Training for Terror

From the refugee camps, and from universities that are often staffed with zealous Palestinian professors, come a steady stream of several hundred recruits a month—more, in fact, than El Fatah can handle. It accepts Palestinians for the most part, and only those who pass rigorous medical tests and an examination by a team of psychiatrists. A recruit must also pass a final, brutal test of fortitude. He is handed a large box containing the body of a newly killed dog, still bleeding profusely. As the blood seeps out, he is told, "Inside this box is a wounded comrade. Take it and carry it around the block and bring it back here." The recruit is not inclined to ask questions. If he vomits or faints on the spot, he is gently steered to an easier job as a courier, or told to go home and simplv spy on his neighbors. If he passes, he is sent to one of dozens of different training camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Outside Amman, children, aged eight to twelve, from the Baq'aa refugee camp, are trained in commando techniques. They are given rigorous calisthenics and obstacle-course training, taught to handle rifles and machine guns, and instructed where the larynx, heart, liver and intestines are located, the better to thrust a dagger in the right place. Daughters of dead fedayeen are sent to schools run by the "Martyr Family Welfare Service," where they are taught to chant: "I have broken mv chains. I am the daughter of Fatah! We are all commandos." Refugee women are trained in first aid and in handling weapons.

In El Fatah's headquarters buildings in Amman, a hectic bustle reflects the growth of the movement. Switchboard operators bellow into makeshift World War II British field telephones, trying to make contact with branch offices in Salt or Irbid. Most communication is still by handwritten letter, carried by couriers on bicycles, in Jeeps or on foot. When a dusty Arab arrives with a tightly wadded piece of paper, Arafat scribbles an answer in the margin, then sends the courier off again. Agents arriving in little black Volkswagens dash up for conferences. A white ambulance pulls up bearing the insignia of the Red Crescent, the Moslem equivalent of the Red Cross. When a cargo of green filing cabinets was unloaded last week, a guerrilla with a .45 stuck in his belt smiled: "Our accounting department has arrived."

These days El Fatah hardly has time to fight as it copes with the avalanche of aid. Stacks of bandages, food and ammunition are piled everywhere. Sometimes the arriving shipments include beer. It is not drunk; the fedayeen sell it and use the money to purchase arms. Some of the fedayeen weapons are purchased directly, but some are contributed by Arab governments, particularly Egypt, Iraq and Syria, which help out in other ways as well. A Syrian raider captured by the Israelis revealed that he had been trained by Egyptian army officers.