Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTIONARY FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF ARABISTAN • 145In the 2005 Palestinian Authority presidential elections, the DFLPcandidate, Taysir Khalid, won only 3.35 percent of the vote. In the2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections, the DFLP formed ajoint list with the Palestine Democratic Union and won two of the132 seats. There have been no new elections for the PLO’s PalestineNational Council or Executive Committee since 1988 and so theDFLP remains the third-largest faction within the PLO.Since 2000 the DFLP has carried out several attacks that have beencoordinated with other Palestinian groups. The most deadly recent attack,claimed by the DFLP and coordinated with al Fatah, was the 16July 2002 attack upon Israeli soldiers in a bus at the entrance of theImmanuel settlement in the West Bank, in which nine people werekilled and 16 injured. The DFLP claimed responsibility for an attackcoordinated with Hamas involving the firing of two missiles on theKissufim Crossing into the Gaza Strip, in which no casualties werereported. From 23 June to 20 August 2006, the DFLP conducted nofewer than seven attacks against Israeli targets coordinated with otherPalestinian groups, all of which involved bombings or rocket attacksbut none of which caused deaths or injuries. Four of these attacks werecoordinated with the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, one with the PopularResistance Committee, one with Hamas, and another with al Fatah.While three of these attacks were on border stations between Gaza andIsrael, the other four were rocket attacks on the Israeli city of Sderot,which lies within Israel proper, representing a deviation from theDFLP declaratory policy of only attacking Israeli targets within Gazaor the West Bank. The sudden increase in DFLP attacks in the summerof 2006 was probably spurred by the need for the organization tomaintain some visibility during a period of increasing competition andconflict between the more visible Hamas and al Fatah.DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTIONARY FRONT FOR THE LIB-ERATION OF ARABISTAN (DRFLA). Originally a Marxist-Leninist splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation ofAhwaz (PFLA), both organizations appear to have been Iraqi statesponsoredgroups ostensibly seeking the independence of the largelyArab-inhabited regions of Khuzistan Province in southwestern Iran.In reaction to a long-standing dispute with Iran over sovereigntyof the Shatt-al-Arab estuary, the Iraqi government began in 1960 tosupport irredentist Arab claims to Iran’s Khuzistan Province on the