Word: fatah
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Crack Down. Whether the Lebanese or the Al-Fatah guerrillas provoked the fighting is unclear. Certainly, the army has long been edgy. Last December, in retaliation for guerrilla actions elsewhere, Israeli commandos carried out a raid on Beirut airport. Lebanon's generals, humiliated that the nation lost 13 commercial airplanes without being able to strike back, were chafing to crack down on the guerrillas, who were moving across the countryside pretty much at will...
...Fatah has also been spoiling for a fight for months. Last spring, army attempts to control the commandos led to street demonstrations in which 17 died. The riots caused the downfall of the government of Rashid Karami, who resigned to avoid a confrontation that would hurt Lebanon, but stayed on as caretaker Premier. After the riots, the guerrillas tacitly agreed to operate only along Lebanon's border with Israel and to keep away from civilian settlements against which the Israelis could retaliate. Despite the agreement, they have tripled their forces to about...
...disgusted with the news of the attacks on the Arabs. I'm not overlooking the raids of Al-Fatah, made across the Israeli border, but I admire them for at least putting up a struggle to keep their country intact...
...newsmen to pointedly announce that "a blond, freckled man dressed in khaki, who did not appear to be a Palestinian," had been seen fleeing from the mosque just before the fire. That was all the information that Arab propagandists needed. Cairo Radio called the fire a "premeditated crime." Al-Fatah, the Palestinian Arab commando organization, demanded shrilly in its broadcasts: "Moslems, what are you waiting for? The Zionists are burning down your sacred shrines. How can you face the Prophet Mohammed?" Jordan's King Hussein, whose grandfather King Abdullah was assassinated by a Palestinian Arab gunman in front...
...Israelis maintained that the fire was accidental. A welding torch was found beneath the roof, where work men had been repairing old timbers treated with inflammable linseed oil. Some angry Israelis suggested that, just as the Nazis had burned down the Reichstag and blamed it on the Communists, Al-Fatah terrorists had set fire to the shrine so that the Israelis could be blamed and emotions aroused throughout the Arab world...