Al-Fatḥ (also Fataḥ, an inverted acronym for Ḥarakat al-Taḥrīr al-Waṭanī al-Filasṭīnī, Palestinian National Liberation Movement) has dominated the Palestinian National Movement since 1969. It was founded in Kuwait in 1959 by Palestinian migrant workers, most of them professionals employed there. Yāsir ʿArafāt (1929-2004), who studied engineering in Cairo and started his political career as a student leader in the early 1950s in Egypt, controlled the movement almost from the beginning. Even after his death, in November 2004, he remained the symbol for Palestinian nationalism. The