The Storm Troopers

Wearing the red garb of a condemned man, a young Arab housepainter named Mahmud Hejazi last week waited nervously in Israel's Ramla jail for the decision that could send him to the gallows.

Young Hejazi was the first member of a little-known organization called Asifa (Storm Troopers) to be captured by the Israeli authorities. He was recently tried by a court-martial, found guilty of sabotage and sentenced to death.

Asifa is the military arm of a group called El Fatah, which is a reverse acronym standing for the Arabic words Harakat Tahrir Falastin (Movement for the Liberation of Palestine). By itself, El Fatah means "Conquest." One of El Fatah's top leaders is Haj Amin Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Since the first of the year, Asifa claims to have made 13 raids into Israel to commit acts of "strategic sabotage," that is, the dynamiting of reservoirs and kibbutz buildings.

Disregard for Nasser. Asifa's membership is under 200 and limited to Palestinian Arabs between 20 and 30 years of age. Each volunteer takes an oath, on the Bible if a Christian, on the Koran if a Moslem, that he will 1) be on an alert status 24 hours a day, 2) tell no one of his activities and 3) never discuss a mission he has been on. Asifa is typical of other terrorist groups in that its members are organized into small cells, and only the cell leader has contact with one man in the echelon above him. Thus, if an Asifa agent is captured, he can provide little information about his fellows.

Asifa's irregulars operate mainly out of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. They have close links with the year-old Palestine Liberation Organization, which, with the endorsement of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, has raised and trained a 7,000-man army, helped by millions of dollars in cash contributions extracted from the 1,750,000 Palestinian Arabs scattered throughout the Arab world. But unlike P.L.O., Asifa takes orders from no Arab government. Asifa leaders are contemptuous of Nasser's recent warning to the Arab world against involvement in a premature war with Israel. A man close to Asifa said, "Liberating Palestine is the business of Palestinians, not of Nasser. Seventeen years of talk have got us nowhere. We are going to act, regardless of what Nasser wants."

No 2? In making its raids into Israeli territory, Asifa is aided by an underground group among Israel's own 250,000 Palestinian Arabs called El Ard (the Land). Members of El Ard act as guides for Asifa raiders, supply military intelligence and provide hideouts. Though few in numbers, Asifa could succeed in plunging the Arab world into a probably disastrous war with Israel. The former Israeli military commander, General Moshe Dayan, is one of those urging his nation to launch a preventive attack while the Arab states are torn by dissension and 50,000 Egyptian troops tied down in the Yemen civil war.

Israel's mood may well be indicated by what it does about the condemned Asifa prisoner Hejazi. Under the law, an appeal for clemency to President Zalman Shazar is mandatory. Nine years ago, three Arab saboteurs were sentenced to death, but the penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. In fact, the only man ever hanged in Israel was Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann. Last week Israel's dilemma was whether or not to make Mahmud Hejazi the second.

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