Farouk Kaddoumi - Career With Fatah

Career With Fatah

In 1960 he joined Fatah in the United Arab Emirates. In 1965-66 he worked for the ministry of health of Kuwait but in 1966 was expelled from the country for anti-governmental activities connected with the PLO. By 1969 he became one of key figures in the PLO and after 1973 he headed its political department in Damascus, Syria.

In 1976, Arafat and Kaddoumi met with Meir Vilner and Tawfik Toubi, heads of Rakah (New Communist List), which had developed after the 1965 split in the Israeli Communist Party, and from which Hadash eventually developed. This meeting led to a close cooperation.

Kaddoumi participated in the activities of Said al-Muragha (Abu Musa) group, including the 1983 mutiny attempt against Yassir Arafat (see Fatah Uprising), but switched sides and was assigned to the Central Committee of Fatah. He has been living in Tunis since the early 1980s, where the PLO was based after it evacuated Lebanon. In 1985, he claimed that Leon Klinghoffer was pushed over the side of the Achille Lauro by his wife for the insurance money.

After the Oslo accords in 1993, which he opposed as a betrayal of the PLO's principles, he refused to move to the Palestinian territories with the rest of the leadership to set up the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). From exile, he continued to advocate a hardline stance towards Israel, refused cooperation with the PNA and repeatedly embarrassed the PLO during negotiations with Israel by making statements denying the Jewish state's right to exist. This led to him being sidelined in Palestinian politics for over a decade, as the center of power moved to Gaza and then Ramallah.