Movements

Founded c. 1930 · Haifa — Izz ad-Din al-Qassam

The clandestine cells a Syrian-born preacher built among the dispossessed peasants of Haifa's shanty towns in the early 1930s. Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was killed in the woods at Ya'bad in November 1935; his funeral filled Haifa, and six months later the country rose in the longest general strike of the colonial world.

Islamic revivalismanti-colonialismarmed strugglepeasant mobilisation

Founded 1935 (reconstituted 1947) · Jerusalem — Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, Hasan Salama

The volunteer force that defended the Jerusalem corridor in the winter of 1947–48 — a few thousand villagers with rifles against an organised army. Its commander, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, was killed retaking al-Qastal on 8 April 1948; the road fell, and a day later Deir Yassin was massacred.

Palestinian nationalismanti-colonialismterritorial defence

Founded 25 April 1936 · Jerusalem — Amin al-Husayni, Raghib al-Nashashibi, Awni Abd al-Hadi, Ahmad Hilmi Abd al-Baqi and others

The first body to speak for all of Palestine — six parties and ten men, formed on the sixth day of the 1936 general strike, outlawed by the British in 1937, and left after 1948 as a government-in-name-only over a people it could no longer reach.

Arab nationalismanti-colonialismindependenceopposition to partition

Founded 1951 · Beirut (American University of Beirut) — George Habash, Wadie Haddad, Hani al-Hindi, Ahmad al-Khatib and others

Founded by medical students at the American University of Beirut who had watched their own towns emptied in 1948, on the premise that Arab unity was the road to the liberation of Palestine. Its Palestine Section became, after the defeat of June 1967, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Arab nationalismArab unityNasserismanti-imperialismlater Marxism-Leninism

Founded 11 December 1967 · Beirut / Damascus — George Habash, Wadie Haddad, Ahmad Jibril, Ahmad al-Yamani and others

Formed six months after the June 1967 defeat from the Palestine Section of the Arab Nationalist Movement, and turned Marxist at its second congress in February 1969. Its spokesman was the novelist Ghassan Kanafani; its external operations branch made the hijacking a global symbol, and its own leadership voted in 1970 to stop them.

Marxism-LeninismArab nationalismanti-imperialismsecular democratic statearmed struggle

Founded October 1968 · Damascus — Ahmad Jibril, Abu al-Abbas Zaydan

Ahmad Jibril's breakaway of October 1968, founded on the argument that the PFLP was drowning military work in ideological debate. It became the most Syria-aligned of the Palestinian organisations, fought other Palestinians in Lebanon, and negotiated the largest prisoner exchange in Palestinian history in 1985.

Arab nationalismmilitary-first doctrinerejectionismalignment with Syria

Founded 22 February 1969 · Amman — Nayef Hawatmeh, Yasser Abd Rabbo, Bilal al-Hasan

Split from the PFLP in February 1969 on the argument that a petit-bourgeois group could not simply declare itself Marxist-Leninist. It was the first Palestinian organisation to argue publicly, from 1973, for a state on the West Bank and Gaza — and the organisation responsible for the killing of twenty-five schoolchildren at Ma'alot in 1974.

Marxism-Leninismmass worksecular democratic statetwo-state settlement (from 1973)

Founded c. 1980 (organised in Palestine from November 1981) · Egypt (Zagazig University) and the Gaza Strip — Fathi Shaqaqi, Abd al-Aziz Awda, Bashir Musa

Founded by Palestinian students in Egypt who concluded that they had found nationalists without Islam and Islamists without Palestine. Its founder Fathi Shaqaqi, a paediatrician from Rafah, was assassinated in Malta in October 1995; the movement has stayed out of elections and out of government ever since.

IslamismPalestinian nationalismarmed jihadpan-Islamic solidarityrejection of negotiated settlement

Founded 9 December 1987 · Gaza City — Ahmed Yassin, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, Salah Shehadeh, Muhammad Sham'a and others

Founded in Gaza City on the second day of the First Intifada by seven Muslim Brotherhood leaders around Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Its 1988 charter and its 2017 Document of General Principles say materially different things, and the movement issued the second itself, to restate its position.

IslamismPalestinian nationalismarmed resistancesocial welfareMuslim Brotherhood tradition