Fatah: Can Someone Please Clear This Up?

Okay, I consider myself fairly news savvy and up to date, but apparently missing a couple of days has thrown me for a complete loop, and now I have no idea what's going on.

The last I heard, Fatah were the good guys in Palestine, Abbas was their leader (now prez of a new Unification government), and Hammas were the ousted bad guys.

Now I'm hearing that Fatah are bad guys, attacking the Lebanese army while the LA tries to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah? And Israel is now shelling Fatah-led Palestine...

What the hell is going on???

Can someone please clear this up for me? I'm confused as all get out.

(edit, grammar)

[edit on 5/22/2007 by thelibra]

Fatah has become a generic name used by a number of Palestinian militant groups - the Fatah in Lebanon is a relatively new extremist Islamist group.

The Fatah that evolved from the PLO is an entirely separate group (actually an alliance of groups) that are largely secular leftists, hence their conflict with the Islamists in Hamas.

[edit on 5/22/07 by xmotex]

Originally posted by xmotex
Fatah has become a generic name used by a number of Palestinian militant groups - the Fatah in Lebanon is a relatively new extremist Islamist group.

Great...

You know, it'd be a lot easier to keep track of who's who if they'd use different names. It's almost as bad as that scene from The Life of Brian, where they try to figure out which group they belong to.

Finnish news sources call the Gazan Fatah just Fatah and The lebanese organisation is called Fatah-al-Islam... Don't know what the organisations themselves want to be called but at least this keeps them separated on news items

I was watching a report from a US M.E. political analyst on BBC News24 last night and he stated much the same...small splinter groups emerging that no-one is sure of the aims and objectives are.

What he did say that caught my attention is that the groups alliegences aren't along political lines, but rather sectarian Sunni/Shia.

Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah-al-islam=Shia
Fatah (Abbas' original organisation)=Sunni

Sunni organisations are being armed and backed by the US and others, Shia by Iran and others

Originally posted by citizen smith
Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah-al-islam=Shia
Fatah (Abbas' original organisation)=Sunni

Sunni organisations are being armed and backed by the US and others, Shia by Iran and others

Thanks, Citizen Smith, this helps clarify the news a lot.
Okay, now to go back and re-read the articles with this in mind, and see if I can decypher what's happening over there today.

Actually I'm pretty sure Fatah al-Islam is a Al Quaeda-affiliated Salafist Sunni group.

Abbas's Fatah is largely secular in it's aims - one of the reasons for the current conflict in Gaza is that the traditionally liberal residents of Gaza are chafing under Hamas's Islamist agenda. Hamas's election victory was largely due to a protest vote against Fatah's ineffectiveness and corruption, not the popularity of their Islamist ideology.



[edit on 5/23/07 by xmotex]

Originally posted by xmotex
Actually I'm pretty sure Fatah al-Islam is a Al Quaeda-affiliated Salafist Sunni group.

If I got that wrong then I stand corrected...was 4am and unable to sleep when I was watching that report.

It does seem to make sense as to why the various factions are at each others throats though. It's almost as if a new 'front' has opened up in the sunni/shia conflict that has been raging in Iraq and both sides are being played as proxies by outside powers

NP it's easy to get confused with so many groups popping up - IMHO there are multiple axes of conflict: radicals/moderates, islamists/secular leftists, Sunni/Shia - it's a dizzying array of groups and positions.

Yeah, I just got reamed for trying to discuss this with a political friend. When they heard me say "Hamas are Shia" they went nuts. Apparently they're Sunni, as are Abbas' Fatah, Al' Qaeda, the Taliban, and Syria. Hezbollah, Iraq, and Iran are the only Shiites.

Guess it doesn't matter how much of the news I read, there's almost no way to wrap my head around these conflicts because they're so damn daft. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of figuring out who the good guys and bad guys are, I find out that there's just no clear distinction as to what the bloody hell everyone in the M.E. is fighting everyone about.