page_title: Palestinian fedayeen
section_title: Suez Crisis
hierarchical_section_title: Palestinian fedayeen / History / Suez Crisis
caption_attribution_description: English: Original Description: FIVE FEDAYEEN MARAUDERS KILLED BY ISRAELI BORDER POLICE IN CHASE AFTER ATTACK NEAR NIR GALIM.
context_page_description: Palestinian fedayeen are militants or guerrillas of a nationalist orientation from among the Palestinian people. Most Palestinians consider the fedayeen to be "freedom fighters", while most Israelis consider them to be "terrorists".
  Considered symbols of the Palestinian national movement, the Palestinian fedayeen drew inspiration from guerrilla movements in Vietnam, China, Algeria and Latin America. The ideology of the Palestinian fedayeen was mainly left-wing nationalist, socialist or communist, and their proclaimed purpose was to defeat Zionism, claim Palestine and establish it as "a secular, democratic, nonsectarian state". The meaning of secular, democratic and non-sectarian, however, greatly diverged among fedayeen factions.
  Emerging from among the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their villages as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, in the mid-1950s the fedayeen began mounting cross-border operations into Israel from Syria, Egypt and Jordan. The earliest infiltrations were often to access the lands agricultural products they had lost as a result of the war, or to attack Israeli military, and sometimes civilian targets.
context_section_description: On 29 October 1956, the first day of Israel's invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, Israeli forces attacked "fedayeen units" in the towns of Ras al-Naqb and Kuntilla. Two days later, fedayeen destroyed water pipelines in Kibbutz Ma'ayan along the Lebanese border, and began a campaign of mining in the area which lasted throughout November. In the first week of November, similar attacks occurred along the Syrian and Jordanian borders, the Jerusalem corridor and in the Wadi Ara region—although the state armies of both those countries are suspected as the saboteurs. On 9 November, four Israeli soldiers were injured after their vehicle was ambushed by fedayeen near the city of Ramla; and several water pipelines and bridges were sabotaged in the Negev.
  During the invasion of Sinai, Israeli forces killed fifty defenseless fedayeen on a lorry in Ras Sudar. (Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Saul Ziv told Maariv in 1995 he was haunted by this killing.) After Israel took control of the Gaza Strip, dozens of fedayeen were summarily executed, mostly in two separate incidents. Sixty-six were killed in screening operations in the area; while a US diplomat estimated that of the 500 fedayeen captured by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), "about 30" were killed.
caption: Israeli policemen inspecting the bodies of 5 fedayeen killed near Nir Galim, 1956
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