TEL AVIV (Jul. 8)
El Fatah activities have shifted in recent days from populated areas to deserted regions, indicating that Jordanian authorities have managed to exercise some degree of control over the guerrilla bands, it was reported here today. Apparently the shift was necessitated by the refusal of Jordanian farmers to work their fields in the Jordan Valley facing Israels heavily settled Beisan region. El Fatah incursions into the Beisan Valley brought often devastating Israeli return fire usually directed against villages which the terrorists took over as bases.
Villagers who fled their homes are now seen from the Israeli side to be returning to their houses and fields. El Fatah activities are now concentrated in the Umm Tutz region and the southern Golan Heights where there are no settlements on either the Israeli or Jordanian sides of the demarcation line.
A young El Fatah member who received a six-year prison sentence today for membership in the guerrilla organization told a military court in Nablus that Palestinian Arabs who volunteer are under constant surveillance by El Fatah leaders as being spies for Israel. Jamal Abul said that El Fatah prisons in Damascus are filled to capacity with young Palestinians who wanted to join but were arrested as “security risks.”