seems to indicate that the Jordanian authorities were opposed to it.
However, the lower-ranking officials and military commanders were
reluctant to block infiltrations, and the authorities were either unable
or unwilling to force them to do so.
Despite powerful reprisalattacks by Israel (which until 1953 in-
cluded the deliberate targeting of civilians), the infiltrations never
stopped, although frequently they were briefly interrupted. Better than
a wholly passive strategy by Israel, the “infiltration-then-retaliation”
pattern produced a state of border warfare, in particular with Egypt.
This situation was insupportable in the long term, and a more com-
prehensive solution was needed.
By 1956 the need for a change was obvious. Furthermore the Egyp-
tians decided to nationalize the Suez Canal, a move that would block
Israeli shipping between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. These
factors led Israel to accept an invitation by the British and French to
join in a war against Egypt. In this conflict in October 1956, Israel oc-
cupied the Sinai Peninsula. Afterward, U.S. pressure resulted in an Is-
raeli withdrawal without a full peace treaty, but a promise was made by
Egypt to disband the fedayeen and stop their raids. In addition, the
United Nations placed peacekeeping forces in the Gaza Strip and Sinai.
In 1965, after several years of quiet, the Syrian government em-
barked on a program of diverting Israel’s water supply from sources
rising in Syria. To intensify the belligerency, Syria resorted to Pales-
tinian terrorism. It transformed the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), formally established in 1964 and heretofore a moderately suc-
cessful group with political aspirations led by Ahmad Shukairy, into
a full-fledged terrorist network enjoying popular Arab and Palestin-
ian support, with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in the van. The
first PLO attacks, in February 1965, were aimed—unsurprisingly—
at Israel’s water installations in the north, but they never caused much
damage and the PLO remained only a minor player.
In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, territories in which more than a million Palestinians lived, many
of them refugees of the war of 1948. Some of the residents of the Oc-
cupied Territories belonged to various militant movements. The PLO’s
previous influence in these areas had been limited by Egypt and Jordan,
which regarded the organization as a pawn of Syria. However, in 1967
it began rapidly to take over the existing infrastructure in both regions.TERRORISM• 28506-102 (04) Q-Z.qxd 3/24/06 7:26 AM Page 285