Emerging from among the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their villages as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War,[3] in the mid-1950s the fedayeen began mounting cross-border operations into Israel from Syria, Egypt and Jordan.

The earliest infiltrations were often made in order to access the lands and agricultural products, which Palestinians had lost as a result of the war, later shifting to attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets.

Most of the people in question were refugees attempting to return to their homes, take back possessions that had been left behind during the war and to gather crops from their former fields and orchards inside the new Israeli state.

Meron Benvenisti states that the fact that the "infiltrators" were for the most part former inhabitants of the land returning for personal, economic and sentimental reasons was suppressed in Israel as it was feared that this may lead to an understanding of their motives and to the justification of their actions.

[4] According to Yeshoshfat Harkabi (former head of Israeli military intelligence), early infiltrations were limited "incursions", initially motivated by economic reasons, such as Palestinians crossing the border into Israel to harvest crops in their former villages.

[6] After one month of training, "a patrol of the unit that infiltrated into the Gaza Strip as an exercise, encountered Palestinians in al-Bureij refugee camp, opened fire to rescue itself and left behind about 30 killed Arabs and dozens of wounded.

[10] General Mustafa Hafez, commander of Egyptian army intelligence, is said to have founded Palestinian fedayeen units "to launch terrorist raids across Israel's southern border,"[11] nearly always against civilians.