Word: fatah
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fight to Israel. The guerrillas provide an outlet for the fierce Arab resentment of Israel and give an awakened sense of pride to a people accustomed to decades of defeat, disillusionment and humiliation. In the process, the Arabs have come to idolize Mohammed ("Yasser") Arafat, a leader of El Fatah fedayeen who has emerged as the most visible spokesman for the commandos. An intense, secretive and determined Palestinian, he is enthusiastically portrayed by the admiring Arab press as a latter-day Saladin, with the Israelis supplanting the Crusaders as the hated-and feared...
...fedayeen coffers funds usually contributed to Jordan's budget. Individual contributions by the thousands poured in from Arabs throughout the Middle East and those abroad; the wife of Saudi Arabia's King Feisal sent $4,500. In the coffee bars of Beirut, young Arabs peddle El Fatah stamps, to be used like Christmas seals, bearing a picture of a burned child and the words "Shalom and Napalm"-a reference to the use of napalm by Israelis in last August's reprisal raid on the Jordanian town of Salt. Other stamps show a guerrilla fighter, a monument...
After Suez, El Fatah-was founded as a strictly Palestinian force outside Nasser's reach...
...until 1964 was El Fatah ready for its first raid, sabotaging an Israeli water-pumping station. It was an "experimental era," recalls Arafat, when El Fatah staged only one raid a week, testing out attack techniques, taking notes on Israeli defenses and reaction times, and filing away the information to be used in future battle plans. "We were also experimenting with public opinion all through this period," Arafat's top aide told TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes last week. According to the dictum of Mao Tse-tung, guerrilla fighters must be able to live among a friendly population like fish...
After last year's war, El Fatah found itself not only swimming in popular support but also possessed of a sudden bequest of weapons left by the retreating Arab armies. The battlefields were littered with arms, and for two weeks, El Fatah teams took camels into the Sinai desert to collect machine guns, rifles, grenades and bazookas before the Israeli salvage squads. Four heavy trucks were found in Golan, along with two tons of ammunition and weapons. A Bedouin offered to sell 150 Kalashnikov rifles for $140. El Fatah gave him twice as much. Another Bedouin found a Syrian...