Yasser Arafat - Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini ياسر عرفات

Following the Suez Crisis in 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, a leader of the Free Officers Movement, agreed to allow the United Nations Emergency Force to establish itself in the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, causing the expulsion of all guerrilla or "fedayeen" forces there – including Arafat.

Arafat originally struggled to obtain a visa to Canada and later Saudi Arabia, but was unsuccessful in both attempts. In 1957, he applied for a visa to Kuwait (at the time a British protectorate) and was approved, based on his work in civil engineering. There he encountered two Palestinian friends: Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) and Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), both official members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Arafat had met Abu Iyad while attending Cairo University and Abu Jihad in Gaza. Both became Arafat's right-hand men in future politics. Abu Iyad traveled with Arafat to Kuwait in late in 1960; Abu Jihad, working as also a teacher, had been living there since 1959. After settling in Kuwait, Abu Iyad helped Arafat obtain a temporary job as a schoolteacher.

As Arafat began to develop friendships with other Palestinian refugees from Gaza (some of whom he knew also from his Cairo days), he gradually founded the group that became known as Fatah. The exact date for the establishment of Fatah is unknown. However, in 1958–1960, the group's existence was attested in the pages of a Palestinian nationalist magazine, Filastununa Nida al-Hayat (Our Palestine, The Call of Life), which was written and edited by the organization's founding members. FaTaH is a reverse acronym of the Arabic name Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini which translates into "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement". Fatah is also a word that was used in early Islamic times to refer to 'conquest' .

Fatah dedicated itself to the liberation of Palestine by an armed struggle carried out by the Palestinians themselves. This differed from other Palestinian political and guerrilla organizations, most of which firmly believed in a united Arab response. Arafat's organization never embraced the ideologies of major Arab national governments of the time, in contrast to other Palestinian factions, which often became satellites of nations such as Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and others.

In accordance with his ideology, Arafat generally refused to accept donations to his organization from major Arab governments, in order to act independently of them. However, he did not want to alienate them, and sought their undivided support by avoiding alliances with groups loyal to other ideologies. He worked hard in Kuwait, however, to establish the groundwork for Fatah's future financial support by enlisting contributions from the many wealthy Palestinians working there and other Gulf States, such as Qatar (where he met Mahmoud Abbas in 1961). These businessmen and oil workers contributed generously to the Fatah organization. Arafat continued this process in other Arab countries such as Libya and Syria.

During 1962–1966, Arafat and his closest companions immigrated to Syria — a country sharing a border with Israel — which had recently seceded from its ephemeral union with Nasser's Egypt. Fatah had approximately three hundred members by this time, but none were fighters. In Syria however he managed to recruit members with a higher income to enable his armed struggle against Israel. Fatah's manpower was incremented further after Arafat decided to offer much higher salaries to members of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), the regular military force of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was created by the Arab League in the summer of 1964. On December 31 of that same year, a squad from al-Assifa, the armed branch of Fatah at the time, attempted to infiltrate Israel, but they were intercepted and detained by Lebanese security forces. Several other raids with Fatah's poorly-trained and badly-equipped fighters followed this incident. Some were successful, others failed in their missions. Arafat often led these incursions personally.