Disaster Dictionary

A group of West Bank militias affiliated with the late Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat’s al-Fatah faction. The brigades began in 2000 as an offshoot of Fatah, the secular Palestinian nationalist movement led by Arafat. In January 2002, al-Aqsa became the first Palestinian terrorist group to use a female suicide bomber. In March 2002, after a deadly suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the State Department added the group to the U.S. list of international terrorist organizations, to which the group responded with a communiqué calling the designation “an honor.” The group’s name refers to the al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslim tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from that very site. Also known as al-Aqsa Martyrs Battalion.