Palestinian Arabs Reportedly Engaged in Sabotage Campaign

Beirut (UPI)

Transcribed from the clipping

Beirut (UPI) — A secret commando organization of Palestinian Arabs is reported to have started a campaign of sabotage against targets inside Israel. The organization, calling itself “Al-Asifa” — Arabic for storm troops — has issued nine communiques describing such attacks since early January.

Observers say it is the first such campaign since 1955-56 when Egyptian-trained Palestinian “fedayeen” (the faithful) carried out raids inside Israel from the neighboring Gaza Strip. Al-Asifa's communique No. 1, published here Jan. 4, said the “newly created, clandestine” commando outfit, dedicated to regaining Palestine, had “started operations inside Israel.”

A leading pro-Egyptian Beirut newspaper, apparently caught off guard, immediately labeled the organization as part of a “plot by Israel and CENTO” designed “to give Israel an excuse before international public opinion to wage aggression against neighboring Arabs.”

When the government-controlled Cairo press later began publishing Al-Asifa communiques straight, the pro-Egyptian papers here followed suit and there has been no more talk of an Israeli or CENTO plot. The Israelis themselves have publicly acknowledged only two attacks, both times giving somewhat different and far less dramatic accounts of the same incidents.

Context added by this archive

The paper glosses fedayeen as “the faithful.” The word means those who sacrifice themselves.

Cite this item

"Palestinian Arabs Reportedly Engaged in Sabotage Campaign," Lincoln Journal Star, 2 April 1965. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1965-003. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1965-003