Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION • 521oldest guerrilla group within the PLO and usually followed the leadof al Fatah, although it was also highly influenced by Syrian statesponsorship. The Arab Liberation Front (ALF) was partial towardthe PFLP and was highly influenced by the former sponsorship ofIraq. The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) alternated between supportingthe PFLP and al Fatah and was very much influenced by Iraqisponsorship during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The PopularStruggle Front had quit the PLO in 1974 because of disagreementwith al Fatah’s policies but rejoined it in 1991 and was under Syrianinfluence. The Palestine Communist Party entered the PLO in 1982on a par with the tanzimat, despite lacking an armed wing, because ofits ability to mobilize mass action in the West Bank due to its deeplyrooted political infrastructure there.Al Fatah is estimated to have more than 10,000 members, thePFLP about 800 members, and the DFLP about 500 members. Otherconstituent members of the PLO have, since the early 1990s, becomeinactive and lost influence within the PLO: Al Sa’iqa, which oncehad about 2,000 members, is now inactive with only a few membersremaining in Syria and Lebanon. Similarly, the Arab LiberationFront, which had at most about 500 members, is inactive. The PalestineLiberation Front had about 50 members but has been mostlyinactive since 1990, and the Popular Struggle Front, which had about300 members, is also inactive.The Fatah Revolutionary Council run by Abu Nidal was neverofficially a part of the PLO or al Fatah even though Abu Nidal wasa member of al Fatah until 1974. Abu Nidal was once under a deathsentence by the PLO for having assassinated PLO officials and forhaving tried to assassinate Yasir Arafat. Against this perception ofthe Abu Nidal group is the claim by Michael Ledeen, a terrorismexpert who is also a resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute,that the Abu Nidal group was in reality a covert action grouporganized by Yasir Arafat to assassinate potential rivals within thePLO as well as to carry out terrorist actions for which the PLO wouldhave plausible deniability. This information is based solely on thetestimony of Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former Romanian intelligenceservice chief who defected to the United States in July 1978, and isnot regarded as credible by all analysts.The PFLP-General Command of Ahmad Jibril was expelled from thePLO in 1983. The PFLP Special Operations Group was a breakaway