Word: fedayeen
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...King Hussein and Guerrilla Leader Yasser Arafat shook hands self-consciously. The gesture sealed a shaky agreement. In the wake of the ten-day civil war that claimed thousands of lives, Hussein won a pledge of loyalty from the Palestinian guerrillas. At the same time, he granted the fedayeen broad freedom to move and operate within his kingdom. Yet scarcely had Hussein and Arafat concluded the bargain when minor skirmishes between guerrillas and loyalists began breaking...
Western newsmen have summed up Jordan's civil war as a confrontation between "fed" and "Bed"-that is, between the Palestinian fedayeen and the Bedouins, who make up the largest segment (250,000) of the other Jordanians. To a certain extent this is true, for the Bedouins remain the backbone of Hussein's 56,000-man army. Yet increasing numbers of "Beds" are joining the "feds." Arabs estimate that up to 15% of the guerrillas are non-Palestinians. No fewer than 2,500 members of the Beni Sakhr, Jordan's most powerful Bedouin tribe, have joined Arafat...
Flung together in confining cities, the various Transjordanian ethnic groups are intermingling, and substituting political allegiance for tribal or ethnic ones. In a country where no formal political parties are allowed to function, the urban Jordanian turns increasingly to the fedayeen, mostly because of the guerrillas' commitment to defeating Israel but also because they are attracted by the emerging social cohesion of the Palestinians...
...King seemed sad but not apologetic about the slaughter. "We tolerated a great deal in the hope that we could avert such a disaster," he said. "There was an explosion and it could not be averted." Most significant, Hussein appears ready to risk yet another explosion if the fedayeen challenge his authority again. Said the beleaguered King, who has outlawed guerrilla leaders George Habash of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Nayef Hawatmeh of the even more extreme Popular Democratic Front: "There will be law and order in this country. Jordan will never tolerate a state...
...memory "is embalmed in a wonderful matrix of ignorance." London mail-order companies report that most orders for Che posters are now coming from teen-age girls who find his unkempt good looks sexy. Asked what he knew about Che, one Arab guerrilla claimed that he was an important fedayeen who came "from Jaffa, I think...