Word: fatah
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...coincided with the rise of the Palestinian resistance. After the Six-Day War, the Palestinians lost faith in the ability of other Arab states to seize back the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Instead, they pinned their hopes on an Egyptian-educated former civil engineer, Yasser Arafat, whose Fatah organization began carrying out raids inside the conquered territories and later committed atrocious acts of terrorism. Like other boys in the camp, Omar would listen to TV news from Jordan and Syria about their heroes--Arafat and his Palestinian fighters. They dreamed that one day Arafat would lead them back...
Many Palestinians are less charitable than Omar about Arafat and his successors in Fatah, plenty of whom have become millionaires--and some of those Palestinians have taken their disaffection in a direction hardly imaginable in 1967. Let down by the secular Old Guard, younger Palestinians are turning to radical Islam as an alternative. In the West Bank, shops sell DVDs of Iraqi insurgent attacks against U.S. troops and songs of praise for the Lebanese Hizballah militia leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah for withstanding Israel's siege of Lebanon last summer. The last words of suicide bombers, preserved by video cameras...
...Jalazon and other camps, a generational divide splits the Palestinians. The older ones, of Omar's age, belong to Fatah, the organization run by Arafat's hapless successor, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority. Those in their 20s and younger support militant Islamic groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. These radicals led the charge during the second intifadeh, which began in 2000, sending suicide bombers to blow up hundreds of Israeli civilians. Militants say that in the camp they have no shortage of young volunteers eager for martyrdom. As a parent, Omar says the last thing he wants...
...Fatah al-Islam residents of Tebbaneh blew themselves up when surrounded by police in Tripoli last week. The funeral for one was held here Saturday, his shattered body tightly wrapped in a green Islamic shroud, furious mourners yelling revenge packing the street outside his home...
...Lebanese government has sworn to crush Fatah al-Islam and an imminent showdown at Nahr al-Bared seems to be drawing near, but the boiling resentment in neighborhoods like Tebbaneh suggests that Lebanon's struggle against radical Islamists may be far from over...