Palestinian fedayeen

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Palestinian fedayeen (Arabic: فدائيون, romanized: fidāʾiyyūn) are militants or guerrillas of a nationalist orientation from among Palestinian Arabs. 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,...

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