Fatah was organized as a Palestinian nationalist group in 1954 , and exists today as a political party in Palestine . In 1967 it joined the Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ) , an umbrella organization for secular Palestinian nationalist groups formed in 1964 . The PLO began its own armed operations in 1965 . The PLO 's membership comprises separate and possibly contending paramilitary and political factions , the largest of which include Fatah , the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( PFLP ) , and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( DFLP ) . Factions of the PLO have advocated or carried out acts of terrorism . Abu Iyad organized the Fatah splinter group Black September in 1970 ; the group is arguably best known for seizing eleven Israeli athletes as hostages at the September 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich . All the athletes and five Black September operatives died during a gun battle with the West German police in what later became known as the Munich massacre . The PFLP , founded in 1967 by George Habash , on September 6 , 1970 hijacked three international passenger planes , landing two of them in Jordan and blowing up the third . Fatah leader and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat publicly renounced terrorism in December 1988 on behalf of the PLO , but Israel has stated that it has proof that Arafat continued to sponsor terrorism until his death in 2004
Munich massacre
Munich massacre
History of terrorism