Many Palestinians fled to Jordan and destabilized its political system.
Within months, Israel was again the target of a wave of attacks (at that
time mainly consisting of, but not limited to, bombings), originating
from within the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, or
from Jordan, which was no longer able to contain them.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli Security Agency
(ISA) retaliated energetically and eventually devised tactics to stop
the attacks. By 1970, members of most major Palestinian terror net-
works in the West Bank and Gaza were identified and arrested, while
the PLO’s attempts to take over Jordan only led to an armed response
and the organization’s expulsion by King Hussein. Arafat and the
PLO moved to southern Lebanon.
The PLO initiated numerous terrorist raids on Israeli targets from
Lebanon that caused hundreds of Israeli casualties. In addition, in the
1970s and early 1980s various arms of the PLO unleashed a plague of
terrorist bombings, massacres in synagogues and airports, and airplane
hijackings across Europe. The most infamous was the Munich mas-
sacreof Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games by a group known
as the Black September Organization. Israel responded with a series of
covert actions unofficially known as Wrath of God Operation.
On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to eradicate the PLO there.
The operation succeeded in putting Arafat and numerous PLO members
to flight to Tunisia. During the operation, Israel became entangled with
the local population. In 1985 Israel withdrew from all of southern
Lebanon except for a 10-mile-wide (16-kilometer) strip whose occupa-
tion was intended to prevent mortar and rocket fire at Israel’s northern
towns. Israel’s prolonged stay, and Arab and Iranian backing, stimulated
the strengthening of the Shi’ite Muslim group Hizbullah, which began
to attack Israeli and Western targets, military and nonmilitary alike.The Intifada.In December 1987, Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza rose up in a popular civil uprising (in Arabic, intifada), oppos-
ing the continued Israeli occupation. In one of a series of assessment
failures, Military Intelligenceanalysts did not predict the outbreak
of the Intifada. While the Intifada began spontaneously, by January
1988 it was under the control of the PLO headquarters in Tunis. Yet
the Intifada also signified the rise of Islamic opposition groups to the
secular PLO leadership, particularly Hamas (founded and led by286 • TERRORISM06-102 (04) Q-Z.qxd 3/24/06 7:26 AM Page 286