Terrorism - Israel and Palestine

fedayeen

"Warriors who sacrifice themselves." The term was used differently in Arab history; the modern term is used to describe the secular warriors of Fatah.

tawhid

'Oneness.' In Islamic theology this word refers to unity of God. Abu Musab al Zarqawi once led a terrorist organization known by this name.

Yasser Arafat

(1929-2004) The name assumed by Mohammed al Husseini. Born in Cairo, he was a founding member of Fatah and the PLO. He merged the PLO and Fatah in 1964 and ran a terrorist campaign against Israel. After renouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel's right to exist, he was president of the Palestinian National Authority from 1993 until his death in 2004.

Hafez Assad

(1930-2000) President of Syria from 1970 to 2000. He brutally suppressed a rebellion of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982. His son Bashir Assad assumed the presidency after his death.

Rabbi Meir Kahane

(1932-1990) He was an American-Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure, whose work became either the direct or indirect foundation of most modern Jewish militant and right-wing political groups. Founder of the Jewish Defense League and Kach, an Israeli political party that was banned by Israel as racist and anti-democratic. He was assassinated in New York City in 1990 after giving a speech exhorting all American Jews to emigrate to Israel. He supported the forced deportation of all Palestinians in Israel.

Mahmud Abbas

(1935-) The president of the Palestinian National Authority since 1995 and a founding member of Fatah and an executive in the PLO.

Kahlil Wazir

(1935-1988) He was a Palestinian leader and founder of the secular nationalist party Fatah. As a top aide of Yasser Arafat, he had considerable influence in Fatah's military activities, eventually becoming the commander of Fatah's armed wing al-Assifa. The majority of the Palestinians viewed him as a martyr who died resisting the Israeli occupation or at least sympathized with his cause, while most Israelis considered him to be a high-profile terrorist for planning the killings of Israelis.

King Hussein

(1935-1999) King of Jordan. He drove the PLO from Jordan in September 1970. After his death his son Abdullah assumed the throne.

Sabri al Banna

(1937-2002) The real name of Abu Nidal, he was a founding member of Fatah, but split with Arafat in 1974. He founded militias in southern Lebanon, and he attacked Western and Israeli targets in Europe during the 1980s. In the 1990s he became a mercenary. He was murdered in Iraq, probably by the Iraqi government.

Ahmed Yassin

(1937-2004) He was a quadriplegic who was nearly blind and one of the founders and leaders of Hamas. He originally started the Palestinian Wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, but merged it into Hamas during the Intifada. He was killed in an Israeli targeted assassination.

Muammar Gadhafi

(1942-2011) The leader of Libya before the Arab Spring. He took power in 1969 in a socialist revolution. He developed a unique theory of Arab socialism. His intelligence forces were responsible for planting a bomb on a Pan American flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people. The attack was in response to an American bombing raid in Libya in 1986.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi

(1947-2004) One of the founders of Hamas along with Ahmed Yassin. He took over Hamas after Israeli gunships assassinated Yassin. He, in turn, was assassinated by the Israelis a month after taking charge.

Abd Al Aziz Awda

(1950-) A founding member and current spiritual leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, deemed by the US as an international international terrorist organization.

Musa Abu Marzuq

(1951-) He is a senior leader of Hamas, who is thought to be in Damascus, Syria. He is believed to have controlled the Holy Land Foundation, which was the largest Islamic charity in the United States before it was shut down by the US government and suspended by the UN.

Fathi Shekaki

(1951-1995) He was the Palestinian who founded and led the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organisation and was the initiator of suicide bombings. Along with Sheik Odeh (Abd Al Aziz Awda), he founded the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip during the 1970s, initially as a branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Like many leaders of the Islamic Jihad Movement, he was a convert to Shia Islam.

Khalid Mashal

(1956-) He has been the main leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian paramilitary organization and political party, since the assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in 2004. In addition, he heads the Syrian branch of the political bureau of Hamas.

Baruch Goldstein

(1956-1994) An American physician who immigrated to Israel. In February 1994 he entered a religious site in Hebron wearing his Israeli military uniform. He then began shooting Muslim worshippers, killing twenty-nine and wounding more than a hundred. His action set off a number of suicide bombings in response.

Ramadan Abdullah Sallah

(1958-) He is the current leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad after Shekaki's assassination. He is wanted by the FBI and believed to be in Syria.

Abu Musab al Zarqawi

(1966-2006) He was a Jordanian militant Islamist who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War. He formed al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in the 1990s, and led it until his death in June 2006. He opposed the presence of US and Western military forces in the Islamic world, as well as the West's support for the existence of Israel. In late 2004 he joined al-Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. After this al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). He dispatched numerous suicide bombers throughout Iraq to attack American soldiers and areas with large concentrations of Shia militias. He is also responsible for the 2005 bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan.

Marwan Barghouti

(1969-) He is a Palestinian political figure convicted and imprisoned for murder by an Israeli court. He is regarded as a leader of the First and Second Intifadas. At one time he supported the peace process, but later became disillusioned, and after 2000 went on to become a leader of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in the West Bank. He is said to have founded Tanzim, a militant faction of the Palestinian Fatah movement, and he has been called "the Palestinian Mandela".

Muqtada al Sadr

(1974-) An Iraqi ayatollah. Along with Ali al-Sistani and Ammar al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, he is one of the most influential religious and political figures in the country not holding any official title in the Iraqi government. He gained popularity in Iraq following the toppling of the Saddam government by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and he has on occasion stated that he wishes to create an "Islamic democracy."

Lebanese Civil War

(1975-1990) A brutal factional war between several different religious militias for control of Lebanon. Several nations intervened, and Syria exerted control in the waning years of the war. Supporting Hezbollah, Syria retained control of Lebanon until 2005.

Oslo Accords

A 1993 agreement between Palestinians and Israel. It resulted in the Palestinian National Authority and limited self-rule. The Accord provided for the creation of a Palestinian interim self-government, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The Palestinian Authority would have responsibility for the administration of the territory under its control. The Accords also called for the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Najaf

A city in Iraq one hundred miles south of Baghdad. It is a holy site for Shiites who believe that the Imam Ali, Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law, is buried there.

Palestine Liberation Organization

A political movement uniting Palestinian Arabs in an effort to create an independent state of Palestine.

Salafism

A reform movement in Islam that started in North Africa in the nineteenth century. Its purpose is to purify Islam by returning to the Islam of Mohammed and his companions. It has association with contemporary religiously extreme Sunnis.

Arab socialism

A school of Arab nationalism contending that a single Arab nation should have a socialist economy.

Gaza Strip

A territory along the Mediterranean Sea just northeast of the Sinai Peninsula; part of the land set aside for Palestinians, which was occupied by Israel in 1967.

Katyusha rockets

A type of mobile rocket developed by the Soviet army during World War II. These rockets were originally mounted on the beds of trucks and target a general area and are effective when used in barrages.

Holy Land Foundation

An Islamic charity based in the United States. Federal authorities closed the foundation in 2001, alleging that it sponsored terrorist activities through its support of Hamas.

al Aqsa Intifada

An uprising sparked by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount with a group of armed escorts in September 2000. The area is considered sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Muslims were incensed by the militant aspect of Sharon's visit. Unlike the 1987 Intifada, this uprising has been characterized by suicide bombings.

occupied territories

Any number of territories controlled by Israel. The areas may become the independent nation of Palestine, if the Palestinians are able to create their own nation.

Abdullah II

He is the reigning King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He ascended the throne on 7 February 1999 upon the death of his father King Hussein.

Mossad

The Israeli intelligence agency formed in 1951. It is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counterterrorism, as well as bringing Jews to Israel from countries where official Aliyah agencies are forbidden, and protecting Jewish communities worldwide.

Operation Peace for Galilee

The code name for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It resulted in the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon and the influx of Iranian revolutionaries who helped form Hezbollah. Israel occupied southern Lebanon for eighteen years, eventually leaving. Hezbollah claimed victory.

Intifada

The first spontaneous uprising against Israel that lasted from 1987 to 1993. It began with youths throwing rocks and creating civil disorder. Some of the violence became more organized. Many people sided with religious organizations, abandoning the secular PLO during this uprising.

Arab nationalism

The idea that the Arabs could create a European-style nation based on a common language and culture. The idea faded after the 1967 Six Days' War.

Izz el Din al Qassam Brigades

The military wing of Hamas, named after the Arab revolutionary leader Sheik Izz el Din al Qassam (1882-1935), who led a revolt against British rule.

Black June

The rebel organization created by Abu Nidal in 1976. He changed the name to the Fatah Revolutionary Council after a rapprochement with Syria in 1981. Most analysts refer to this group simply as the Abu Nidal Organization.

Black September

This Terrorist Organization was created by PLO after relocation to Lebanon. It was responsible for killing Jews at Munich Olympics.

Shin Bet

This is Israel's internal security service. Its motto is "Magen VeLo Yera'e" (Hebrew: מגן ולא יראה‎, lit. "Defender that shall not be seen" or "The unseen shield").

Fatah

This is a major Palestinian political party and the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in terrorism in the past, though unlike its rival Islamist faction Hamas, it is not regarded as a terrorist organization by any government.

Aman

This is the central, overarching military intelligence body of the Israel Defense Forces.

Operation Grapes of Wrath

This refers to the Israeli Defense Forces code-name (Hezbollah calls it April War) for a sixteen-day campaign against Lebanon in 1996 in an attempt to end shelling of Northern Israel by Hezbollah. Israel conducted more than 1,100 air raids and extensive shelling (some 25,000 shells). The conflict was de-escalated on 27 April by a ceasefire agreement banning attacks on civilians.

Sabra and Shatila

This was the slaughter of between 762 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese Shiite Muslim civilians, by a Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia assisted by the Israel Defense Forces in two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon between September 16 and September 18, 1982. The massacre was presented as retaliation for the assassination of newly elected Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese Kataeb Party. It was wrongly assumed that Palestinian militants had carried out the assassination, which is now generally attributed to native, pro-Syrian militants.