Sovinform

Someone asked: "Didn’t Nasser sponsor the Fedayeen?" Answer: "Gamal Abdel-Nasser supported the operations in Gaza against Israel after 1967. He opposed the Palestinian operations on other frontiers because he saw them as at best demagogical if not outright counter-productive. "The Fatah co-founder and PLO intelligence chief Salah Khalaf Abu Iyad, in his memoirs, recounted that the Egyptian state security detained the proto-Fatah commander Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) after the latter's anti-Israeli operations via Gaza. The proto-Fatah's operations often avoided Israeli military targets and were attacks on kibbutz farms. "However, as Abu Iyad correctly recalled, the Palestinians, in part led by the proto-Fatah cells, launched a colour revolutionary uprising against the Nasserist state because of its alleged 'anti-Palestinian' attitude. Only after that did Gamal Abdel-Nasser agree to allow the proto-Fatah operatives, whom he had ordered to be arrested, to be incorporated into Egyptian Army. When the latter infiltrate the Army, they began their typical idiotic operations again, which provided the Ben-Gurion group the pretext for war against revolutionary Egypt. "Arafat remained distrusted by the Egyptian authorities and thus eventually had to escape to Kuwait, wherein the Fatah was founded. "Abdel-Nasser's debate with Salah Jadid was precisely over the Fatah operations in the Golan, operations which Abdel-Nasser opposed. The Egyptian President did fund the operations in Gaza, however, as the more proletarianized Gaza mounted a real armed resistance against the IDF, rather than engage in demagogical, adventurist and terror operations."