A guide to Palestinian political parties

Not only Fatah and Hamas: A guide to Palestinian political parties: From the Geopolitics Channel

Representatives of 14 Palestinian political groups and factions signed an agreement in Beijing to create an interim reconciliation government. Usually only Fatah and Hamas appear in media outlets as the main Palestinian parties, but in fact, there are many more. Here is a brief guide on Palestine’s parties and movements:

🔸Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is a coalition, which in fact rules the Palestinian administration on the West Bank. It consists of 10 groups:

◾️Fatah: social-democratic party established by Yasser Arafat in the late 1950s. Now it is led by Mahmoud Abbas and remains the largest and most dominant party in both the PLO and Palestinian administration;

◾️The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP): the second largest faction and the main opposition force to Fatah in the PLO. The party poses itself as revolutionary socialist group;

◾️Fatah – Democratic Reform Bloc: a democratic wing that split from Fatah in 2016;

◾️National Democratic Assembly: a democratic party established in 2021 by Yasser Arafat’s nephew, Nasser Kidwa. He wanted to take part in Palestinian legislative elections in 2020, which were later canceled;

◾️ Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP): Marxist-Leninist party formed as an offshoot of the PFLP. The DFLP has been responsible for attacks against Israeli targets (including civilians) in Israel and the occupied territories of West Bank;

◾️ Palestine Democratic Union (FIDA): was founded in 1990 as an offshoot of the DFLP, but with social democratic reformist ideology;

◾️ Palestinian People’s Party (PPP): a Palestinian communist movement. Members of the party have repeatedly served in Palestinian Authority governments. In 2021, it announced its withdrawal from the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, where it held the labor ministry portfolio. But the threat was not implemented.

◾️The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF): the movement is close to the pan-Arab Baath socialist party, which, for example, is still the key political power in Syria but traditionally aligned itself closely with Fatah in Palestinian administration.

◾️The Palestine Popular Struggle Front (PPSF): a leftist party led by Ahmad Majdalani, ex-minister of social affairs, who is seen as a close ally of Abbas.

◾️The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC): left-wing national movement, whose leadership are mostly based in Lebanon and Syria, being supported among Palestinian refugees there.

Even though, the majority of these parties have lost their popular support base and contribute very little to politics, they are still part of the PLO and Palestinian political system in general.

🔸 The Committee of Popular Resistance group, also known as The Resistance or Islamic Resistance, is active in the Gaza Strip and includes Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Inspired by political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood movement, these groups have controlled Gaza since 2007, isolating it from Palestinian Authority politics. In 2017, Hamas revised its political platform to distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood*. Both Hamas and PIJ have their own military wings and jointly combat the Israeli army.

🔸Others. the Fatah-Hamas struggle in 2007 led not only to political distancing between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also to formation of several new secular parties. One of them is a liberal-democratic Third Way, which poses itself as an alternative to the two-party Hamas-Fatah leadership system. The second one is The Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), which presents itself as a democratic movement of non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation.