Farouk Qaddumi*
Farouk Qaddumi (فاروق القدومي), born in 1931 in Nablus, was a founding member of Fatah. He died in August 2024 in Amman, Jordan. He had a very contentious relationship with Mahmoud Abbas and had been steadily marginalised from the centres of power within the party and the PLO.
Following Yasser Arafat’s death in November 2004 he acted as interim chairman of Fatah’s Central Committee until his replacement by Abbas. He was ousted from the the Central Committee in 2009, and from the PLO’s Executive Committee in 2018.
Qaddumi studied at Cairo University during the 1950s where he met Arafat. Together they moved to Kuwait where they launched Fatah. He opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority, choosing instead to remain in exile in Tunis where the PLO had relocated after its expulsion by Israel from Beirut.