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French Press Reports Arab Guerrilla Movement Against Israel Unified

January 4, 1968
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A unified Arab terrorist movement with headquarters on the West Bank of the Jordan River, that will wage guerilla warfare against Israel in the style of the Algerian seven-year war against France, was foreseen in articles that appeared in two French weeklies today.

Plans for such a campaign were discussed in a lengthy piece on the ouster of Ahmed Shukairy as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, published in France Observateur. Similar plans were outlined in an Express article by Abu Adnar, head of the PLO’s “liberation army.”

Another aspect of Israel’s struggle with her neighbors was the subject of an article in Revue de La Defense Nationale in which Jean Paul Mauriat, chief of the French counter-intelligence service, paid tribute to Israel’s intelligence services. M. Mauriat wrote that the work of Israeli intelligence in the Six-Day War demonstrated that great battles of the future could be won even before operations start. He said that “in some embassies in France, 40 to 60 percent of the personnel are spies.”

Former French Premier Pierre Mendes-France said in an exclusive interview published in Nouvel Observateur that Gen. de Gaulle had proposed a Big Four conference on the Middle East so that he could act as mediator between the United States and the USSR in that region. “But the Israelis did not need him to make war, and the Americans and Russians did not need him to impose a cease-fire,” M. Mendes-France said.

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