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Force 17 is an elite VIP terror unit of the Palestinian Fatah movement and later of the Office of the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority. It is also known to be a terrorist organization. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... The term Palestinian has other usages, for which see definitions of Palestinian. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... The President of the Palestinian Authority is the highest-ranking political position (equivalent to head of state) in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). ...

Force 17 was formed in the early 1970s by senior Fatah militant Ali Hassan Salameh (Abu Hassan) Ali Hassan Salameh Ali Hassan Salameh (1943 – January 22, 1979) was the chief of operations — code name Abu Hassan - for Black September, the terrorist organisation responsible for the Munich Massacre (1972) and other attacks; he was also the founder of Force 17. ...

Unlike various units formed within Fatah previously the premise of Force 17 was assasinating Israeli political figures. The importance of such a unit was made clear by the humiliating losses suffered by the PLO leadership in Operation Spring of Youth (1973). Force 17 was used by Fatah to protect PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, his top lieutenants, as well as diplomats of the organization. They accompanied Arafat during his 1974 address to the United Nations in New York City. Operation Spring of Youth took place on the night of April 9 and early morning of April 10, 1973. ... The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (Arabic Munazzamat al-Tahrir Filastiniyyah منظمة تحرير فلسطينية ) is a political and paramilitary organization of Palestinian Arabs dedicated to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state to consist of the... This article is about the Palestinian leader. ...

Two of the key setbacks of the group was the bloodier assassination of Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) in 1991 by a member of Sabri al-Banna's (Abu Nidal) group not far from there. This came after a relatively successfully period when senior Fatah leaders emerged relatively unscathed from the Lebanese Civil War, despite being targeted by Syria, Israel, Christian militias, and Palestinian rivals within and outside of Fatah. They contributed greatly to the legend that Arafat had nine lives. In 1979 their founder Salameh was assassinated in Beirut, along with a group of his own bodyguards. Abu Iyad Salah Khalaf (Arabic صلاح خلف), also known as Abu Iyad (Arabic أبو إياد) (born 1933 – January 14, 1991) was deputy chief and head of intelligence for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the second most senior official of Fatah after Yasser Arafat. ... Abu Nidal in 1976 in a photograph released by the Israeli army, one of only a handful of photographs of him known to exist. ... Salameh may refer to: Hassan Salameh, killed fighting the Israelis in 1948 Ali Hassan Salameh (c. ... For other uses, see Beirut (disambiguation). ...

In the 1990s the unit was evolved from an organ of Fatah to an official unit of the Palestinian Authority's national security apparatus. During the Second Intifadeh Force 17 or members of it were illegaly tasked with responsibilities ranging from acquiring and securing arms shipments for Palestinian armed groups loyal to Arafat, to carrying out terror attacks or resisting incursions by Israeli military or police forces into PA territory (Area A). Proof of these actions were allegedly found during Operation Defensive Shield (June 2002) when IDF forces besieged Arafat and Force 17 in his Muqat'ah compound in Ramallah, and broke into the PA's own file records. Operation Defensive Shield (In Hebrew, מבצע חומת מגן) was a large-scale military operation conducted by the Israeli Defence Forces in April 2002. ... Ramallah (Arabic:  ) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank of approximately 57,000 residents. ...

Since Arafat's death the unit's future has become increasingly clouded, given the rise in internal tensions within the PA security organs, the threat to the hegemony of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and the victory of Hamas in 2005 parliamentary elections. The unit is staffed almost entirely by fanatical Fatah stalwarts who would have difficulty accepting a Hamas leader should Abu Mazen be replaced in the near future. Mahmoud Abbas (Arabic: محمود عباس) (born March 26, 1935), commonly known by the kunya or nom de guerre Abu Mazen (ابو مازن), was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on January 9, 2005, and took office on January 15, 2005. ...

The unit is also considered a chess piece in Fatah's internal wars. Because of the warlord structure of PA security authorities, each one loyal to a local leader, and the similar situation within the Fatah-aligned terrorist organizations Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Tanzim that do as they please paying no heed to Fatah's official leader Abu Mazen, Force 17 is one of most stable organs within Fatah, and the man who controls their loyalty is supposed to be the one who controls the movement. Force 17 was crucial for decades in preventing PLO and Fatah chieftains from usurping Arafat's power, and today it plays the same role for Abu Mazen. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (كتائب شهداء الأقصى) are a Palestinian armed terrorist group closely linked to the Fatah party. ... Tanzim (Organization in Arabic) is a faction of the Palestinian al-Fatah movement. ...