al Asifa

The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat gave the name al Asifa, or “the Storm,” to the military wing of his al Fatah movement at its founding in 1957. In the early days of Fatah, Arafat signed communiqués and leaflets calling for “armed revolution” with the name al Asifa.

Calling for an armed struggle for Palestine carried out by Palestinians themselves, Fatah launched its first raid into Israel in 1965, claiming responsibility under the name al Asifa. As Fatah emerged further from the underground and gained leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the group gradually stopped making distinctions between Fatah and al Asifa. Some Arafat biographers have claimed that al Asifa was merely the cover name that Fatah used to launch its first operations, and that at its beginning al Fatah had no separate military wing.

al Asifa made international headlines when Sabri al Banna (also known as Abu Nidal) split from Arafat and the al Fatah movement in the early 1970s. Banna condemned Fatah's work for political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, and is said to have been expelled from the organization for plotting to assassinate Arafat. In what many saw as a move to prove himself to be the legitimate representative of the true Fatah ideology, Banna gave institutions in his organization names identical to those in al Fatah, including calling his military operations wing “al Asifa,” and his operatives often claimed responsibility for violent acts under that name.