For their part the Palestinian guerrilla organizations, grouped together in the reconstructed Palestine Liberation Organization, did not at this stage foresee the establishment of a small Palestinian state alongside Israel any more than the Israelis. The Palestinian National Covenant, which was adopted in 1968 by the Palestine National Council (the Palestinian quasi-parliament in exile) looked forward to the total Arab liberation of Palestine and the disappearance of the state of Israel. Palestine would be for the Palestinians, who were defined (Article 5) as ‘the Arab citizens who were living permanently in Palestine until 1947’ and ‘whoever is born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date’. Jews who were living permanently in Palestine ‘until the beginning of the Zionist invasion’ would also be considered Palestinians (Article 6), but by implication this excluded the majority of Israeli citizens.
Despite their failure to cause Israel any serious military problem, the Palestinian guerrilla organizations enjoyed high prestige. Their morale reached a climax with the battle of Kerameh in the Jordan Valley in March 1968, when the Jordanian army and Palestinian commandos co-operated in a major engagement against an Israeli reprisal raiding force which inflicted heavier losses on Israel than on previous occasions. But the increasingly independent activities of the Palestinian organizations, which brought heavy Israeli reprisals against Jordanian territory, threatened Jordan’s stability. The Jordanian civilian and military authorities were divided between those who wished to accommodate the commandos and those who wanted to restrict and control their activities. Both King Hussein and the PLO chairman Yasir Arafat favoured compromise, but the king had to contend with increasing anti-Palestinian resentment in his army, especially among ultra-loyalist elements of beduin origin, while Arafat was unable to control and discipline the smaller extremist groups in the PLO. Under pressure, the king agreed to the formation of a provisional military government.
The spark of civil war was lit in September 1970 when the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked three Western airliners to a deserted airstrip in east Jordan. From 17 September fighting was general between army units and guerrillas until on 25 September a cease-fire was arranged by an inter-Arab mission representing Arab heads of state who had hastily met in Cairo at President Nasser’s invitation (shortly before his death). King Hussein and Arafat reached a fourteen-point truce agreement providing for a return to civilian rule. Although the guerrillas still held some strongholds in north Jordan and certain quarters of Amman, they had been fatally weakened by the fighting. The king made prime minister one of his closest advisers, Wasfi Tel, who adopted an uncompromising attitude towards the guerrillas.
Gradually the full weight of the Jordanian army was used to expel the guerrillas from the country, and by July 1971 their last military bases in Jordan had been eliminated. Other Arab states expressed outrage but could do little to help the guerrillas, and Jordan, although isolated, stood firm. The frustration and despair of the Palestinians gave rise to the self-styled ‘Black September’ movement, a shadowy and undisciplined group bent on revenge. In September 1971 Wasfi Tel was assassinated in Cairo. Black September was responsible for a series of incidents – mainly outside Israel – involving hijacking, bombing and attempts to take hostages. The most sensational, during the Olympic Games in Munich in September 1972, led to the death of nine Israeli athletes who had been taken hostage by Black September terrorists. The world reacted with horror, but the Palestinians, with nothing left to lose, felt that their cause was at least attracting public attention.
The expulsion of the Palestinian guerrillas from Jordan caused the PLO to concentrate its activities in the one remaining Arab country where they could enjoy some freedom of action – Lebanon. While many Lebanese – especially the Muslims – had some sympathy for the Palestinians’ struggle, the majority of Lebanese Christians were hostile and the Maronite political leaders demanded that the guerrillas be excluded from Lebanese territory. But the Lebanese state, built on a delicate political compromise, was weak and unable to defend its interests. All Lebanese were sharply aware of their country’s defencelessness in the face of Israeli reprisals against Palestinian guerrilla activities.
For a time the clashes between the guerrillas, the Lebanese army and armed civilian groups of various loyalties were prevented from deteriorating into a general conflict through a series of patched-up compromise agreements achieved through Arab mediation. But such mediation became increasingly difficult after 1971, when the PLO transferred its headquarters from Jordan to Lebanon, where it had the last opportunity for building up a ‘state within a state’.
The 1973 Arab–Israeli war and its aftermath brought some benefits to the case of the Palestinians on the international level. The feeling that Israel was no longer invincible, the improved performance of the Arab armies and the great increase in wealth and influence of the Arab oil states were reflected in a new awareness of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. West European states inclined more strongly towards the Arabs, while Cuba and twenty-seven African states, several of which had been friends of Israel, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel by the end of 1973. In September 1974 the UN General Assembly for the first time agreed to include ‘the Palestine question’ as a separate item on its agenda and then invited the PLO to take part in the debate, and on 13 November Yasir Arafat, accorded the honours of a head of state, addressed the UN General Assembly. ‘I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hands,’ he said. The PLO now had quasi-official status in various international organizations.
After the UN’s action the Arab states felt they could do no less in recognizing the PLO. At their summit meeting in Rabat in October 1974, King Feisal of Saudi Arabia took the lead in persuading a reluctant King Hussein to accept a resolution endorsing the right of the Palestinian people to establish an international authority under the direction of the PLO ‘in its capacity as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’. Subsequent attempts to dispute this title by proposing an alternative Palestinian leadership consistently failed.
Yet there was a weakness at the heart of the PLO’s position, as Arafat could not fail to be aware. The 1973 war had helped its cause, but the Palestinians had played no part in the decision to go to war and had fought only minor actions on the Lebanese border. World recognition of the justice of Palestinian claims depended heavily on Arab diplomacy, and the key Arab states (notably Egypt) wanted peace. The prospect of recovering Palestine for the Arabs was as remote as ever.
This paradox was reflected within the Palestine Liberation Organization. Some of the Palestinian leaders, including Yasir Arafat, had reached the conclusion that Palestinian aims should be scaled down to the creation of a Palestinian ‘mini-state’ in the West Bank and Gaza and that the PLO should seek a settlement in co-operation with Egypt through a UN-sponsored conference at which they would be represented. This was bitterly opposed by others – the rejectionists – who refused to abandon, even temporarily and tactically, the goal of making the whole of Palestine a ‘democratic, non-sectarian state’. Arafat and his colleagues did not admit that they had abandoned that aim, which was the theme of his speech to the UN General Assembly, but, as he said later, it was a dream and ‘Is it a crime to dream?’ The reality was that the Palestinian mini-state was now the objective, and the formula that was successfully adopted was to have the Palestine National Council pass a resolution calling for the establishment of a ‘national authority’ on any Palestinian territory that might be liberated.
However, as Israel, with the support of the United States, stood by its refusal to grant any recognition to the PLO, the chances of recovering even a small portion of territory to set up a PLO state seemed remote. The PLO concentrated on building up its shadow state in Lebanon. Here the situation was rapidly deteriorating and the Palestinian presence was far from being the only reason. The Shiite Muslims who were the majority of the po
pulation in southern Lebanon and had traditionally been the country’s social and political underclass had found a charismatic new leader in Imam Moussa al-Sadr, a cleric of Iranian origin, who organized a Movement of the Disinherited with its own armed militia – Amal (‘hope’). The deprived southerners suffered most from Israel’s reprisal raids against the Palestinian guerrillas, and some fled their homes to the relative safety of the suburbs of south Beirut. The social and economic disparities in Lebanon, always dangerously strong, were being increased by the effects of the great Middle East oil boom, which brought added prosperity to the country’s affluent business classes. Meanwhile the plethora of armed militias representing Lebanon’s many sects and political trends acted with increasing independence in open defiance of the inadequate Lebanese armed forces.
In 1975 the unrest developed into full-scale civil war. At first it was mainly a conflict between the right-wing Christian militia and an alliance of leftists under the leadership of the Druze politician Kemal Jumblatt. The conflict was fuelled from outside by the supply of arms and money from various quarters, including Israel, some Arab states and very probably the CIA. The Palestinian leaders initially tried to keep out of the civil war but were dragged in remorselessly, until by January 1976 they were fully engaged on the side of the leftists. After initial successes, the leftist-Palestinian alliance gained control of some 80 per cent of the country, but at this point Syria began to intervene in force, fearing that Lebanon would be partitioned into a tiny Christian state, which would be in alliance with Israel, and a remainder in the hands of Lebanese Muslims and Palestinians, outside Syria’s control. President Assad, like any Syrian leader, regarded Lebanon as a vital Syrian interest. He also saw the Palestinian cause as the responsibility of all the Arabs – and especially of Syria, as the leading front-line state with Israel. He did not believe the PLO should act independently, and his personal relations with Arafat were characterized by deep mutual distrust.
Syria’s intervention led to a bizarre alliance with the right-wing Lebanese Christians which, although short-lived, was sufficient to turn the tide against the leftist-Palestinian coalition. The Arab states reluctantly endorsed the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon as the main body of an Arab peace-keeping force. The civil war died down, leaving some fifty thousand dead and many more injured, while about one million Lebanese were driven from their homes. As in all such wars, atrocious acts of massacre, kidnapping and murder were committed by both sides.
With their usual vigour the Lebanese set about restoring their economy. Trade and banking revived; the Lebanese currency remained strong and it seemed that Lebanon could not easily lose its commercial pre-eminence in the region. But it was soon apparent that the civil war had subsided rather than ended. The fears and hatreds which had been intensified by the war remained, and the Syrian forces were incapable of disarming the sectarian militias and pacifying the whole country. The Lebanese Christians, who had welcomed them in 1976, soon came to detest the presence of Syrian troops and demand their withdrawal. But Syrian domination was opposed by some in the opposite camp, too. In March 1977 the Druze leader Kemal Jumblatt was assassinated, almost certainly by Syrian military intelligence. Moreover, the continuing presence of the Palestinian quasi-state in Lebanon meant that Israel always found cause to intervene. The alliance between Israel and various branches of the Christian militia, which had begun during the civil war, continued to develop.
Since Israel’s earliest days, its leaders had seen the advantages of promoting Christian separatism in Lebanon and the creation of a Maronite-dominated Christian state which would be in alliance with Israel. In southern Lebanon the Israelis had an opportunity to make a start by helping to establish a friendly border enclave controlled by a Lebanese Christian officer who had their full support. By Israeli–Syrian mutual agreement, mediated through the Americans, Syrian forces kept a substantial distance from the Israeli frontier. Lebanese southerners now crossed the ‘open border’ into Israel for refuge or medical treatment. The great majority were Shiites, and some of them, embittered by their suffering and antagonized by the frequently domineering and insensitive attitude of the PLO fighters towards them, joined the Christian militia.
The situation became more dangerous with the advent to power in Israel in May 1977 of a right-wing government headed by Menachem Begin. The virtual certainty that Israel need no longer be concerned about war with Egypt after President Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in November meant that Israel was free to concentrate on its northern front. In March 1978 it launched its first full-scale invasion of south Lebanon, with the aim of destroying the Palestinian guerrilla bases. The Palestinians melted away northwards and it was mainly the Lebanese who suffered. On this occasion, firm UN Security Council action, backed by President Carter, secured an Israeli withdrawal by June and the installation of a UN International Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). But Israel continued to maintain and support the friendly border enclave over which UNIFIL had no control.
The years 1979–81 were a period of uneasy stagnation in the Arab–Israeli conflict. It became fully apparent that the conclusion of a separate peace between Egypt and Israel was not going to lead to any comprehensive settlement; in fact it made this more difficult in that Israel, faced with an Arab front in disarray from which the strongest member was excluded, was even more determined not to yield to the demands of Palestinian nationalism. In June 1980 the members of the European Community issued what was called the Venice Declaration, in which they said that the PLO should be ‘associated’ with any Middle East peace negotiations. But Israel could afford to ignore such suggestions as long as the Europeans still accepted President Sadat’s view that the United States held 99 per cent of the cards in the Middle East.
In July 1979 the Israelis formally annexed east Jerusalem and declared the united city their permanent capital. In August 1981 the Saudi Arabians put forward their own plan, to be guaranteed by the UN, providing for Israel’s withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in 1967 and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem as its capital. All states in the region, including Israel by implication, should be able to live in peace. But Saudi Arabian influence, although strong, was not enough to secure Arab endorsement. A new disturbing factor had emerged in the outbreak, in 1980, of full-scale war between Iran and Iraq. This diverted attention in the Middle East and the rest of the world away from the Arab–Israeli conflict and caused further division among the Arab states.
During this period, Lebanon hardly enjoyed peace. Violence between sects and within sects, with their inevitable reprisals, and massive Israeli retaliation for Palestinian guerrilla attacks resulted in many thousands of dead and injured. Some partial respite was achieved when, in September 1981, the PLO arranged an unofficial cease-fire with Israel through US mediation. But Israel had not abandoned its aim of finally destroying the Palestinian quasi-state in Lebanon. An assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador in London by young Palestinian extremists provided Israel with a pretext: on the following day – 6 June 1982 – it launched another full-scale invasion of Lebanon but this time it did not halt at the River Litani, some twenty miles from the border, but went on to besiege Beirut for two months. Thousands died and tens of thousands were made homeless in the capital and the cities and villages of the south.
The Arab states were appalled, but frustrated and humiliated because of their inability to influence events. Many Lebanese Christians greeted the Israeli invaders as friends and deliverers, while even some Muslims showed that they had come to detest the Palestinian presence in their country. Syrian forces put up some resistance but, after Israel destroyed their missile sites without losing any planes, Syria agreed to a cease-fire. The Israelis secured a stranglehold on the PLO headquarters in Beirut but the Palestinians, supported by some Lebanese allies, were able to demonstrate that what would have been Israel’s first occupation of an Arab capital would be extremely costly. Faced with tremendous odds, Palestini
an fighters put up a fair resistance, although they lacked an effective strategy.
The Arab gains from this – which might be called the sixth Arab–Israeli war – were negative but important. The heavy civilian casualties among Lebanese and Palestinians, the huge destruction of property and the callous saturation bombardment of Beirut all helped to swing world opinion against Israel, and began to divide public opinion inside Israel itself.
President Reagan, responding to desperate appeals from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, began to show public disapproval of Israel’s actions and to exert pressure for restraint. Through US mediation an agreement was reached whereby Israel would stay outside Muslim west Beirut and Yasir Arafat and 13,000 Palestinian fighters would be evacuated under US military supervision. The evacuation began on 22 August. On the following day Bashir Gemayel, the young leader of the combined Christian militias, was elected president under the shadow of Israeli guns. But on 14 September, before he could take office, he was assassinated – almost certainly by Syrian agents – and Israeli troops, against vigorous but vain US protests, entered west Beirut ‘to maintain order’. Two days later atrocious massacres of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese rightist militiamen took place in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps – in areas now under Israeli military control and without any Israeli attempt to foresee or prevent them. The event provoked huge protests by the peace movement in Israel. The frustrated Arabs could only denounce the USA for breaking its promise that Palestinian civilians would be protected after the fighters had been withdrawn.
Nevertheless, there seemed for a time to be a chance of a new understanding between the United States and the Arabs. On 1 September 1982 President Reagan announced comprehensive proposals for a Middle East settlement which for the first time showed equal concern for Arab and Israeli interests. Although he ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state, he said that permanent Israeli control over the occupied territories was unacceptable and proposed instead the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian entity linked with Jordan. While Mr Begin angrily rejected the Reagan plan, the response of the Arab states was more conciliatory. At a summit meeting in Fez, they put forward their own plan – which was in fact identical with the Saudi proposals of the previous year. Although it differed from the Reagan plan in important respects – notably in demanding the creation of an independent state – the US and the Arab proposals were not too far apart for their reconciliation to be inconceivable. On the other hand, US–Israeli relations were distinctly cool.
A History of the Middle East Page 39