Word: nasser
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...ends. The fedayeen, who owe no fealty to any government, are responsible only to themselves, and view any settlement as a betrayal and a disaster. They possess the power to sting Israel into repeated reprisals, and perhaps to whip Arab popular opinion to such a pitch that not even Nasser with all his prestige might dare a settlement with Israel. In Jordan, their primary staging area, they constitute virtually a state-within-a-state and could probably topple King Hussein and take over his splintered kingdom if they chose. And their power and influence are increasing all the time...
With the fanaticism and desperation of men who have nothing to lose, the fedayeen have taken the destiny of the Palestinians into their own hands. Peace in the area would hurt their cause by removing the support of other Arabs. They have no brotherly concern for the ambitions of Nasser-and certainly not for, as one fedayeen communique puts it, the "slave traffickers in the U.N. lobbies" and their efforts to act as mediators in the Middle East...
That debacle only confirmed Arafat's conviction that the Arabs could never de feat the Israelis with conventional armies. Throughout the 1950s, he had organized "cells" among Palestinian students abroad and studied the techniques of Algerian guerrillas. At that time, Nasser had organized forerunners of today's fedayeen among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and used them to stir up the border, a role they took on with sufficient enthusiasm to help bring about Israel's decision to launch...
After Suez, El Fatah-was founded as a strictly Palestinian force outside Nasser's reach...
...there are many in the Middle East who believe that the fedayeen pose the greatest long-run threat not to Israel but rather to Hussein and Nasser. In Jordan, the fedayeen in a recent showdown with the King won the right to run their own military show without interference from the Jordanian army (TIME, Nov. 22). So great is the popular groundswell for the movement that no Arab leader dares condemn it or openly talk peace on any terms that Israel might be likely to accept. Israel has not helped by its policy of holding each Arab government responsible...