The catastrophic defeat of the regular Arab armies in the June 1967 War had left the burgeoning Palestinian resistance movement as the sole force actively committed to maintaining an armed struggle against Israel. According to the historian Edgar O’Ballance, the very first fedayeen assault launched against Israel from Lebanese territory took place on 1 June 1965, when a small, clandestine band of Palestinian fighters slipped across the unguarded international boundary and detonated explosives at a house in the border hamlet of Yiftah. However, this early incident remained an isolated event. It was not until October 1968 that Palestinian commandos began entering…