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Palestinian fedayeen

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Palestinian fedayeen (from the Arabic fidā'ī, plural fidā'īyun, فدائيون: meaning, "freedom fighter(s)" or "self-sacrificers") is a term used to refer to fedayeen (i.e. militants or guerrillas) from among the Palestinian people. Considered "freedom fighters" by most Palestinians, most Israelis consider them to be "terrorists".

The Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements defines fedayeen as "Palestinian resistance fighters" and they have been considered symbols of the Palestinian national movement. Drawing inspiration from guerrilla movements in Vietnam, China, and Latin America, the fedayeen have always been portrayed in a vanguard role. Beverly Milton-Edwards describes them as "modern revolutionaries fighting for national liberation, not religious salvation," and distinguishes them from mujahaddin (i.e. "fighters of the jihad for God"). While the fallen soldiers of both mujahaddin and fedayeen are called shahid (i.e. "martyrs") by Palestinians, Milton nevertheless contends that it would be political and religious blasphemy to call the "leftist fighters" of the fedayeen, mujahaddin.

Early fedayeen attacks

The first attacks by Palestinian fedayeen were launched by Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, living in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. Between 1949 and 1958, 1,300 Israelis were killed or wounded in such attacks. While the Palestinian fedayeen were generally supported by those governments, in some cases they came into conflict with them.

Israel's complaints that the fedayeen attacks violated the 1949 UN Armistice Agreement forbidding hostilities by paramilitary forces were ignored. Between 1951 and 1956, hundreds of fedayeen attacks were carried out and over 400 Israelis were killed and 900 wounded seriously. The Israeli government cites dozens of these attacks as "Major Arab Terrorist Attacks against Israelis prior to the 1967 Six-Day War". Between 1949 and 1956, 400 Israelis were killed and 900 wounded by fedayeen attacks. In 1955, 260 Israeli citizens were killed or wounded by fedayeen".

Benny Morris writes that the calculated acts of fedayeen terror, supported by the Arab countries, eventually contributed to the outbreak of the Sinai Campaign.

Involvement of President Nasser and Egyptian intelligence

President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918 - 1970) openly deployed forces whom he called "fedayeen" in a 1955 call to arms against Israel:

Egypt has decided to dispatch her heroes, the disciples of Pharaoh and the sons of Islam and they will cleanse the land of Palestine....There will be no peace on Israel's border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel's death.

Scholars have noted that the fedayeen were trained and equipped by Egyptian intelligence to engage in hostile action on its border with Israel, to infiltrate it and to to commit acts of sabotage and murder. The fedayeen also operated from bases in Jordan. The attacks violated the 1949 Armistice Agreements prohibiting hostilities by paramilitary forces, but it was Israel that was condemned by the UN Security Council for its counterattacks.

Israel establishes Unit 101

Main article: Unit 101

In 1953, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion created Unit 101, to retaliate against a spate of Arab fedayeen violence against Israelis. Its commander was Major Ariel Sharon. Unit 101 was disbanded in late 1955.


After 1967

During the mid and late 1960s, a number of independent Palestinian fedyaeen groups emerged who sought to bring about "the liberation of all Palestine through a Palestinian armed struggle."

Jordan

The Battle of Karameh in 1968 tranformed the Palestinian fedayeen into "daring heroes of the Arab world". Though the fedayeen lost the battle against Israeli forces at Karameh, they did inflict much heavier casualties on Israel than had been expected. Thus, Karameh became what Rashid Khalidi has termed the "foundation myth" of the Palestinian commando movement, whereby "failure against overwhelming odds brilliantly narrated as as heroic triumph."

The French writer Jean Genet who visited Palestinian fedayeen at their bases in Jordan between 1970 and 1972, "memorialized what he perceived to be their bravery, idealism, flexibility of identity, and heroism" in his novel Prisoner of Love (1986).

Gaza Strip

The emergence of a fedayeen movement in the Gaza Strip was catalyzed by Israel's occupation of the territory during the 1967 war. 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.

Palestinians in Gaza were proud of their role in establishing a fedayeen movement there when no such movement existed in the West Bank at the time. The fighters were housed in refugee camps or hid in the citrus groves of wealthy Gazan landowners, carrying out raids against Israeli soldiers from these sites.

The most active of the fedayeen groups in Gaza was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who enjoyed instant popularity among the secularised, socialist population who had come of age during Egyptian President Nasser's rule of Gaza. 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. This armed struggle was conceived of in secular terms with exhortations to take up arms not as part of a jihad, but in order to "free the oppressed from the Zionist colonial regime." The "radical left" dominated the political scene, and the overarching slogan of the time was, "We will liberate Palestine first, then the rest of the Arab world."

During Israel's 1971 military campaign to contain or control the fedayeen, an estimated 15,000 suspected fighters were rounded up and deported to detention camps in Abu Zneima and Abu Rudeis in the Sinai. Tens of homes were demolished by Israeli forces, rendering hundreds of people homeless. According to Milton-Edwards, "This security policy successfully instilled terror in the camps and wiped out the fedayeen bases." It is also paved the way for the rise of the Islamic movement, which began organizing as early as 1969-1970, led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Lebanon

Israeli armoured artillery and infantry forces, supported by air force and naval units who entered Lebanon on 6 June 1982 in an operation code-named "Peace for Galilee", encountered "fierce resistance" from the Palestinian fedayeen there.

During a 2 September 1982 press conference at the United Nations, Yasser Arafat stated that, "Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian fedayeen who carried his sword along the path on which the Palestinian today carry their cross."

See also

References

  1. Mohammed El-Nawawy (2002). The Israeli-Egyptian Peace Process in the Reporting of Western Journalists. Inc NetLibrary. p. 49. ISBN 1567505457.
  2. Tony Rea and John Wright (1993). The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Oxford University Press. p. 43. ISBN 019917170X.
  3. Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic (2005). The Design of Dissent. Rockport Publishers. ISBN 1592531172.
  4. Edmund Jan Osmanczyk (2002). Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements. Taylor & Francis. p. 702. ISBN 0415939216.
  5. ^ Beverley Milton-Edwards (1996). Islamic Politics in Palestine. I.B.Tauris. pp. 94–95. ISBN 1860644759.
  6. Howard Sachar, History of Israel, p. 450. cited at "Fedayeen Raids 1951 -1956". jafi.org.
  7. "Major terror attacks". mfa.gov.il.
  8. "Palestinina terror". mfa.gov.il.
  9. "Map". jafi.org.
  10. "Record". adl.org.
  11. Benny Morris (1993). Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198292627.
  12. "What happened during the period of the fedayeen attacks on Israel in the 1950s?". palestinefacts.org.
  13. "fedayeen". jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  14. "Fedayeen". jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  15. Martin Gilbert (2005). The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Routledge. ISBN 0415359015.
  16. Lela Gilbert (October 23, 2007). "An 'infidel' in Israel". The Jerusalem Post. t.-Gen. Mustafa Hafez, was appointed by president Gamal Abdel Nasser to command Egyptian army intelligence. Hafez founded Palestinian fedayeen units to launch terrorist raids across Israel's southern border. Between 1951 and 1956, the fedayeen killed some 400 Israelis. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. Tareq Y. Ismael (2005). The Communist Movement In The Arab World. Routledge. p. 76. ISBN 041534851X.
  18. ^ Helena Lindholm Schulz and Juliane Hammer (2003). The Palestinian Diaspora: Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland. Routledge. p. 120. ISBN 0415268206.
  19. Cheryl Rubenberg (2003). The Palestinians: In Search of a Just Peace. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 40. ISBN 1588262251.
  20. Antonio Tanca (1993). Foreign Armed Intervention in Internal Conflict. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 178. ISBN 0792324269.
  21. Bat Ye'or (1985). The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam. Fairleigh Dickinson Univeristy Press. p. 145. ISBN 0838632629.

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