Palestinian fedayeen
This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Palestinian fedayeen (Arabic: فدائيون, romanized: fidā'iyūn) are militants or guerrillas of a nationalist orientation from among the Palestinian people.
[2] The ideology of the Palestinian fedayeen was mainly left-wing nationalist, socialist or communist, and their proclaimed purpose was to defeat Zionism, claim Palestine and establish it as "a secular, democratic, nonsectarian state".
[4] Emerging from among the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their villages as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War,[5] in the mid-1950s the fedayeen began mounting cross-border operations into Israel from Syria, Egypt and Jordan.
Beverly Milton-Edwards describes the Palestinian fedayeen as "modern revolutionaries fighting for national liberation, not religious salvation," distinguishing them from mujahaddin (i.e. "fighters of the jihad").
[22] According to Yeshoshfat Harkabi (former head of Israeli military intelligence), these 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.
[23] 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.
[30] 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,"[31] nearly always against civilians.
In the first week of November, similar attacks occurred along the Syrian and Jordanian borders, the Jerusalem corridor and in the Wadi Ara region—although the state armies of both those countries are suspected as the saboteurs.
[43] In 1966, the Israeli military attacked the Jordanian-controlled West Bank village of Samu, in response to Fatah raids against Israel's eastern border, increasing tensions leading to the Six-Day War.
[9] The most severe act of sabotage of the fedayeen occurred on 4 July 1969, when a single militant placed three pounds of explosives under the manifold of eight pipelines carrying oil from the Haifa refinery to the dockside.
[48] Such developments prompted Rashid Khalidi to dub the Battle of Karameh the "foundation myth" of the Palestinian commando movement, whereby "failure against overwhelming odds [was] brilliantly narrated as [an] heroic triumph.
[47] Further, many Palestinian fedayeen groups of the radical left, such as the PFLP, "called for the overthrow of the Arab monarchies, including the Hashemite regime in Jordan, arguing that this was an essential first step toward the liberation of Palestine.
[2] Palestinian fedayeen from Gaza "waged a mini-war" against Israel for three years before the movement was crushed by the Israeli military in 1971 under the orders of then Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon.
The emergence of armed struggle as the liberation strategy for the Gaza Strip reflected larger ideological changes within the Palestinian national movement toward political violence.
On 11 March 1978, twelve fedayeen led by Dalal Mughrabi infiltrated Israel from the sea and hijacked a bus along the coastal highway, killing 38 civilians in the ensuing gunfight between them and police.
In August 2001, ten Palestinian commandos from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) penetrated the electric fences of the fortified army base of Bedolah, killing an Israeli major and two soldiers and wounding seven others.
"[60] Today, the fedayeen have been eclipsed politically by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which consists of the major factions of the PLO, and militarily by Islamist groups, particularly Hamas.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed faction loyal to the Fatah-controlled PNA, undermined Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas by lobbing rockets into southern Israel in concert with rivals Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
Bard O'Neill writes that for some fedayeen groups, the secular aspect of the struggle was "merely a slogan for assuaging world opinion," while others strove "to give the concept meaningful content.
[4] Bard O'Neill also wrote that the fedayeen attempted to study and borrow from all of the revolutionary models available, but that their publications and statements show a particular affinity for the Cuban, Algerian, Vietnamese, and Chinese experiences.
Although they were initially backed by Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, when he switched sides in the conflict, the smaller pro-Syrian factions within the Palestinian fedayeen camp, namely as-Sa'iqa and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command fought against Arafat's Fatah-led PLO.
Members of the PLO-Executive Committee, poet Mahmoud Darwish and refugee leader Shafiq al-Hout resigned from their posts in response to the PLO's acceptance of Oslo's terms.
[44] The IDFs counterinsurgency tactics, which from 1967 onwards regularly included the use of home demolitions, curfews, deportations, and other forms of collective punishment, effectively precluded the ability of the Palestinian fedayeen to create internal bases from which to wage "a people's war".
[68] The tendency among many captured guerrillas to collaborate with the Israeli authorities, providing information that led to the destruction of numerous "terrorist cells", also contributed to the failure to establish bases in the territories occupied by Israel.
[68] The fedayeen were compelled to establish external bases, resulting in frictions with their host countries which led to conflicts (such as Black September), diverting them from their primary objective of "bleeding Israel".
[69] According to John Follain, it was Wadie Haddad of the PFLP who, unconvinced with the effectiveness of raids on military targets, masterminded the first hijacking of a civilian passenger plane by Palestinian fedayeen in July 1968.
Two commandos forced an El Al Boeing 747 en route from Rome to Tel Aviv to land in Algiers, renaming the flight "Palestinian Liberation 007".
On 8 May 1972, a Sabena Airlines 707 was forced to land in Tel Aviv after it was commandeered by four Black September commandos who demanded the release of 317 fedayeen fighters being held in Israeli jails.
[71] Bell argues that despite the apparent failure of the Munich operation which collapsed into chaos, murder, and gun battles, the basic fedayeen intention was achieved since, "The West was appalled and wanted to know the rationale of the terrorists, the Israelis were outraged and punished, many of the Palestinians were encouraged by the visibility and ignored the killings, and the rebels felt that they had acted, helped history along.
"[71] He notes the opposite was true for the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight redirected to Uganda where the Israelis scored an "enormous tactical victory" in Operation Entebbe.
