The New York Times · 13 October 1985

CP-1985-036

Palestinian Guerrilla: Man of Many Factions

By RONALD SMOTHERS

Scan 1844 × 1236 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

Mohammed Abbas, the Palestinian guerrilla leader sought by the United States in connection with the cruise ship hijacking, is a man in his early 40’s who has been a key strategist within the faction-ridden Palestinian guerrilla forces.

Using the code name Abul Abbas, the mustachioed, broad-shouldered 6-footer has been an active Palestinian guerrilla since 1965, when he joined a small, Jordan-based group called Vengeance. Last month he was chosen secretary general of an anti-Syrian faction of the Palestine Liberation Front at the group’s meeting in Tunis.

He and his faction are allied with the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat. But in the last 10 years, his loyalties have shifted among various Jordanian, Syrian, Libyan and Iraqi-backed guerrilla groups as the fortunes of the Palestinian cause have risen and fallen.

Israeli officials have attributed to him the planning and organizing a 1979 raid on Nahariya in northern Israel by a four-man Palestine Liberation Front force. Four Israelis, including two children, were killed in that raid.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan at 2x to 8x by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by OCR and not by a person. No masthead, folio or dateline; the date rests on the slide label and on content - Abbas is 'sought by the United States in connection with the cruise ship hijacking', and the companion story on the same page reports the two men's flight from Fiumicino via Belgrade to Dubrovnik and the carrier Saratoga 'docked in Dubrovnik for liberty', all of which is 11-12 October 1985. Nothing on the clipping names the paper, so pub rests on the label alone. Printed error kept as set: 'the planning and organizing a 1979 raid'. Mohammed Abbas is named, code-named, aged, measured and described down to his attaché case; he is a guerrilla leader rather than an ordinary Palestinian and is not counted toward the archive's named-ordinary-Palestinians figure.

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