The Well-Heeled Guerrillas

When Syrian forces began attacking Palestinian troops and their Muslim leftist allies during the Lebanon civil war, a worried Yasser Arafat flew to Saudi Arabia seeking help. To the dismay of the Palestine Liberation Organization leader, the Riyadh government refused to intervene with Damascus. But as a kind of consolation prize, Crown Prince Fahd expansively wrote Arafat a check for $5 million.

That modest gift--no strings attached--was in addition to the $25 million that the Saudis annually fork over to fedayeen organizations. Depending on their oil wealth, other Arab states chip in with similar but smaller tokens of support, while such ideological allies of the Palestinians as the Soviet Union and China contribute arms and other materiel. In fact, despite the much publicized poverty and squalor of the refugee camps that provide the fedayeen with a power base and a manpower pool, the Palestinians have what is probably the richest, best-financed revolutionary terrorist organization in history.

Last year, for example, the P.L.O., its frequently insubordinate members and other guerrilla groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who prefer to remain out of the P.L.O. umbrella, took in an estimated $90 million. The bulk of the money --about $70 million--came from Arab governments either in the form of individual donations or as part of the $29 million a year provided jointly by the 20 governments of the Arab League. In addition, the 300,000 or so Palestinians working in the oil states regularly have 5% of their pay withheld by host governments; this head-tax revenue, amounting to about $10 million at present, is forwarded to the P.L.O.. although not always as promptly or as completely as the Palestinians wish. Complains Rifaat Nimr, deputy chairman of the P.L.O. financial committee: "Dubai, for instance, seems to mistake the initials P.L.O. for Dubai municipality and keeps the tax for itself."

Palestinians living outside the Middle East, including at least 150 multimillionaires in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, make regular and generous contributions to the cause. The movement also earns revenue by operating business enterprises, including a modern $8 million chicken farm in Syria. For a time Palestinians ran a popular and profitable discotheque in Rome. It was shut down by authorities, presumably because it might serve as a target for Israeli counterterrorist attacks.

Every so often, Palestinian coffers have been replenished with income extracted by terrorism. In December 1975 a group--working with the mysterious superterrorist "Carlos"--invaded an OPEC meeting in Vienna, killed three people and took 81 hostages. The hostages were gradually released in return for a $25 million ransom paid jointly by Saudi Arabia and Iran. The loot was split, $5 million for Carlos and $20 million for the Palestinians. The Palestinians also claim to make $5 million a year operating an illegal drug market inside Israel, using Oriental Jews as pushers.

Since accounting procedures are haphazard at best, a few Palestinians have succumbed to the tempting rewards of open-collar crime. Two months ago, three P.L.O. officials were tossed into a fedayeen jail for gambling away $250,000 of the organization's money at the gaming tables of Cairo. But as even critics of the P.L.O. concede, most of the Palestinian leaders emulate the ascetic style of Arafat who, despite international renown, dresses in baggy battle fatigues, operates out of a spartan office in a Beirut slum, and indulges in neither whisky, cigarettes nor women.

Expanding Bureaucracy. The largest chunk of the money is still spent on training and terrorist operations; last week a Palestinian bomb went off near Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding 26. One of the smaller and poorer fedayeen groups, the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, took credit for the incident. But an increasing percentage of the revenues pay for a rapidly expanding bureaucracy. The P.L.O. has opened offices--in effect, quasi embassies--in about 100 nations. Heads of the larger offices in Europe and North America receive around $1,500 a month along with "representation" allowances; by comparison a guerrilla private in the fighting ranks receives $70 plus family allowances, medical expenses and social security.

The war in Lebanon took an unanticipated chunk from the organization treasury--according to one reliable estimate about $100 million. Although most of the P.L.O.'s guns and ammunition were underwritten by other countries, notably Libya, the organization has had to care for 4,000 disabled fighters as well as dependents of the dead. Widows continue to receive $75 a month, parents $25, brothers or sisters $10 and children $5 each. Since the war, the P.L.O. has founded Samed (Arabic for steadfast), a kind of poor man's conglomerate of 24 factories and workshops in Lebanon that provide jobs for 2,300 disabled fedayeen and Palestinian women. They work at such diverse operations as handicrafts, ready-to-wear clothing, furniture building and film making.

Samed is expected to eventually turn a comfortable profit--something that appeals more and more to the P.L.O.'s fiscal managers. The organization has put together what amounts to an estimated $60 million to $100 million investment portfolio; current holdings include ownership of two Beirut hotels, a 500-room youth hostelry under construction in Cairo, shares in shipyards, oil tankers and television stations abroad, as well as blue-chip holdings in U.S. companies that operate in the Middle East. Some of this money has even been used for the quiet purchase of land on the West Bank that local Palestinians might otherwise be tempted to sell to Israelis. These investments have a double purpose: they may make the Palestinians a bit less dependent on the generosity of Arab governments, and they also serve as advance economic underpinning for a future Palestinian state.

Warrior Image. The assets are mainly held through numbered bank accounts and blind names to prevent Israeli retaliation--and also to camouflage the wealth of a movement that prides itself on its warrior image. Much of the investment has been handled by the Arab Bank Ltd., a vigorous Amman-based banking house, controlled by Palestinians, with assets of $4 billion and branches or joint ventures in 19 countries, including the U.S. The Arab Bank is widely known in the Middle East as the P.L.O. Bank, but its Jerusalem-born president, Abdel Majeed Shoman, 65, is handsomely repaid for whatever risks he may take in helping his fellow Palestinians invest their growing wealth. During the height of the Lebanese fighting, for instance, Shoman's Beirut branch was heavily guarded by Arafat's fighters. While many of Beirut's 79 other banks were being burned and pillaged, the Arab Bank operated without interruption throughout the war.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.