Farouk Kaddoumi
Farouk Kaddoumi (فاروق القدومي), born in 1930 in Nablus, is a founding member of Fatah, currently residing in Tunisia. He has had a very contentious relationship with Mahmoud Abbas and has steadily been 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 (FCC) until his replacement by Abbas. He was ousted from the the FCC in 2009, and from the PLO’s Executive Committee in 2018.
Kaddoumi studied at Cairo University during the 1950s where he met Arafat. Together they moved to Kuwait where they launched Fatah. Kaddoumi opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority, choosing instead to remain in exile in Tunis.