Farouk Kaddumi, Fatah hardliner who opposed Oslo Accords, dies in Amman at 93
Kaddumi was among Fatah’s founders, supported realignment with Hamas; he served as the faction’s head before fallout with Abbas, whom he accused of killing Arafat
Farouk Kaddumi, a former top official in Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization who opposed the Oslo Accords and supported rapprochement with Hamas, died at his home in Jordan’s capital Amman at the age of 93 on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency reported.
Kaddumi, also known as Abu Lutf, served as the political chief of the PLO and a senior member of its dominant faction, Fatah, which he helped found. He refused to set foot in Palestinian territories after PLO chief Yasser Arafat committed to ceasing “armed struggle” against Israel in the 1993 Oslo Accords.
When Arafat died in 2004, Kaddumi accused new PA President Mahmoud Abbas of collaborating with Israel to assassinate the late chairman. Kaddumi later made amends with Abbas. The president paid him a visit in Amman in May 2023.
“I mourn a brother, a friend, and a comrade in the struggle and indefatigable work for Palestine,” Abbas said Friday, according to the PA’s official news agency WAFA.
Hamas also offered condolences.
“The late Abu Lutf was an example of steadfastness in revolutionary principles, and a strong voice in the face of all attempts to squander and relinquish the rights of our people.”
Kaddumi was born in 1931 in Jinsafut, near Qalqilya, in what is now the West Bank. He was educated in schools in Jaffa and Acre before studying economics at the American University of Cairo, where he met Arafat, an engineering student.
In 1960, the two were among the founders of Fatah, which led violent attacks on Israel. Fatah was later subsumed into the PLO, established in 1964 by a host of Arab nations to be the official representative of the Palestinian people.
Kaddumi served in various diplomatic roles in the PLO, and in 1973 was made head of its political bureau, which Jordan’s King Hussein had banished from Amman to Beirut three years before. With the rest of the PLO’s leadership, Kaddumi fled to Tunis in 1983 during the First Lebanon War, when Israel invaded Beirut.
Kaddumi was opposed to peace talks with Israel. When Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with Israel’s then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Kaddumi refused to move to the West Bank, where the newly formed PA took power, though he later returned to Amman.
He served as both PLO and Fatah leader until being removed in the faction’s 2009 congress, its first in 20 years. Kaddumi’s removal came after he blamed Abbas for Arafat’s death, saying the president arranged it in cahoots with Israel.
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, during the Second Intifada, Kaddumi called on Arab states to help Iraqis and Palestinians “face up to the US-British aggression.” Hussein had strongly supported the Second Intifada.
After Hamas won the 2006 PA legislative election, Kaddumi called on Fatah to reach an understanding with the terror group, and accused negotiators from both parties of intransigence.
“Their stubbornness will lead to a bloody conflict between the factions,” he presciently said in September. By the following June, Hamas had taken over the Gaza Strip in a bloody conflict with Fatah-led PA forces.
In a 2007 interview with Saudi-owned newspaper Al-Quds Al-Araby, Kaddumi bemoaned Fatah’s commitment to non-violence against Israel.
“The greatest sin was abandoning the armed struggle; this is unacceptable,” he said.
