The Atlantic Jump In On Fatah’s 48 Years Of Terror

The Atlantic is a liberal magazine, and that’s fine, but they might want to scrutinise their writers a bit more thoroughly. In Dalia Hatuqa’s first piece for The Atlantic, she repeats the busted lie that Fatah was celebrating 48 years since its creation.

On its 48th anniversary, the storied political party grapples with endemic failure and no way forward.

After nearly a half-century of existence, Fatah has left many loyalists and critics alike pondering its accomplishments. On New Year’s Eve, the Palestinian political party — which has led the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for decades and currently holds the presidency of the Palestianian Authority (PA) — celebrated its 48th anniversary. In Ramallah, a few thousand mostly young men marched across the West Bank city to the Muqata’, the headquarters of the PA president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas. The streets were lined with the party’s younger supporters, some elderly veterans clad in military fatigues and several high-ranking members of the group’s leadership who are based in the West Bank.

As the marchers converged upon the headquarters — once a ravaged icon of the second Intifada, today it stands a revamped modern military compound — many started to trickle away. Addressing the enthusiastic group that remained, Abbas, looking every day of his 77 years, spoke of Palestinian leaders of years past. He started with Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian figure unrivaled in his persona, then moved on to Abu Jihad and Abu Eyad — both icons of Palestinian resistance — and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s late spiritual leader, whose group Fatah has been at loggerheads with since it wrested control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

And no mention whatsoever of Fatah’s terrorism – it’s all “resistance”. Well, what can you expect of an Al-Jazeera drop-out.

Dalia Hatuqa is a Ramallah-based writer who previously worked for Al Jazeera in Washington D.C.

h/t @PhillipSmyth