The shooting of right-wing Knesset minister Rechavam Zeevi was not the work of Islamic militants; it was the Maoist PFLP saying “Todah Raba” (thanks a lot) for Israel’s earlier assassination of PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a major faction within the PLO apparatus, second only to Arafat’s Fatah. The PLFP was largely responsible for the “Black September” reign of terror which culminated in the Munich Olympics massacre. They have established links with other Communist and Maoist guerrillas around the world during their thirty-year history of bombings, hijackings and murder, and should be considered every bit as organized and international as Al-Qaeda.

Arafat’s dialogues with Israel have led to few changes in the lives of the average Palestinian. Desperate poverty continues, along with widespread economic exploitation. Israel was constructed with and came to rely on the aid of Palestinian day laborers; they occupied a social status somewhere between Mexican fruit pickers in Texas and Black mineworkers in apartheid-era South Africa. Since the Intefada, even this limited opportunity has largely dried up. Unemployment has skyrocketed in the squalid refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank; many of those idle hands are picking up stones and heaving them at the hated Israeli soldiers. Others are turning their anger toward their Palestinian leaders; it is generally conceded that Arafat is a lousy administrator, and that the Palestinian coffers are regularly raided by him and by his cronies.

The PFLP sees Israel’s occupation of Palestine as just another symptom of Western imperialism. They wish not only to overthrow the Israeli government but to set up a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist state across the Arab-speaking world. To accomplish these ends, they have engaged in a continuing armed struggle, including the usage of suicide bombers. You might think that the PFLP would be at a disadvantage here; unlike their fundamentalist brethren, they can’t promise their martyrs paradise. Alas, you don’t need hope of eternal reward to be a martyr; ask a Korean Conflict veteran about the Chinese “human wave” technique sometime.

They have received some support from Syria. Assad’s secular pan-Arabic Ba’athist worldview has a great deal in common with the PFLP’s ideals. More importantly, they cause continuing problems for the Israelis, whose rulership over the Golan Heights still rankles Syrians. Assad was playing a similar game in supporting the Maoist Worker’s Party of Kurdistan, until Turkey threatened to invade. They have also been supported in the past by the Soviet Union, China and North Korea, although those funding sources have dried up of late.

Israel’s assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa has only served to further radicalize the PFLP; the Zeevi shooting also won them major credibility in the West Bank and Gaza. They will continue to be a major threat to the Mideast peace process, particularly if (as has been seen in Kurdistan) we begin to see Maoist/Islamic hybridization.