inverted acronym of Ḥarakat al-Taḥrīr al-Waṭanī al-Filasṭīnī ("Palestine National Liberation Movement")
Palestinian guerrilla organization and political party, whose name means "conquest" in Arabic.
Founded by Yāsir Arafāt and Khalīl al-Wazīr in the late 1950s, the movement relied on guerrilla warfare and occasional acts of terrorism in an attempt to wrest Palestine from Israeli control. It eventually became the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization and attacked Israeli interests worldwide. Originally based in Damascus, it was forced to relocate several times before a political agreement was reached with Israel in 1993. A number of factions within Fatah were against peace with Israel and split from the main organization. Fatah faced further difficulty in its attempt to transform itself from a liberation movement to a more conventional political organization.