In the summer of 1970, a group of West German radical activists flew from Berlin to the Middle East. They wanted to acquire the necessary skills to launch a campaign of urban warfare against what they considered to be the fascist regime in their homeland. This would be their contribution to the global struggle against imperialism and capitalism that they believed was under way worldwide.
Thousands of western European left-wing activists travelled to the Middle East out of sympathy with the Palestinian nationalist cause in the late 1960s. Most returned after a few weeks with suntans, a keffiyeh and a book of poetry, in the words of one jaded foreign correspondent; but a minority convinced their hosts to upgrade the standard tour of refugee camps, clinics and schools to include actual military training. The West Germans fell into the latter category and spent six weeks or so in a training camp in Jordan, just north of Amman. This was run by Fatah, the biggest militant Palestinian group at the time, and dedicated to the ‘armed struggle’ against Israel.
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