Summary: Reading Time: 9 minutesYesterday we looked at the ascent of <a href="http://www.theendofhistory.net/complete-balanced-guide-israeli-palestinian-conflict-chapter-12-yasser-arafat">Yasser Arafat</a> and the new footing of the PLO that followed the Six Days War in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. That was not the whole story of what was going on in the conflict. Another trend, beginning in this same time period and continuing to the 1980s was the rise of Palestinian terrorism.<br> <br> What Palestinian Terrorism Was NOT<br> <br> As we look at this topic of Palestinian terrorism during this time period it is important to recognize the differences in what we are and are not talking about. We are NOT talking about religious extremism or terrorism. That is part of the story but it has not arrived yet. We’ll get to that. In the late 1960s and up until the 1980s, the story of Palestinian terrorism is a story of political terrorism. The religious stuff hasn’t touched down yet.<br> <br> The Palestinian terrorist groups are looking at political ideals and philosophies and objectives, not a religious creed. So some of them are communists, some or democratic, some are Baathists. The Palestinian terrorists fit into a lot of what was going on throughout the world during the period between World War 2 and the 1980s. There were politically motivated groups active from Latin America to Europe to Asia and Africa. This was not something unique to Palestine.<br> This Palestinian terrorists also weren’t born because the Palestinians are uniquely inclined to violence. The opposite is probably closer to true, or at least it was in the beginning. This was a people who by the 1960s had been humiliated, suffered injustice and felt they had no voice. The Six Days War only made things worse. The rise in Palestinian terrorism was the result of frustration and anger. Terrorism is usually an appealing and easy pathway of resistance for the weak to utilize in their fight against perceived injustices. That was certainly the case for Palestinian terrorism in the 60s and 70s.<br> <br> We also need to keep in mind the difficulty in defining terrorism when we look at Palestinian terrorism or any other group of political or religious terrorists. In the 1960s the Palestinian terrorism we are looking at today went beyond the guerilla warfare of the war of attrition that we have previously looked at. The guerilla warfare could reasonably also be included as Palestinian terrorism but if we include that we should also include the Israeli practice of demolition of Palestinian homes as terrorism.<br> <br> The Palestinian terrorism of this time period is more closely related to the practices and acts pioneered by Menachem Begin and the Irgun in the 1930s and 40s. Of course, by the end of this part of the story the Palestinian terrorists became pioneers in the field of terrorism in their own right.<br> Palestinian Terrorism – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)<br> <br> This was a notorious organization founded in 1967 by the Palestinian Christian George Habash. Habash had been a medical student in the 1948 Arab Israeli War. When his family was expelled from Palestine he marched with them for three days as refugees searching for a place to call home.<br> <br> For Habash the loss of Palestine was not simply about the Palestinian people. It was about the ongoing triumph of European imperialism upon the rest of the world. He believed that the Palestinians had failed and been routed out of their homeland because the Europeans were too powerful but also because the Palestinians themselves had failed to move into the modern world and order.<br> He imagined a new era of Palestinian thought and perspectives. They needed a revolution not only within Israel to bring the Palestinian people back to their homes but also within the Palestinian mindset itself.
