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By Root 869 0

wade across the Jordan to surrender to the Israelis rather than put themselves at the tender mercies of the Jordanians, a telling comment on the fragilities of intra-Arab solidarities. The US reinforced its Sixth Fleet and despatched elements of the 82nd Airborne Division from North Carolina, although they were recalled in mid-air. Israeli armoured convoys rumbled towards the small Syrian tank force that intervened, sending the latter scuttling homewards. After bold intervention by the Sudanese leader, acting as a proxy for the Arab League in Cairo, Arafat was smuggled out of Jordan dressed as a Kuwaiti dignitary. In Cairo, he and Hussein made their respective cases to the Arab leaders, with each accusing the other of betrayal. While they glowered at each other outside the conference room, the Arab leaders on 27 September patched together a deal regularising Palestinian guerrilla activity within Jordan that both men were obliged to accept. Of course, neither did, and fighting erupted again. The new Jordanian prime minister, Wasfi Tal, pushed the guerrillas out of the capital while confining the remainder to ever diminishing pockets around Ajlun and Jerash. After arranging a meeting with the king in Amman, Arafat thought better of it while en route to Amman, and ordered the car to cross over into Syria, while many of his fighters withdrew to Lebanon in what amounted to a second flight. The so-called Nakbah (catastrophe) of 1948 had been joined by the 1970 ‘Black September’ in the Palestinian mythology of noble fighters and dark betrayals. Shortly afterwards, Abu Nidal in Baghdad began broadcasting attacks on his former Fatah colleagues, accusing them of cowardice and condemning them for concluding a ceasefire with king Hussein.

In 1971 Arafat joined his men in Lebanon, who eventually numbered about 2,400, making Beirut the headquarters for future Palestinian operations. Southern Lebanon was soon dubbed ‘Fatahland’. President Nixon was less polite, asking, ‘Why is Lebanon harbouring those sons of bitches?’ Although Lebanon did not have the large Palestinian presence Arafat had left behind in Jordan, it had other advantages. Beirut was a major cosmopolitan city, for guerrillas were not immune to the high life, with easy access to the international media, some of whom were susceptible to the lure of revolutionary chic. More importantly the Lebanese government was weak and based on delicate ethno-religious compromises that could be undone with the slightest tip in the demographic balance. In 1948 there were already 180,000 Palestinian refugees in camps dotted along Lebanon’s southern coast and in Beirut’s western suburbs. By the 1960s they constituted 10 per cent of Lebanon’s population. Fedayeen fighters in the south attacked Israel’s northern settlements, disregarding the ineffectual Lebanese army and the mounting concerns of Lebanon’s Maronite Christians. Armed clashes between Lebanese troops and Fatah guerrillas led Nasser to broker a deal in November 1969, whereby the Palestinians would co-ordinate their activities with the Lebanese armed forces while refraining from interference in the internal politics of the host country. In reality, this Cairo Agreement included no mechanisms to ensure such co-ordination or to police infractions of it. Moreover, Arafat was increasingly partial to the ambitious Druze leftist Kamal Jumblatt (the Druze were a minority religious sect) and was helping to train the Lebanese Shia Amal militia, evidence of his persistent meddling in the politics of the host country. When Syria’s president Hafaz al-Assad imposed tighter controls on the three to four thousand Fatah fedayeen he had allowed in from Jordan, they decamped and joined their fellow militants in the Arqoub region of southern Lebanon, swelling the number of available fighters.3

With some organisational skill, Arafat and his colleagues set about constructing a state within a state in Lebanon, resembling the one they had been forced to abandon in Jordan. For it is surely noteworthy that just as the Palestinians had baulked at UN partition