During the era of the anti-colonial struggle in
North Africa and the
Middle East, and coinciding with the creation of
Israel in 1948, a series of
Marxist-Leninist and
anti-imperialist movements swept throughout the Arab and Islamic world.
These movements were nationalist and revolutionary, but not Islamic. However, their view that terrorism could be effective in reaching their political goals generated the first phase of modern international terrorism. In the late 1960s, Palestinian secular movements such as
Al Fatah and the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) began to target civilians outside the immediate arena of conflict. Following Israel's
victory over Arab forces in 1967, Palestinian leaders began to realize that the
Arab world was unable to defeat Israel in the battlefield.