Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

FATAH, AL • 179Israeli, U.S., West European, and Arab targets. The governmentof Jordan was especially singled out for terrorist reprisals due to itscrackdown and expulsion of the PLO in September 1970, followingthe confrontation between King Hussein and the PLO over thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) hijackingof three airplanes to Dawson’s Field outside Amman, and another toEgypt, which were then bombed after their 400 passengers had beenreleased. The most notorious Palestinian terrorist group during thisperiod was al Fatah’s own Black September, which was responsiblefor the massacre of the Israeli athletic team at the Munich SummerOlympic Games in 1972 as well as several other atrocities.The 1974 renunciation of terrorism was part of a revision withinal Fatah of its goals, from seeking the liberation of all of Palestineand replacing Israel by a secular democratic state, to the creation ofa separate Arab Palestinian state on any “liberated part of Palestine.”This last phrase was understood to mean the West Bank and GazaStrip following an Israeli withdrawal from those territories. While alFatah still believed armed struggle was necessary to achieve its goals,it came to view armed struggle as not sufficient in itself without parallelinitiatives on the diplomatic front. This revisionism was anathemato the more radical leftists within the PLO, who then soughtto sabotage al Fatah’s diplomatic initiatives with their own terroristoperations and who also tried to depose Arafat from the leadership ofthe PLO by both political and military means.After September 1970, al Fatah and other PLO groups regroupedin Lebanon, from where they staged raids into Israeli territory. Despitesecuring increased quantities of more sophisticated weapons,including rockets, tanks, and antiaircraft artillery, the PLO forceshave never been able to withstand the Israeli Defense Forces in conventionalcombat. The large Palestinian presence in southern Lebanonand the tendency of the non-Fatah PLO groups to meddle in Lebanon’sinternal politics helped precipitate the Lebanese civil war in1975. This tied up al Fatah and the rest of the PLO, which at varioustimes found itself fighting the Christian Phalange, the Shi’ite Amalmilitia, the Syrians, and occasionally even anti-Fatah Palestinians.The Camp David Accords, which excluded the PLO from any role inthe peace negotiations, briefly united the PLO in denouncing Egyptand the United States, and opposition to the Camp David agreementbecame a fixed feature of al Fatah rhetoric and diplomacy.