Word: fatah
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...Fatah's signal, a band of Arabs sets out across the Jordan River on rafts made from tractor tires, carrying their Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles in waterproof inner tubes. In the darkness they land, make their way inland, plant a mine, ambush an Israeli patrol or throw a grenade, then scramble as best they can for home. The odds are heavily against their making it back, for many are caught or killed by efficient Israeli security forces. But the rewards are high, as posthumous compensations go. They are martyrs to all Arabs, their photographs and tales of their...
...Fatah is one of several similar clandestine organizations. While no one can be sure of the exact numbers involved, Fatah is the most prominent and the largest of them. To the Israelis, the raiders are terrorists and thugs, inept and indiscriminate in their missions. To the Arabs, they are freedom fighters in the best guerrilla tradition, skilled in the arts of the commando and the saboteur. The world knows them best as the fedayeen, meaning "men of sacrifice," a disparate group of clandestine plotters often at odds with one another, who play a large part in keeping the Middle East...
...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...