A BROTHERHOOD OF TERROR

Friday, Mar. 29, 1968

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Despite last week's punitive invasion of Jordan, Israel faces increasing danger from a growing army of Arab terrorists. Jordan is fairly exploding with these new commandos, who infiltrate Israel in ever greater numbers for ever more damaging raids that are sometimes held only hours apart. They come from all parts of the Arab world, belong to several groups and are variously equipped—but they are united in their determination to make a battlefield of Israel. TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes spent much of the past two weeks examining the terrorists and their goals. His report:

IN the back room of a stucco house in the hills of Amman, a grave young Palestinian university student squatted on the floor and told eleven friends that he had just joined a guerrilla unit to fight the Israelis. "Any age, any size, either sex," he said. "It makes no difference. They are on my land, and I shall kill them." In his shell shattered villa overlooking the River Jordan, Citrus Grower Raouf Halabi, 50, a graduate of Beirut's American University, reported proudly that his riverfront groves have become a nightly jumping-off place for raiding parties into Israel: "'Welcome,' I say to them. They are fighting for us. Is anyone else?"

Such is Jordan's mood toward the men it calls fedayeen —the Arabic word for freedom fighters. Though he has in the past often declared his opposition to the terrorists King Hussein last week changed his tune, defended 'those who struggle against Israelis occupying Arab territory. But to a population that is 60% Palestinian, 100% Arab—and sick to death of being humbled by Israeli planes and tanks—the fedayeen already have become national folk heroes. Accounts of their successful sabotage missions are headlined in the press. Photographs portraying their martyred dead are plastered all over Amman.

Much as he would like to throw the guerrillas out, Hussein no longer has the power even to hold them in check. Last month he dispatched 20 carloads of troops and police to order a guerrilla unit to leave the refugee camp at Karamah. When it arrived, the column was surrounded by machine-gun-toting commandos, quickly withdrew when the fedayeen commander delivered a matter-of-fact announcement: "You have three minutes to decide whether you leave or die." The rest of the Arab world has taken up the fedayeen with nearly unanimous vigor. Iraq and Syria offer training programs for several thousand commandos. The Persian Gulf states, led by Kuwait, raise money for them through a 5% tax on the salaries of their tens of thousands of resident Palestinian workers, and a recent fund drive in Lebanon brought in $500,000 from Beirut alone. So much money is flowing in that fedayeen organizations now guarantee lifetime support for the families of all guerrillas killed in action.