THE Black September terrorists take their name from the month two years ago when Jordan's King Hussein opened his campaign to crush the Palestinian guerrillas in his country. The group is the latest and most vicious twist in the tortured search by the Palestinians for some means of revenge against Israel. At the same time, Black September, or Ailul al Aswad in Arabic, attests to the fact that ordinary guerrilla warfare against Israel, once touted as the hope of the Arabs, has been an abject failure.
That failure was starkly evident to guerrilla leaders who met last week in Damascus. Israel, by expert policing and harsh retaliation, has virtually sealed its borders against them and forced its neighbors to bring the guerrillas under control. The fedayeen are powerless in Jordan, kept on a tight rein in Syria, and restricted in Lebanon. The result is that they have been reduced to occasional random terrorism that is ruthless but scarcely effective in either overthrowing Arab leaders opposed to them or restoring Palestine to Arab control. Some Al Fatah leaders are even talking about investing in nightclubs and laundries as a hedge against the time when contributions may dry up (Saudi Arabia has not paid the organization anything in seven months).
In these circumstances, the bitterest and most extreme of the fedayeen have turned to Black September. It surfaced for the first time last November in Cairo, where four terrorists boldly assassinated Jordanian Premier Wasfi Tell as he entered the Cairo-Sheraton Hotel. Tell was a pro-Western Arab interested in negotiating with Israel; his killers are out of jail on bail awaiting a trial that has yet to be scheduled. Since that time, Black September teams have also murdered five Jordanians living in West Germany whom they suspected of spying for Israel; attempted to assassinate Jordan's ambassador to London; and set off damaging explosions in a Hamburg plant making electronic components for sale to Israel, and a Trieste refinery whose crime apparently was processing oil for "pro-Zionist interests" in Germany and Austria. The skyjacking of a Sabena Airlines 707 jet to Israel's Lod Airport by two men and two girls last May was another Black September operation—an unsuccessful attempt to free fedayeen prisoners from Israeli jails. The men were finally shot dead by Israeli commandos; the girls were captured and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Israeli intelligence agents say that Black September is a part of Al Fatah, founded by that organization's leaders, in response to criticism that they had become too moderate. By pinning the blame on Al Fatah, of course, the Israelis may merely be providing themselves with a visible target for retaliation. But as they detail the structure, the organization consists of 400 to 600 members—U.S. sources put the figure closer to 100—who plan operations, then recruit rank-and-file members of Al Fatah to carry them out. According to the Israelis, the organization is headquartered in Beirut and commanded by one Mohammed Yusif Najjar, otherwise known as Abu Yusuf, who is a former top intelligence officer of Al Fatah. The Israelis claim that it is divided into four main units that are variously responsible for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas—where Black September has not yet struck.