Palestinian collaborators, and Fatah rivals.

Compounding matters, Lebanon received an influx of armed Palestinian militants, including Arafat and his Fatah movement, fleeing the 1970 Jordanian crackdown.

Fatah dedicated itself to the liberation of Palestine by an armed struggle carried out by Palestinians themselves.

Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian armed groups were the target of a major Israeli army operation in the Jordanian village of Karameh, where the Fatah headquarters — as well as a mid-sized Palestinian refugee camp — were located.

Some Israeli government officials opined in 2002 that the armed Fatah sub-group al-Aqsa Martyrs ' Brigades commenced attacks towards Israel in order to compete with Hamas.

As the Second Intifada raged, Barghouti became increasingly popular as a leader of the Fatah armed branch, the Tanzim, seen as one of the major forces fighting against the Israel Defense Forces.

This followed action by Hamas armed forces to take control of Palestinian Authority positions controlled by Fatah militias.

The PLO did this with the assistance of so-called volunteers from Libya and Algeria shipped in through the ports it controlled, as well as a number of Sunni Lebanese groups who had been trained and armed by PLO / Fatah and encouraged to declare themselves as separate militias.

However as Rex Brynen makes clear in his publication on the PLO, these militias were nothing more than " shop-fronts " or in Arabic " Dakakin " for Fatah, armed gangs with no ideological foundation and no organic reason for their existence save the fact their individual members were put on PLO / Fatah payroll.

The Popular Resistance Committees ( PRC ) ( Arabic: لجان المقاومة الشعبية, Lijān al-Muqāwama al-Shaʿbiyya ) are a coalition of various armed Palestinian factions that oppose the conciliatory approach adopted by the Palestinian Authority and Fatah towards Israel.