Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency

Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency refers to the armed cross-border conflict, which peaked between 1949 and 1956, involving Israel and Palestinian militants, mainly based in the Gaza Strip, the sole territory of the All-Palestine Protectorate — a Palestinian state declared in October 1948, which became the focal point of the Palestinian fedayeen activity. The conflict was parallel to the Palestinian infiltration phenomenon. Hundreds were killed on the course of the conflict, which declined after the 1956 Suez War.

Emerging from among the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their villages as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, in the mid-1950s the fedayeen began mounting cross-border operations into Israel from Syria, Egypt and Jordan. The earliest infiltrations were often made in order to access the lands and agricultural products, which Palestinians had lost as a result of the war, later shifting to attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets. Fedayeen attacks were directed on Gaza and Sinai borders with Israel, and as a result Israel undertook retaliatory actions, targeting the fedayeen that also often targeted the citizens of their host countries, which in turn provoked more attacks.

Palestinian infiltration refers to numerous border-crossings by Palestinians, considered illegal by the Israeli authorities, during the first years of Israeli statehood. Most of the people in question were refugees attempting to return to their homes, take back possessions that had been left behind during the war and to gather crops from their former fields and orchards inside the new Israeli state. Between 30,000 and 90,000 Palestinian refugees returned to Israel as a result. Meron Benivasti states that the fact that the "infiltrators" were for the most part former inhabitants of the land returning for personal, economic and sentimental reasons was suppressed in Israel as it was feared that this may lead to an understanding of their motives and to the justification of their actions.

According to Yeshoshfat Harkabi (former head of Israeli military intelligence), early infiltrations were limited "incursions", initially motivated by economic reasons, such as Palestinians crossing the border into Israel to harvest crops in their former villages. Gradually, they developed into violent robbery and deliberate 'terrorist' attacks as fedayeen replaced the civilians.

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