Publications

The institutionalization of Fatah mirrors the evolution of the PLO and the Palestinian national cause generally. Understanding the factors that have influenced Fatah’s politics of violence, and its political path – and the balance between the two – help to explain the political history of the Middle East in recent decades. This book documents Fatah’s rise to prominence within the variegated Palestinian national movement through a detailed analysis of the organization’s evolution – from its inception in 1959, through the climactic institutional accomplishment of 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords, to the institutional regression that was marked by the eruption of the Intifada in 2000. Fatah’s institutionalization is marked by alternating bases of the organization’s legitimacy: organizational, communal, and external. Transformations from one phase to another are distinguished by the shifts in relative importance assigned to the different sources of legitimacy, which in turn dictated different courses of action for the organization. Analyzed according to these concepts, Fatah’s dynamic evolution comprises phases characterized by oscillating shifts between a violent and political struggle, and between dominant sources of legitimacy. The study of Fatah’s institutionalization reveals an ongoing interplay of intra-organizational considerations, relations between the organization and its national constituency, and environmental opportunities and pressures.