DURING the day, the summer heat, well over 100, shimmers oppressively
over the Jordan Valley. Hardly anything moves. It is only at night that
the valley comes to life, for night is the time of the fedayeen, the
Arab guerrilla raiders who slip toward the river for another
hit-and-run slash at Israel's defenses. “We live like roaches,” a
fedayeen commando said last week. “I do not like this sneak war. But it
is the only way for us. There is no army to fight by our side.” Two years after the Six-Day War, the fedayeen remain the Arabs' main
weapon. The cost has been high: by Israeli body count, the fedayeen
have suffered 450 dead on Israeli-held territory and an estimated 550
more in clashes across or on the other side of the border; they have
also lost 2,000 captured. But at the same time, the guerrillas have
forced Israel to maintain its military force at full strength.
Ironically, in the course of their war, the fedayeen have also set
themselves on a possible collision course with some of the Arab
governments who sponsor them. For while Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser now
only talks about forcing the Israelis to withdraw to prewar frontiers,
the commandos still insist that their goal is the destruction of Israel
and the recovery of Palestine. The Israelis maintain that the fedayeen have not managed to penetrate
deeply and in strength, nor have they been able to win over the bulk of
the 944,000 Arabs living on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the
Gaza Strip. Good intelligence and highly sophisticated, hard-hitting
defense tactics stop most guerrilla activity on the perimeter of the
Israeli heartland. Harsh retaliation by frequent air and artillery and
occasional ground strikes has pushed fedayeen bases away from the 1967
borders. Sabotage and terrorism have dwindled in recent months. The
Gaza Strip, that beehive of Palestine nationalism, is as quiet as it
has been in years, most likely because of growing prosperity. On the
West Bank, cultivated acreage has increased sharply. Yet resentment
smolders on, occasionally erupting into violence, as it did last week
when seven Arabs and four Israelis were killed in rocketings and
terrorist incidents. “Don't get the idea that they are beginning to
love us,” says one Israeli official. “They hate us as much as ever.” Immense Pressures. Israeli officials are convinced that while the
fedayeen are constantly trying to build up fresh cells of supporters
among Arabs in Israeli-held territory, most of them can be quickly
broken up. Still, the fedayeen thrust continues. There are armed
incidents almost every day and the guerrillas come with better
equipment and more spirit than they showed a year ago. Two recent
attacks on fortified Israeli positions were led by officers—a rare
event in the past. Earlier this month, in a well-planned strike, half a
dozen guerrillas belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine blew up Aramco's trans-Arabian pipeline
linking Saudi Arabia and Lebanon across 25 miles of formerly Syrian,
now Israeli-held territory. The Israelis, working with bulldozers to
form earthen ramparts, then burning off the oil, had a difficult time
keeping 8,500 tons of spilled crude from polluting their major water
source in the north, the headwaters of the Jordan River.
