By 1970, Arafat had to confront the results of the two events which had elevated him to the chairmanship of the PLO and the leadership of the Palestinians. The Arab defeat in the 1967 War had provided him and Fatah with the opportunity they needed to assume the dominant Arab position in the conflict against Israeli, and he capitalized on the ripe situation. In the process he had become part of the Arab established order, which undermined the independence of Fatah and saddled it with the responsibility of reconciling its advocacy of Palestinianness with an overall Arab position. The Karameh victory had left him unable to cope with what followed: his talents were not sufficient to adapt to the unexpected opportunities it generated. He found it impossible to transform the PLO into a cohesive organized force and to elevate it to an entity capable of giving permanency to the fruits of success.
Despite the call for the creation of a democratic state of Muslims, Christians and Jews, the total lack of Israeli response to all peace moves meant that the PLO’s real aim was the defeat and dismantling of the Zionist state. Total or partial success in the declared aim of creating a multi-religious state depended on the Jews of Israel accepting Palestinian rights, and the Israelis would not entertain that. Arafat and the PLO could not abandon the idea of an armed struggle to achieve a change in the Israeli stance towards them without undermining their new position of primacy. A serious shift in position, such as clarifying the idea of a democratic state as a viable political alternative to the idea of armed struggle, would have weakened their mass appeal and reduced them to just another Arab entity, like most of the Arab states which secretly or openly sought a way out of the conflict. And the armed struggle waged by Arafat and the PLO consisted of infiltrating territory occupied by Israel, causing as much human and material damage as possible, then retreating to sanctuaries in Jordan and other Arab countries.
Despite the standard name given it and which I myself use, the war that Arafat was waging against Israel was not true guerrilla warfare. Unlike the then recent examples of the Algerians and the Vietnamese, and the resistance against the Japanese in China and the Germans in Yugoslavia during the Second World War, Arafat was operating not on home ground but from safe bases outside Israel. This fundamental difference eluded him.
The raids were intermittent, bothersome and costly to Israel without being dislocating, and they followed prescribed patterns. But the Israeli responses were now more controlled and in proportion to the raids’ success, and differed substantially from the usual counter-insurgency measures that central governments use to fight guerrillas. Having failed in his efforts to organize the people of the West Bank, what Arafat was conducting against Israel was what might be called semi-conventional warfare. The Israelis replied mostly with artillery and air attacks, essentially aimed at interception and halting rather than eliminating the source of the problem. For the time being they had abandoned the sledgehammer tactics of Karameh and were following a policy of making the raids too costly to continue. Both sides were going by rules improvised to meet a unique situation.
The distinctive characteristics of this limited conflict, in particular the fact that one side relied on the goodwill or acceptance of other governments whose territory was being used, meant that outsiders had as much to say about the hostilities as the PLO and Israel. The government most immediately affected was that of Jordan. This is where Arafat was based and where most of his raids originated, so the Israeli response was directed against Jordan, its people and infrastructure, and at forcing the government to stop backing or tolerating the presence of the PLO.
The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were another factor in what was happening. They represented a natural component of the PLO, a prospective guerrilla movement against Israel, and their leaders could pre-empt the PLO and promote themselves as an alternative partner in a negotiated solution involving the Palestinian people. Thirdly, there were the rest of the Arab states, all still at war with Israel and some, like Egypt and Syria, with territory under Israeli military occupation. Except for Syria and distant Iraq and Algeria, the Arab countries wanted out of the Arab–Israeli problem in a serious way which went beyond surrendering its future fate to the PLO and Arafat. Finally there were the United Nations and the rest of the world, weary of a conflict which contributed to regional instability and contained the potential for superpower confrontation, but unable to come to terms with having to deal with a political entity with questionable credentials and a vague programme – the PLO.
Arafat’s response to the complicated situation facing him, the need to take all these factors into consideration, was very much in character. ‘We were not dealing with the total issue, we couldn’t, so we concentrated on continuing to represent the Palestinians and staying alive,’ is the way his former lieutenants and a member of the cabinet in Arafat’s Palestinian Authority described the situation which existed at the beginning of 1970. This explains why all efforts towards adopting a clear policy which would make sense to the rest of the world became secondary. According to the same source, Arafat knew that a total or even partial military victory against Israel was impossible, but continued to promote the idea to his people in order to maintain his position as leader. This has been interpreted as telling his people something while knowing better, and has produced accusations of cynicism. But that is too simple and convenient an explanation for what he was doing. By tying himself to what his people wanted and consolidating his and the PLO’s paramountcy in the Arab–Israeli conflict, he was following a safer course of action within the Palestinian and Arab spheres.
There were so many Palestinian groups operating under the PLO umbrella in Jordan that no two authors or journalists are agreed on their number or the figures of their membership. Certainly there were more than thirty of them (I have a list of thirty-one), and the confused membership tallies show that some of them, for instance Fatah, had fifteen thousand men under arms while others, such as Al Ansar (The Partisans) numbered somewhere between fifty and a hundred. Some, like the PLA, were backed by Arab funds allocated for that purpose through the Arab League or donated in an open, acceptable way. But most had connections to Arab and outside countries, which used them to advance their wish to put pressure on Arafat and influence the outcome of the conflict.
Libya, Syria, Iraq, the USSR and China sponsored specific groups. Others, including major ones with several hundred members like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (the PFLP–GC is not to be confused with the PFLP), received simultaneous Libyan, Iraqi, Syrian and other support. There were groups whose members came from other Arab countries – among them were the Lebanese Fidai’ Front and the Organization of the Arabs of Sinai – and Marxist – Leninist, Maoist and Arab socialist groups. Others were extensions of parent organizations – Al Assifa and Force 17, for example, were part of Fatah – but had special duties and responsibilities. Some, especially the PFLP and DFLP, established connections with guerrilla organizations throughout the world, including the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, Action Directe of France, the Italian Red Brigades, the Japanese Red Army and the less well-known guerrillas of the Turkish Liberation Army and Colombian, Nicaraguan and Armenian groups. Regardless of origin, sponsorship, political direction or connection with international terror groups, all guerrilla groups operated under the umbrella of the PLO; they made the PLO.
The need to control groups with such diverse aims, backing and connections is obvious, but Arafat never understood this requirement. This is why the attempt to place all of these entities under the Armed Struggle Command, and other similar organizations which came and went without leaving a mark, never got off the ground. He created these bodies, then ignored them. But there was another element which contributed Arafat’s attitude in the face of this uncontrollable diversity. As already seen, he favoured consensus, which meant accepting all groups as long as they paid his leadership position at least lip service. Regardless of how small or unimportant they were, he felt safer with them within the fold and feared alienating them or the power(s) behind them. This superseded any need to discipline them or to reject them on the basis of their ideology or the damage they might inflict on the parent organization, the PLO.
There is no better way to explain this naive, simplistic attitude than to show how he handled the plane hijackings organized by Wadi’ Haddad of the PFLP. Though Arafat eventually condemned the hijackings and stated that he was against them, he undertook no spontaneous moves to stop Haddad and his group, who operated in the open and occupied seats on both the Palestine National Council and the executive committee of the PLO. Only when these bodies forced him to speak out did he do so, and then only perfunctorily. In fact, he considered PFLP leader George Habbash one of his major sources of support.
Arafat’s failure to act against Haddad exposed his limited horizons. To Arafat, the hijackings helped introduce the name of Palestine to the world and contributed to the creation of the Palestinian identity which he valued above all else. He found them beneficial and could not see the damage they were doing the Palestinian cause. His handling of hijackings was indeed cynical: he wanted the benefits, yet rejected these acts when speaking to the world media or Arab leaders. He behaved the same way towards other groups; he wanted the benefits of their actions without assuming responsibility for them. In Jordan this was to cost him dearly.
The September 1970 civil war in Jordan, which has come to be known as Black September after the terrorist group it spawned, is often represented as the natural consequence of the existence of a Palestinian state within, but not beholden to, the Jordanian state. In fact, despite signs to the contrary, including the proclamation of a Republic of Palestine by the residents of certain refugee camps such as Al Wahdat, there was no Palestinian state. There was nothing beyond a name, the PLO, behind which the various Palestinian guerrilla groups operated and sheltered. The erratic presence and the organizational dislocation1 of the PLO, the inevitable results of Arafat’s loose policies, inability to plan and lack of judgement, determined the nature of the civil war and its consequences. The confrontation between Jordan and the Palestinians was inevitable, given the inability of a nation state to accommodate the presence of a massive foreign rabble. Above all, it was Arafat’s refusal to define the nature of the Palestinian presence in Jordan which was to eliminate any chance of some agreement acceptable to both sides – one which might have allowed the PLO to remain in Jordan without eroding the authority of the Jordanian government.
Between mid-1968 and the end of 1969 there were no fewer than five hundred violent clashes between members of the various Palestinian guerrilla groups and the Jordanian army and security forces. Serious incidents included the kidnapping of Arab diplomats and unfriendly Jordanian journalists, unprovoked attacks on government offices, rape and the humiliation of army and security officers.2 The Palestinians, who were legally entitled to set up road blocks, molested women, levied illegal taxes and insulted the Jordanian flag in the presence of loyal Jordanians. Historians and biographers differ in their analysis of these events. To Arafat’s biographers Janet and John Wallach, Arafat could have controlled the Palestinian rabble;3 King Hussein’s biographer James Lunt believes that Arafat could not impose discipline on his followers;4 and the historian Charles D. Smith believes that Arafat was unwilling to challenge the groups behind them.5 The best way to answer this important question is to judge Arafat in terms of what he did to control the groups operating under the PLO umbrella, including his own Fatah fighters.
Arafat’s lack of attention to creating and giving support to a joint command capable of controlling what came to resemble an armed mob is a matter of record. What matters is that it was intentional. The loutish, high-handed behaviour of Palestinian fighters increased dramatically after Karameh. The situation had become unmanageable as early as November 1968, when King Hussein demanded that the Palestinians curb their activities within his country and reached the first of many agreements with them towards this aim. (It was followed by the February, August and November 1969 and February and July 1970 agreements.) The Fourteen-point Agreement, as it was called, contained modest demands, among them that the PLO should refrain from enlisting Jordanians wanted for service in the country’s army; that armed Palestinians should not enter cities in military dress; that there should be an end to the Palestinian right to build road blocks; and that civil disputes should be settled in Jordanian courts.
It was Arafat, initially as Fatah’s field commander and later as PLO chairman and military supremo, who violated the articles of these agreements. Under his direction, and despite the protests of many Fatah leaders, the PLO created its own police force and courts and arrested and punished people without deferring to the apparatus of the state.6 Arafat ignored the fact that Fatah’s armed members continued to set up road blocks and subject innocent citizens to indignities. Opting for consensus and not wishing to offend the components of the PLO, he refused to act when DFLP fighters raised Communist red flags over mosques and offended Muslim sensibilities throughout the world. He violated all the agreements repeatedly and without considering the feelings of the Jordanian people, the effects on the host government or the other Arab governments which were watching these developments with dismay. Even after the repeated clashes between February and June 1970 with the Jordanian army which resulted in eight hundred to a thousand casualties, he refused to make any determined moves towards controlling his fighters. He went beyond violating agreements and acted contrary to what common sense dictated, paying no attention to one of the most basic rules of guerrilla warfare and armed resistance: the need to have the local population on your side. The blame for the Jordanian mess which led to Black September rests with Yasser Arafat, the one person who was capable of defusing the situation.
There is more to Arafat’s behaviour than boredom with the routine of organizing anything, the wish to maintain a Palestinian front and his misplaced belief in consensus. After Karameh the PFLP stole the limelight. Whatever view the world had of the hijackings, they represented singular triumphs to the Palestinian people – certainly something more tangible than the raids across the Jordanian and Lebanese borders produced. In a way the PFLP was supreme, and its advocacy of activity aimed at disrupting Israeli life, regardless of that activity’s nature and where it took place, guaranteed it a high level of popular support. Arafat, the master of drama, believer in consensus and a naturally jealous person, could not ignore the possibility of sharing such support. He felt that he had to go along with the PFLP, that he could not oppose Habbash publicly and needed his backing, even though the PFLP was committed to undermining the Jordanian government and replacing it with a friendlier regime. The DFLP, too, called for replacing the Jordanian monarchy. Because of the size and importance of these movements – second only to Fatah – Arafat felt that if he moved against them he would lose his position. Furthermore, he feared curbing smaller groups in case they joined or sought the protection of the PFLP or DFLP. It was his lack of willingness to adopt a statesmanlike position and think of the long term consequences rather than his own popularity that determined his course of action.
Moreover, undermining the Jordanian government was agreeable to him for a different reason. Jordan was the weakest of the Arab states which had accepted the Rogers Plan and similar peace initiatives by the United States and the United Nations, and Arafat, unable to pressure the others into a change of position, hoped to force Jordan into a retreat which would influence them. Without a change of policy in Jordan or the PLO, a clash between supporters and opponents of the Rogers Plan became unavoidable.7
There were two more reasons behind Arafat’s behaviour. Despite the advice of leading Fatah and PLO figures, including Abu Jihad and Kamal Adwan, against pushing King Hussein too far, Arafat persisted in misjudging the nature of the Jordanian regime and the ability of the King to use force against the Palestinians. Arafat believed that Hussein would not dare undertake an armed confrontation with the PLO for fear of public reaction and the possibility that his army would not support him.8 Furthermore, Arafat believed that no Arab country, including the ones which had also accepted the Rogers Plan and with which he was quarrelling, would allow Hussein to use force against the Palestinians, even if internal conditions within Jordan pushed him to do so. In both cases he overestimated his position within the Arab world.
The third element contributing to Arafat’s misreading of the situation was the proximity of Syria and the presence in Jordan of seventeen thousand Iraqi troops who had been stationed there since the 1967 War. General Salah Jedid, who was still in power in Syria, was a supporter of the Palestinian cause and an admirer of Arafat. To Arafat, the long, indefensible border between Jordan and Syria meant that direct Syrian military intervention would be possible, or at least one using the thousands of Palestinian fighters still stationed in that country. Added to this, the Iraqi regime was a most vocal opponent of the Rogers Plan and Arafat expected it to back him to the extent of putting its forces at his disposal.
What Arafat failed to take into consideration was the degree of commitment in Israel and the United States to maintaining Jordan and assisting Hussein. In 1969, still trying to reach agreement with the PLO but keeping his options open, King Hussein had three meetings with the Israeli Minister of Defence, Yigal Allon.9 The Israelis offered Hussein all the assistance he needed to crush the Palestinians. Simultaneously Henry Kissinger, who had replaced William Rogers as US Secretary of State, offered American help in any endeavour aimed at eliminating the PLO’s presence in Jordan.10 Meanwhile Nasser and most of the Arab leaders, wiser than Arafat in the sphere of international affairs, knew that Israel and the USA would come to Hussein’s aid. But Arafat was dizzy with success and, because his stubbornness over Karameh had served him well, would listen to no one. By mid-1970 there was no turning back, and only Hussein’s decision to act was needed.
If Arafat showed little understanding of the dynamics of Jordanian politics and the inevitable involvement of outside powers in determining the outcome of the contest for control between the Palestinians and the country’s government, then King Hussein is certainly guilty of prevaricating to the extent of convincing Arafat that he, Hussein, was acting out of weakness. The King did not know which way to jump, and he changed direction frequently and substantially. He also feared an army mutiny, a popular uprising in support of the PLO and the reaction of Arab countries.
In February 1970, taking advantage of a visit by Arafat to Moscow, Hussein issued a decree limiting the scope of PLO operations in Jordan and reimposing the rule of law. The Eleven-point Declaration led to bloody Palestinian–Jordanian skirmishes and dozens of deaths. Upon Arafat’s return the King demonstrated a sudden loss of nerve. He rescinded his decree, described it as a misunderstanding and fired the man who had recommended it, his Minister of the Interior Mohammed Rasul Al Keilani. But this conciliatory move did not work, because Arafat could not put into effect the promises he had made in return for Hussein’s concession. Not only did the skirmishes continue, but the PFLP and DFLP continued to advocate the overthrow of the monarchy and demanded the dismissal of Hussein’s uncle and Chief of Staff, Sharif Nasser bin Jameel, and his cousin and commander of the Jordanian armoured forces, Sharif Zeid bin Shaker. In May, once again bending to the storm, King Hussein fired his two relations.
What followed the series of concessions to Arafat and the PLO bordered on farce. In a singular triumph of inventiveness, King Hussein asked Arafat to form a government and become his Prime Minister.11 An amazed, almost speechless Arafat turned him down because he had no plan for Jordan, or for incorporating the PLO into a functioning nation state with or without Hussein. With this refusal Arafat, who survives on improvisation and constantly turns turmoil to personal advantage, was left with no option but to continue to contribute to the existing untenable chaotic state of affairs. Unable to control his followers or assume power, he was cornered into trying to maintain the status quo. As if to underscore the absurdity of the situation, immediately afterwards, in June, there was yet another failed attempt by renegade guerrillas to assassinate Hussein by ambushing his motorcade. And in an act of utter stupidity the guerrillas killed Jozza bin Shaker, the King’s cousin and sister of the dismissed General Zeid.
In July Hussein had a meeting in Cairo with Nasser, in which he shocked the Egyptian leader by detailing unacceptable guerrilla activities, including the proliferation of cars without licence plates and acts of vandalism against bakeries which left some of his people without bread. Nasser needed little persuading. He himself had been humiliated in Jordan – at one point Palestinian demonstrators had paraded a donkey with his picture on it. The Egyptian President, totally convinced that Arafat was failing a major test of leadership, gave Hussein tacit approval to reimpose his authority. Arafat, though undoubtedly aware that he could not stand up to a Nasser – Hussein alliance, still failed to respond. As if daring them, in August he convened a Palestine National Council meeting in Amman which openly debated the issue of replacing Hussein. Exploring new avenues, but still unable to formulate sensible plans, Arafat was involved in several contacts with Jordanian army officers to stage a coup d’état, including a serious one with Colonel Said Maraghe. The door for Hussein was wide open and the PFLP wasted no time in providing him with ample excuse.
On 6 September 1970 the PFLP, acting on the instructions of the Master, Dr Wadi’ Haddad, carried out the most memorable hijackings in history. They began with the simultaneous diversion to Jordan of a Swissair DC-8 and a TWA Boeing 707, which was followed six days later by the hijacking of a BOAC VC-10. The aircraft were forced to land at Dawson Field, 30 miles from Amman, which was quickly renamed Revolutionary Airport. Meanwhile another PFLP hijack team which had failed to board an El Al plane managed to hijack a Pan American Boeing 747 to Cairo and blow it up, while the media recorded the incident for a gasping world audience.
The dichotomy between the thinking of the PFLP and the world reaction which followed is most vividly demonstrated by the show – a modern circus with aircraft replacing animals – which surrounded the event. That the hijackers and planners of the escapades meant no harm to the passengers and had the sole aim of advancing the cause of the Palestinians through dramatizing their plight is undoubtedly true. Statements read by the hijackers and repeated by a PFLP ‘reception committee’ waiting to greet the passengers made this abundantly clear. Everything was done to make the ordeal of being on a hijacked plane easier. Elderly passengers were helped off planes. All were provided with food and assured that they would not be harmed, including some who had dual Israeli–American nationality and a rabbi.12 Furthermore, efforts were made to acquaint them with the Palestinian problem and explain what was happening – a kind of crash course aimed at convincing them that their hijackers were freedom fighters and not terrorists. Much of the routine was carried out in front of cameras, and PFLP spokesman Bassam Abu Sharif used a megaphone to relay what was said to the passengers aboard the planes to the world media. In fact, the whole episode was reduced to a media spectacular and camera footage of the event leaves no doubt that the Palestinian participants were enjoying their sudden notoriety. Abu Sharif resembled a guerrilla cheerleader, but the world beyond, including the Arab states, condemned the event and there were very few cheers. Even the eventual release of the hostages failed to eradicate the impression of a tribe which had lost its direction as well as its head.
On the surface, the demands of the PFLP were simple enough: the freeing of would-be hijackers who had failed in their efforts and were serving time in European prisons. But there was a bigger, undeclared reason which coincided with Arafat’s thinking: to protest against the Arab leaders’ acceptance of the Rogers Plan and to undermine them. Not for the first time, the attitude of the guerrillas coincided with that of Israel. Their short-sightedness was helping their enemy because Prime Minister Golda Meir too had turned down the Rogers Plan, fearing an Arab – US attempt to force her country to evacuate the territories occupied in 1967. The same PFLP spokesman, Bassam Abu Sharif, admits in his memoirs, Tried by Fire, that the Rogers Plan was the main target of the guerrillas.13 Of course, there were some gains to be made from the effort and the media attention it was receiving, and the PFLP and DFLP, later to be joined by Arafat and Fatah, declared the airport ‘a liberated area’. With little idea how to liberate the rest of Jordan, this marked another aspect of the absurdity on the ground.
The Jordanians were divided on what to do about the hijackers. Prime Minister Abdel Munim Al Rifai’, a staunch PLO supporter who had repeatedly stood by the Palestinians while trying to get them to behave, remained adamant that a settlement should be negotiated. Other Jordanian politicians, notably former Prime Minister Bahjat Talhouni, former deputy Prime Minister Akef Al Fayez and the popular politician Ibrahim Izzedine, supported him. On the other side, advocating a crackdown, were Crown Prince Hassan, former Prime Minister Wasfi Tel, the dismissed trio of Sharif Nasser bin Jameel, Sharif Zeid bin Shaker and the former Minister of the interior Mohammed Rasul Al Kilani, politician Zedi Al Rifai (Abdel Munim’s nephew) and most of the senior officers of Hussein’s army. Although Hussein was in touch with the United States and Israel and had prepared for confrontation to the extent of dismissing several army officers with PLO sympathies and organizing a special force to deal with the situation,14 the outcome of the crisis depended on the PLO leader.
Arafat, unprepared for the snowballing confrontation despite the multitude of signs that it was reaching a climax, proved unequal to the task facing him. Very early in September, in a move which further alienated Nasser, he had rushed to Baghdad to obtain the Iraqi government’s promise of assistance against Hussein even though he was able to articulate the final purpose of such assistance. Even after the PFLP destroyed the hijacked planes on 15 September, he remained a prisoner to the image he had created for himself and his people. Except for the meaningless suspension of the PFLP from joint command of the guerrilla forces, he demonstrated no inclination to act against it or its leaders. Initially, he concentrated on reaching the King. Later he reached an agreement with Hussein through intermediaries, then rejected it and demanded ostentatiously that the King leave the country within twenty-four hours. He then began broadcasting appeals on the improvised PLO radio calling for the overthrow of the monarchy. In reality there was no determining what his true position was: he vacillated between wanting a final confrontation and trying to avoid it, but still without much thought as to what might follow. Characteristically, he began preparing for the consequences of his actions by attributing what was happening to ‘outside influences’ and other standard accusatory phrases which had become a habit with him. His behaviour confused his supporters and enemies alike, and encouraged Hussein to put his own plans into action.
The day after the destruction of the hijacked planes King Hussein declared martial law, dismissed Rifai’, recalled Field Marshal Habis Al Majali to active duty and appointed him commander in chief, and entrusted the formation of a military government to the Palestinian-born General Mohammed Daoud. Arafat stormed around Amman making statements but there were no last-minute moves to salvage the situation, even after the Arab governments showed little inclination to stand in Hussein’s way.
The fighting began the following day, with a Jordanian artillery barrage against the PLO stronghold of Zarqa. Within hours similar attacks were being directed against several areas of Amman, including the strategic Jabal Al Hussein, and on refugee camps such as Al Wahdat which had raised the flag of the Republic of Palestine. For the first time Arafat used the word ‘genocide’ to describe what was happening to the Palestinians, while urging his fighters to resist. The Palestinians acquitted themselves well, helped by his undoubtedly inspiring personal courage and steadfastness. But Arafat’s first disappointment came when Iraqi army units which he had counted on refused to come to his aid and were seen retreating to a distant safe area. But Arafat took the Iraqi ‘betrayal’ in his stride.
On 18 September Arafat’s men were still acquitting themselves well and the Jordanian army was failing to make any substantial progress, despite Hussein’s expectations of an easy victory. The Arab countries and the Arab League issued appeals for a cessation of hostilities but did little else. By the end of the day, lack of organization and coordination was beginning to show and some Palestinian fighting units were running out of ammunition. By early morning on the 19th armoured units of the Palestine Liberation Army, complemented by regular units of the Syrian army operating under thin disguise, crossed into northern Jordan in a drive towards Amman. Arafat the propagandist rose to the occasion and declared northern Jordan a liberated area. The Arab League called for an extraordinary meeting of heads of state. Israel urged Hussein to continue and, in line with the secret agreement between them, code-named Sandstorm, placed its forces on alert. The United States announced that naval units were converging on the eastern Mediterranean to reinforce the Sixth Fleet as a precautionary measure.
The fighting in the streets of Amman was bloody. Neither side took any prisoners; both sides committed atrocities, many innocents were raped and killed, and most of the city was ablaze. In other parts of the country, besieged refugee camps were running out of food and water. Wherever possible people lived in shelters, while others abandoned their villages for the safety of empty spaces. No fewer than five thousand soldiers and officers of the Jordanian army defected to the PLO, but most did so individually: the fact that there was no defection by whole units left the army’s organizational structure intact and enabled it to continue fighting, and did little to strengthen the PLO.15 After an initial setback, the Jordanians counter – attacked the invading force from Syria and pushed it back. When Hussein sent his air force against it, the Syrian air force commander and Minister of Defence, Arafat’s enemy General Hafez Al Assad, refused to use his aircraft and the Syrian ground forces had to withdraw. What lay behind the Syrian move was Assad’s calculating conviction that the use of his air force would bring the United States and Israel into the conflict,16 the one thing Arafat never understood.
In the midst of the fighting, on 22 September, an Arab League delegation nominated by Nasser in a hurriedly convened meeting in Cairo arrived in Amman. It was headed by the Sudanese President, Ja’afar Numeiri, who was accompanied by the Tunisian Prime Minister, the Kuwaiti Minister of Defence and the Egyptian chief of staff. The following day, with Arafat on the move to avoid capture but remarkably still in total command of the Palestinian forces, the Arab delegates hammered out an agreement with PLO leaders Abu Iyad and Farouk Qaddoumi, who had been taken prisoner by the Jordanians and were released by Hussein to act as negotiators. But no sooner had the Arab delegates returned to Cairo than Arafat rejected the agreement and renewed his calls for the overthrow of the monarchy.
The rejection of the agreement was vintage Arafat. Given that the PLO fighters were losing some ground and running low on ammunition, it was a supreme act of daring which undermined Abu Iyad and Qaddoumi, made him more popular with the anti-Hussein Palestinians and forced the Arab delegation to return to Amman to locate him. Because the Jordanian forces kept him in hiding and on the move, the Arab peace-makers resorted to sending messages and signals. Eventually they appealed to King Hussein to restrain his fighters in certain areas and made an open radio appeal to Arafat to contact them. When he did, they told him that Nasser had ordered them not to return to Cairo without him.17 According to Arafat’s version of events, he left disguised as a Kuwaiti sitting on the plane next to the Kuwaiti member of the delegation, the Defence Minister Sa’ad Al Abdallah. However, many Jordanians continue to claim that no disguise was needed, that King Hussein knew of Arafat’s departure and welcomed it as a way of ending the fighting.18 In either case the strutting, fuming Arafat who arrived in Cairo was still full of histrionics and initially insisted, against all advice, on keeping his sidearm.
Because his military Prime Minister General Daoud had defected and disappeared rather than speak against the Palestinians or respond to the pleas of Nasser, on 27 September King Hussein arrived in Cairo. He too wore the uniform of an army general and carried a pistol. It took considerable effort to convince the two men to join in the deliberations of the Arab League without their weapons.19
As expected, the meeting lacked any form of decorum. Hussein accused Arafat of conspiring to overthrow him and produced tapes of radio broadcasts as proof. Arafat retaliated by pounding the table, gesticulating and screaming: he accused Hussein of being an agent of imperialism and conspiring with the USA and Israel against the Palestinians. When it came to invective, Hussein’s efforts were no match for the talents Arafat had acquired on the streets of Cairo. The Libyan leader General Qaddafi, never one to miss participating in a quarrel or to utter singular stupidities, accused Hussein of being a lunatic like his father (Hussein’s father, King Tallal, had been forced to abdicate because of mental illness). King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, disheartened by the vulgar recriminations and incoherent rantings, declared that all Arab leaders must obviously be mentally unbalanced.
It was left to an ailing, tired Nasser, who had suffered several heart attacks and had been ordered by his doctors to rest and avoid exertion, to hammer out an agreement. At the end, there was a frosty handshake between Arafat and Hussein. Just hours later, after saying goodbye to all the departing Arab leaders, Nasser suffered another heart attack, collapsed and died. The one man with the stature and authority to enforce the agreement was gone. For Hussein this represented an opportunity to finish what he had started.
The most remarkable aspect of the September 1970 civil war was the failure of the Jordanian army to win an outright military victory. The overall level of casualties was high – the estimates range from three thousand to fifteen thousand dead and many more wounded – and the army did manage to dislodge the Palestinian forces from several districts of Amman and small cities such as Zarka and Al Salt. But the PLO forces still occupied important parts of the Jordanian capital, the town of Irbid and the whole northern section of the country, Ajlun. Given a background of Israeli and American psychological support for Jordan – Nixon ordered the Sixth Fleet to the Mediterranean and Israeli planes buzzed Palestinian positions – and the material assistance supplied to Hussein by some Arab countries,20 the fact that the Palestinians fought alone attests to their bravery and determination and raises a serious question about Arafat’s lack of design. Whether he wanted to overthrow the monarchy – and would have been capable of it – is a question that can never be answered, but he certainly failed to capitalize on the performance of his fighting men. He acted strictly defensively and with no specific direction. In the process, he compromised the heroic performance of the Palestinians. It was the reverse of Karameh; this time a potential military victory was turned into defeat. This time, the Arabs did not rush to embrace Arafat.
Hussein had the advantage of a simple plan which called for the ejection of the Palestinians from his country. Soon after returning from Cairo he formed a new government and appointed a hard-liner, Wasfi Tel, to the premiership. Tel, a former British army officer, was a calculating man of method who had the distinction of having drawn up the only militarily sound Arab plan in the 1948 War. Late in 1970 he established contact with the two new Arab leaders at the helm in Syria and Egypt, Hafez Al Assad and Anwar Sadat, and determined that they would do little to help Arafat. Assad had overthrown the government headed by Salah Jedid and was fearful of outside intervention in Jordan, while Sadat, who firmly believed that Arab military victory against Israel was unattainable, had succeeded Nasser. Both represented more moderate approaches and were reluctant to come to the rescue of the Palestinians in the manner of the former regimes in these countries. With his Arab flank thus covered, Tel moved in for the kill.
Arafat had returned to Jordan and set up headquarters in Ajlun in the north. From there he sent Tel and Hussein repeated messages professing moderation and promoting a policy of live and let live. His pleas amounted to too little too late, and Tel refused to consider any of his suggestions. Meanwhile Hussein was expanding his contacts with the Israelis, and by the beginning of November 1970 he had held several meetings with them in London and Tehran.21 The final Jordanian move to liquidate the Palestinian resistance took place in July 1971.
Having thrown Palestinian fighters out of Amman and the major towns in a series of deliberate dislodgements, the Jordanians eventually forced them into the corner of the country bordering Israel and Syria. In July the Jordanian forces, reorganized and with their spirits uplifted by the prospects of victory, hit the Palestinians with everything they had. Using tanks, aircraft and heavy artillery they pushed Arafat and his fighters into an indefensible triangle. The Palestinians were outmanoeuvred and outgunned, and this time the prospect of outside military assistance did not exist. Arafat’s screams of genocide drew Arab protests and led to the closure of the Iraqi and Syrian borders with Jordan and suspension of aid by Kuwait, but these measures could not alter the desperate plight of the Palestinian fighters. Two weeks of fighting produced another three thousand Palestinian dead. The ferocity of the Jordanian onslaught and the savagery of Hussein’s vengeance-seeking Bedouin troops (they gratuitously executed the Palestinian commander, another Abu Al Iyad) forced some of the Palestinian fighters to flee across the River Jordan and seek asylum in Israel.22 Meanwhile, Israel capitalized on the Arabs’ preoccupation with fratricide to administer another defeat to the Palestinians. The Israelis successfully carried out a massive campaign against the people and refugees of Gaza, which led to the arrest of thousands and the demolition of hundreds of houses belonging to suspected resisters.
Arafat had no way out of his military and political predicament except to leave the country. After several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with Hussein through a trusted friend, former general Radi Abdallah, he sent an urgent appeal to the leading Palestinian member of Tel’s cabinet, Munib Masri, to rescue him. The latter travelled to northern Jordan in the company of the Saudi Ambassador to Jordan, Fahd Al Koheimi, and talked Arafat, who was hiding in a cave, into returning to Amman to meet King Hussein. But Arafat knew he could not face Hussein to negotiate what amounted to terms of surrender. On reaching the town of Jarrash in the company of Masri and Al Koheimi he asked to be driven in the direction of the Syrian border.23 After crossing into Syria he soon moved to Lebanon with two thousand of his fighters to avoid being under the control of President Assad, a man forever opposed to independent PLO action and determined to place the Palestinian resistance under his country’s control. Yasser Arafat may have been defeated but he remained arrogant and unrepentant.
When a Fatah convention was held to review what had happened in Jordan in November 1971, Arafat refused to accept any criticism of his conduct and, in what was later to become familiar behaviour, he stormed out of the meeting three times. He used his awareness of his unassailable position as a symbol of Palestinian resistance to put the blame on others, including Abu Iyad and Abu Jihad, respectively the man who had negotiated an agreement with Hussein and the PLO’s leading organizer who had called for better Palestinian conduct in Jordan. If the convention showed Arafat at his worst, then his triumph over those who held him personally responsible for the disaster in Jordan allowed him to perpetuate another myth; years later he still attributed his Jordan problems exclusively to ‘outside influences’ and declared, ‘We made no mistakes in Jordan.’24
Though the Arab house was divided, the defeat in Jordan total and the one in Gaza hugely damaging, there was a little-noticed but bigger victory which would eventually lead Arafat to a fundamental change of direction and save him from oblivion. In the West Bank and Gaza, atrocities committed by the Jordanians against the Palestinian fighters, the brutal treatment of Palestinians in refugee camps and the humiliation of all Palestinians severely damaged these territories’ link with the Jordanian monarchy. One out of every fourth or fifth Palestinian family in the West Bank was directly affected by these events, and the rest saw King Hussein as an enemy of the Palestinian people.25 Even pro-Hussein politicians such as Anwar Khatib, a former mayor of Jerusalem under Jordan, asked for Hussein to step down. Without exception, opinion polls revealed that the people of the territories had gone against Hussein and the Arabs and adopted a Palestinian identity. The major barriers standing between the people of the West Bank and the PLO, the Jordanian claim to their loyalty, and their attachment to an Arab rather than a Palestinian approach to their problem – had been eliminated. The suffering of the people of Gaza at the hands of the Israelis, coupled with lack of faith in Sadat’s Egypt, produced the same results there. In the middle of all this, no one paid attention to Yasser Arafat’s humiliation of Abu Iyad and Abu Jihad.
Arafat’s failure to generate an uprising against the Israelis immediately after the 1967 War was followed by Israeli and Jordanian failures to capitalize on the political vacuum created by the war. Two mistakes and the lack of a consistent coherent policy stood in the way of Israeli success. At first the Israelis attempted to cooperate with local notables without paying much attention to their popular standing. Chief among the West Bankers towards whom they paid special attention was Sheikh Mohammed Ali Al Ja’abari, mayor of Hebron and a former member of several Jordanian cabinets. The Israelis overlooked their various decrees banning political activity and allowed Ja’abari to form a Committee for Public Affairs, a group of notables willing to work with them. Members of this committee were a discredited lot, however, who commanded no respect and whose pre-1967 work with the harsh Jordanian administration and association with King Hussein counted against them. The Israelis further undermined their position vis à vis the people of the West Bank and Gaza by expropriating land in Jerusalem, Hebron and Gaza and announcing plans to build settlements. Both Israeli actions helped Arafat’s cause.
Overall, whatever plans Israel had for the occupied territories were vague, cynical and short-sighted. The Israelis were opposed to the idea of a separate Palestinian entity, and even their occasional offers of local autonomy never got off the ground because they could not accept the principle of the Palestinians deciding their own fate on any level. They favoured cooperating with King Hussein because he was an alternative to the PLO who would concede more, but they could not bring themselves to do anything to make such cooperation a viable choice acceptable to even the most moderate of Palestinians. Beyond the pliant Ja’abari they conducted negotiations with several groups of local leaders, notably those of Nablus,26 but had nothing to offer to secure their cooperation. The banning of several popular opposition groups, such as the Higher Islamic Council and the Communist-led National Guidance Committee, reduced the Israeli effort to an attempt to impose an antiquated leadership on the people of the occupied territories. This was something which the intelligentsia of the population and through them the ordinary people, for whom they interpreted such matters – rejected. Israel’s only success was in integrating Palestinian workers into the Israeli economy; the number working within Israel’s pre-1967 borders continued to grow, and by 1970 there were over thirty thousand of them.
Jordanian efforts aimed at maintaining a connection with the occupied territories, and at presenting Jordan as a country to which the Palestinians should adhere in order to produce a settlement of the conflict acceptable to them, were equally unsound. Jordan too depended on local Palestinian leaders to advance its cause without much attention to their popular standing. In addition to the ephemeral support of Ja’abari, the Jordanians could count on the loyalty of the mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, and the mayor of Gaza, Rashad Shawa. But whatever popularity the three mayors possessed was nullified by their inability to produce benefits for the people as a result of their varying degrees of cooperation with Israel, which Jordan initially supported. Moreover, the Jordanian rule of the West Bank before 1967 had been harsh and dictatorial, and the post-1967 Jordanian efforts to retain a position in the occupied territories consisted of funding the mayors to promote pro-Jordanian sentiments. The mayors did little beside pocket the money and perpetuate the image of a corrupt Jordan which paid little attention to the feelings of the people. Finally, even those mayors found it difficult to side with Jordan after the Black September Civil War. On top of all this, Israel’s lack of policy occasionally found it opposing the pro-Jordanian mayors’ modest demands and vitiating their effectiveness.27
The lack of success which accompanied the Israeli and Jordanian efforts opened the door for some of the local leaders to act. For instance, a Christian lawyer, Aziz Shehadeh, a journalist, Mohammed Shalbiya, and a member of an old political family, Dr Hamdi Al Taji Al Farouqi, had begun to advocate a separate Palestinian state comprising the West Bank and Gaza soon after the Israeli occupation in 1967, and were encouraged to step up their efforts by the Black September disaster in Jordan.28 But three things stood between them and success. First, because of Israel’s uncompromising stance the people of the occupied territories misjudged their intentions. They could not differentiate between honest advocates of peace and collaborators trying to accommodate Israeli designs. Second, they had no backing whatsoever: the Arabs were behind the PLO, the Israelis were against their ideas and pro-Jordanian mayors saw them as competitors. Lastly, Arafat himself, stunned by his original failure in the West Bank and cleverly learning from it, did everything to discredit and frighten them. From 1969 he used Radio Al Assifa in Cairo, the transmitters at his disposal in Damascus and Baghdad, and PLO publications to issue warnings to them and to ask the people to refrain from following them. In November 1970 he met some of them in Jordan and threatened them in person.29 The threats were real enough to make it impossible for some of them to travel or to get their opinions published in local newspapers.
Arafat’s efforts blocked all attempts to create a local leadership capable of negotiating the fate of the West Bank and Gaza. The later efforts of a broad-based West Bank coalition calling itself the Palestine National Front, presented to the PLO in advance in recognition of its primacy as an act of respect, achieved no more than Shehadeh, Farouqi and Shalibya had. Arafat refused to tolerate any local initiative which might lead to settlement with Israel for fear of being marginalized. In fact, he devoted considerable energy to stifling the development of local leadership in the West Bank and Gaza. He successfully equated compromise with treason.
With the Arabs discredited, Israel and Jordan ineffective and the people of the occupied territories unable to act on their own, this time the only organization that held any appeal for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation was the PLO. Arafat knew this and used it with his customary speed. He made much of ‘the betrayal’ of Jordan, lack of Arab support and Israeli behaviour, and the agony they generated among the Palestinians of the occupied territories. Every move by the Jordanian or Israeli governments was seized on by Arafat’s propaganda machine and broadcast to his new constituency. In addition, peace moves by Arab governments, like Sadat’s diplomatic efforts towards a dialogue and Hussein’s ongoing secret negotiations, played right into his hands. This time people showed no reluctance in joining him; using his newly acquired knowledge of conditions on the ground with remarkable effectiveness, he began cultivating instead of threatening the local leadership. He sent them money while knowing that most of them would never use it for political purposes, and finally he succeeded in bribing them. If Israeli actions presented him with an easy target, and the marginalization of the ordinary people by Jordanian policies which favoured the elite helped him, it was the death of Nasser which paved the way for Arafat to fill the ideological void. After the Black September civil war, all he had to do was prove that the Palestinian issue was still alive and well and in loyal Palestinian hands. He seized the all – important propaganda scene by coining unrealistic new slogans like ‘Haifa before Jerusalem’ – Haifa, after all, was in pre-1967 Israel – but to people without hope they were effective.
In the absence of a base from which to conduct serious raids against Israel, the Palestinians and the rest of the world needed proof that armed resistance had not died. How to maintain his Palestinian position became a problem, as was convincing the rest of the world which supported Hussein and his ambitions. This was the beginning of terrorism and secret diplomacy.
Palestinian terrorism falls into two categories. In the first category, what the PLO, Fatah, PFLP, DFLP, PFLP–General Command, Al Saiqa and other major groups undertook always had a clear political purpose behind it. Whether or not the acts were justifiable or acceptable in principle, the arguments for and against them were always reduced to people’s perception of whether this was terrorism or the work of freedom fighters. The second category of terrorist activity, the work of the lunatic fringe of Abu Nidal, Abul Abbas and others, consisted of random acts of violence carried out by people totally lacking in political acumen but committed to a destructive activity without understanding its consequences. The Fatah campaign of terror, like those of the PFLP and DFLP, was elaborately political.
On 28 November 1971, an organization which was to leave an indelible mark on the history of political terror and the modern Middle East committed its first murder. Four armed Palestinians, operating in broad daylight and without the benefit of masks, shot dead the Jordanian Prime Minister, Wasfi Tel, as he returned to Cairo’s Sheraton Hotel from an Arab League meeting. The assassination itself was followed by a gruesome ritual as one of the killers knelt down, lapped up some of Tel’s flowing blood and shouted several times that he and his accomplices belonged to Black September. The following month the group tried to assassinate Jordan’s Ambassador to London, Zeid Al Rifai’, a leading politician who had supported King Hussein’s crackdown on the Palestinians. There was no let-up, and in February 1972 members of Black September blew up a West German electrical installation and a Dutch gas plant.
These four acts of terrorism revealed a great deal about the organization behind them. Black September’s fearless members were willing to defy major Arab governments, including the very important Egyptian one. The attempt to assassinate Rifai’ in London demonstrated that they had international connections. And the attacks against the West German and Dutch installations indicated that the plans of the new terror group went beyond eliminating individuals and included a threat to the economic infrastructure of the West on its home ground.
The reaction to the attacks followed clear-cut lines. Because they acted as a safety valve for Palestinian frustration, the majority of Palestinians applauded them. Most of the Arab states either sanctioned Black September or looked the other way,30 and this was confirmed in a dramatic way when the the Egyptians released Tel’s assassins on phoney technical grounds. The West took hurried steps to protect its airports and industrial complexes and began to draw up protective measures. And Israel, utterly stunned by the Palestinians’ ability to rise from the ashes, resorted to increased aerial attacks on PLO bases and began developing plans for responding to the new threat on a global basis.
In 1972, what amounted to a full-fledged war of terror between the Palestinians and Israel complemented the escalating situation on the ground. In January, PLO raids from Lebanon against northern Israel prompted an Israeli incursion into that country and aerial attacks against PLO bases there as well as the first attack against Syria since the 1967 War. The Syrian aerial response came close to starting a full-scale war. Later PLO cross-border activities resulted in similar land, air and sea clashes and further Israeli incursions which occasionally involved thousands of men. The Palestinian issue was alive, the raids against Israel and Black September terror tactics were successful; the United Nations and the rest of the world were left in no doubt that the defeat in Jordan had not finished off the PLO or Arafat’s leadership.
Countering and containing the acts of terror was what preoccupied everyone, rather than the message which Black September sent out. In May 1972 there was another hijacking, of a Belgian Sabena plane flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv. Later that month, using their international connections and relying for assistance on members of the Japanese Red Army, the PFLP carried out an attack on Lod airport in Israel which left twenty-four dead. On 9 July, the Israelis hit back by assassinating PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani and his niece in Beirut. Two days later, a bomb at a Tel Aviv bus terminal wounded eleven people. On the 19th, a letter bomb came close to killing Kanafani’s second-in-command, Bassam Abu Sharif. On the 25th, Black September attacked an oil refinery in Trieste in north-eastern Italy. The cycle of violence had to end with war or escalate into some senseless act of outrageous proportions, and it did.
On 5 September 1972, during the Olympic Games, the Munich Massacre entered the vocabulary of the world. This Black September operation, code-named Ikrit and Byram after two villages in Galilee razed by the Israelis, generated shock waves which no one could ignore. Two Israeli athletes were killed when hooded Palestinians raided the Olympic grounds and took another eleven as hostages. Later, in a twenty-three-hour drama, a German attempt to lure the kidnappers failed and in the ensuing shoot-out nine more Israeli athletes, five of the eight gunmen and a German policeman perished. The three surviving kidnappers were captured by the Germans but freed later after the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane. Pictures of the hooded gunmen were flashed all over the world; they became the masked face of Palestinian resistance, the face of terror.
These statistics were nothing compared with the worldwide impact of Munich. The victims were athletes participating in the most international event of them all, and the media coverage was greater than that for the hijackings. The world could not overlook the challenge of Munich and, through passing judgement on it, passed judgement on PLO terror as a whole. The question of how Munich came about, and why, had to be answered. So did the matter of the culpability of the PLO and Arafat.
Immediately after their ejection from northern Jordan and before their move to Lebanon, in August and September 1971, the PLO had met in Damascus to lick its wounds and decide on a course of action.31 The recollections of a member of the PFLP command who participated in the meetings, and the length of time it took to reach a decision, attest to the lack of agreement on what was needed to keep the flame of resistance alive. Moderate Khalid Al Hassan, who had acted as de facto foreign affairs spokesman for the PLO, was firmly opposed to the use of terror tactics. Arguing against him were Abu Iyad, Abu Jihad, Kamal Adwan, Ali Hassan Salameh (Abu Hassan), George Habbash of the PFLP and the DFLP representatives. Arafat straddled the fence but was dead set against any such acts taking place under the name of the PLO. In fact, except for suggesting the use of a new name, the final decision to create the Black September Movement was carried without his vote.
Black September thus came into being without Arafat’s explicit approval. It was a conglomeration of the leading Palestinian resistance groups, and the PFLP in particular provided it with all the expertise at its disposal and volunteers. But could the actions of Black September have taken place without Arafat’s knowledge and approval? Amazingly, the answer to this question is a qualified yes.
It was the strength of Palestinian feeling which cornered Arafat into accepting the idea of a terror organization; the master of consensus, whose leadership of the Palestinians during the civil war in Jordan had diminished him, could not do otherwise and survive. What followed the creation of Black September showed him at his disorganized worst. The killing of Wasfi Tel in Cairo was carried out under the direction of Ali Hassan Salameh,32 a handsome, ambitious, whisky-drinking young skirt-chaser who had been trained in guerrilla tactics in Egypt. Despite the protest resignation of Khalid Al Hassan, this event had broad-based Palestinian approval and is therefore not one by which to judge Arafat’s association with terrorism. What followed it does deserve examination.
According to my informant and two others who participated in the terror attacks of the early 1970s to the extent of planning one of them, Black September had no single leader. Salameh was determined to endear himself to the ‘Old Man’ and became something akin to an adopted son, but Abu Iyad and Mohammed Yusuf Al Najjar were also determined to leave their mark. Najjar was not after personal glory, but Salameh and Abu Iyad were, and the latter in particular was determined to erase the stigma attached to him by Arafat for reaching an agreement during the fighting in Jordan which proved unacceptable to the PLO and its leader. This produced rivalry both for the leadership of Black September and for credit for the various operations. For example, insiders confirm that Trieste was definitely Salameh’s work, but, despite accusations against him which ultimately cost him his life, Munich was the responsibility of Abu Iyad, and many of the hijackings which followed were the work of the PFLP assuming the name of Black September.
Even after more than twenty years no evidence has been uncovered to suggest that Arafat was personally involved, or that he approved any one single operation. But he was in a position to stop the operations, at least most of them, and that he did not do. Nor was he averse to seeing the various members of Fatah and the PLO compete with each other as to who conducted the more successful acts of terror: it weakened them and made them more dependent on him. Certainly he knew who the culpable trio were and was content to see them burn themselves and reap the benefits. By not acting against the attacks committed in the name of Black September across the board, he gave them his implicit approval. In particular his close association with Salameh, a seriously flawed show-off who wore unbuttoned silk shirts and tailored suits, surrounded himself with eighteen guards at a time and listened to Elvis Presley’s ‘Love Me Tender’ every day, suggests a wish to control events without direct involvement. Whatever tacit approval Arafat gave these activities was obviously tactical; in combination with efforts to organize the occupied territories and raids from Lebanon it was aimed at guaranteeing the paramountcy of the PLO and himself as its head. Once this was accomplished, he acted against the organizers of terror. This was cynicism pure and simple.
On 1 March 1973, an eight-man Black September hit squad shot their way into the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum where a farewell party was being held for American chargé d’affaires J. Curtis Moore. They took the guests hostage and made the usual demands for the freeing of prisoners in several countries. It was an affront to Sudan’s President Ja’afar Numeiri, the man who had saved Arafat during the fighting in Amman, an insult to the Saudis, who had continued to fund the PLO, and a direct threat to American diplomats. The negotiations with the semi-literate terrorists got nowhere and the grisly episode ended with the cold-blooded murder in the embassy basement of Moore, the American Ambassador, Cleo Noel, and the Belgian chargé d’affaires, Guy Eid. This atrocity forced Arafat into the open.
That the terrorists were in radio contact and receiving instructions from Beirut during the day-long siege is undoubtedly true. But the Israeli claim that Arafat personally gave them orders,33 has never been verified and consequent events suggest it was untrue. The Israelis failed to produce the so-called tapes of Arafat issuing instructions; the American monitoring of the operation produced nothing to incriminate him; and, although the real planners of the hideous episode remain unnamed, Arafat used it to disavow terror and the unknowns behind it. In fact, the suspicion of some biographers that he began to oppose terror and the clear but subdued statements made by certain historians34 are considerably more credible. Arafat’s emissary who was despatched to the Sudan to mend relations with that country speaks of him ‘being livid to the extent of reciting swear words like a psalm’ and claims that the PLO leader used the incident to order the cessation of all terrorist activity.
However, acts of terror by some Fatah elements continued without Arafat’s sanction and he had no control over some small groups. Indeed there was a long list of PLO and Israeli acts of terror from Bangkok to New York, culminating in March 1973 in Operation Spring of Youth, the assassination by an Israeli hit squad in Beirut of PLO leaders Kamal Adwan, Mohammed Yusuf Al Najjar and Kamal Nassar. By then Arafat had definitely decided against terror, and even the murder of the popular PLO leaders and the subsequent calls for revenge by close colleagues would not induce him to change his mind. The Palestinian response to Spring of Youth was carried out by a small Fatah faction and independent groups committed to undermining his new policy. Although other Fatah leaders, notably Kamal Adwan before he died, wanted to use force against the renegades who refused to obey Arafat, the latter had opted against this course of action for fear of exposure and an internal conflict which would have divided the PLO and rendered it totally ineffective. Ironically, the refusal of some to obey him was one of the results of Arafat’s failure to place all the Palestinian forces under an effective single command.
To this day, the PLO has extensive files on all terrorist operations which took place during this period. They are kept in a secret office in Algeria. In 1990 an offer made to me in association with the foreign editor of the French newspaper Libération, Mark Kravitz, to publish the contents of these files came to nothing when certain Palestinian groups issued threats against anyone involved in doing so. The offer to me came from Fatah through Arafat’s political adviser at the time, Bassam Abu Sharif; it implied a wish to set the record straight and absolve Arafat.
Whatever the level of Arafat’s past approval of acts of terror, his efforts to negotiate a solution to the Palestinian problem through diplomatic efforts were solid and extensive. He acted though secret and highly personal contacts about which very few people knew and which would have affected his standing with the various branches of the PLO, the leadership of Fatah and a Palestinian people which had trustingly followed his call for an armed struggle. Arafat’s change of heart in favour of diplomacy came earlier than the record indicates, perhaps while he was still in Jordan, but he could not reconcile it with his open advocacy of an armed struggle. However, his personal assumption of responsibility for this came later and was an undoubted act of courage. From 1970 he acted as the sole arbiter of military, political and public relations matters,35 but, unlike other acts which exposed a dictatorial tendency, the commitment to peace was not aimed at buying people’s loyalties or advancing his personal position. It was kept secret because most Palestinians were against it. (Neither Abu Iyad nor Abu Jihad knew about most of these efforts, but the two men were forever hampered by their loyalty to Arafat and the fear that acting against his efforts would destroy the PLO as a whole.)
The courage behind his pursuit of peace aside, it is worth noting that it represented a major policy change which he adopted without consulting others. Though he cynically used the results of the terror campaign to strengthen the PLO and his personal position, Arafat knew its limitations. Munich in particular was counter-productive and inexcusable on any human level. But terror worked, and confirmed the impossibility of erasing the Palestinian identity. Comfortable in having achieved this aim – the world’s acceptance of the Palestinians as a people deserving of consideration and a necessary component in any solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict – he followed it with steps to integrate himself and the PLO in all attempts towards a negotiated settlement. To Arafat, what was happening within the Palestinian and Arab arenas dictated a move in the direction of peace, which he accepted and acted on. He could not reveal this change of direction without running the risk of being replaced by militants whose attitude was more to the liking of the Palestinians.
In March 1972 King Hussein, unlike Arafat a man who has always tried to impose external considerations on internal conditions, floated the idea of a United Arab Kingdom. With Israeli connivance,36 he offered the Palestinians autonomy within a state made up of Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza to be headed by him. The unsoundness of the plan – its utter unacceptability because of Hussein’s unpopularity with the Palestinians, particularly after the Black September civil war – did not detract from its appeal to outsiders. In addition to Israel, the United Nations and the United States saw merit in Hussein’s proposal; but the Arabs reacted angrily – Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Algeria severed diplomatic relations with Jordan and declared their support for the PLO. Without Arafat’s approval, PLO elements concocted an plot to assassinate Hussein, which failed. The imprisoned leader of the assassination squad, Abu Daoud, told the world sordid tales about Black September, claiming that it was no more than a front for Fatah.
Hussein’s plan failed when even the countries which saw in it a possible way out of the conflict did little to help him. Yet the plan was there, a possible solution to be used if the PLO failed or refused to move in a peaceful direction. In 1961 Habbib Bourguiba, the outspoken President of Tunisia, had promoted a return to the UN partition plan of 1948, which would have entailed Israel returning small areas of territory gained in the 1948 War. Now, in May 1973, the realist Bourguiba floated a new idea to achieve a lasting solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict. Bourguiba’s scheme was dismissive of Hussein and Jordan and called for the creation of a Palestinian state which would include the occupied territories – the West Bank and Gaza – and Hussein’s kingdom. But this too was rejected by the PLO, because the organization and its leader were not yet ready to forsake the principle of armed struggle without Israeli acceptance of their position as representatives of the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, President Sadat of Egypt was using a combination of military threats and diplomacy to end the Israeli occupation of Sinai and to settle the conflict. He improved his relations with Saudi Arabia, America’s leading Arab ally, sent special emissaries to Washington, lessened his dependence on the USSR and in 1972 ejected over ten thousand Russian military advisers who had been stationed in Egypt since the war of attrition in 1969. Sadat’s coolness towards Russia and friendship towards America amounted to an acceptance of US policy, which called for a ‘comprehensive and lasting peace’ between the Arabs and Israel. In fact, Sadat was explicit in his offers to make peace; only the selfish politicking of Henry Kissinger, the head of the National Security Council who wanted to undermine Secretary of State Rogers, stopped him from achieving success.37 Interestingly, Arafat’s reaction to Sadat’s moves consisted of implicit acceptance. Sadat’s plans would not have realized more for the Arabs, but they accepted the PLO and Arafat as the representatives of the Palestinians; Sadat supported the notion of a separate Palestinian identity.
In Lebanon, a different but equally revealing situation was unfolding. Continued raids against Israel by the PLO from Lebanese territory were producing retaliatory Israeli raids which threatened the structure of the country. The Lebanese Christians considered the Palestinians an alien force and wanted to be rid of regional entanglements. They put pressure on their government to amend the agreements reached during Nasser’s time, and specifically the Cairo Agreement which allowed the Palestinians use of Lebanese territory to attack Israel. The Muslims saw in the PLO an ally against the Christians: the PLO dashed repeatedly with the Christians, as well as with the army. But despite support from Muslim and leftist elements, the PLO’s presence became precarious and their future uncertain.
Syria was another problem altogether. More than other Arab countries it sought direct control over the Palestinian resistance, and continued to control the Al Saiqa group and units of the PLA stationed within its boundaries. Initially the country was totally against the Rogers Plan, but from 1971 Assad signalled that he would no longer oppose the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 24238 and began behaving as if he he might go along with Rogers in support of Sadat.39 Syria’s contradictory position and the animosity between its leader and Arafat eliminated it as a source of support for the embattled Palestinians.
The other militant Arab states, Iraq, Algeria and Yemen, had a lesser impact on what was happening because of their remoteness. They supported a PLO hard line, because Israel was not a threat to them. But all they could do was offer the PLO financial help and training facilities – and then only when they agreed with its policies. Their indirect support mattered little. The rest of the Arab countries, especially the oil – producing ones, were looking for a way out of the conflict but waiting for someone else to lead the way. There was nowhere for Arafat to turn within the Arab sphere. The decisions of Khartoum were in the distant past and Arafat had to make his own moves towards the forces which appeared to be determining the actions of the Arab states.
The collapse of support for the PLO on the Arab front was matched by substantial divisions within Palestinian ranks, another threat to the continuance of the PLO and Arafat’s leadership. The DFLP led the way and accepted the principle of a Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank and Gaza as a first step towards a final settlement.40 Two small groups, the Action Organization for the Liberation of Palestine and the Organization for Arab Palestine, supported the acceptance by most Arab governments of UN resolution 242 and initiatives towards peace negotiations. Elements of the Palestine Liberation Army stationed in Syria wanted Arafat dismissed for incompetence, while the rest of the PLA cooperated with the host countries, even Jordan, against his wishes. West Bank leaders sent a direct plea to Secretary of State William Rogers, asking for help in ending the Israeli occupation. The Israelis carried out municipal elections, which threatened PLO primacy; Arafat had a difficult time stopping the people of the occupied territories from participating in them. The Mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, cast caution to the wind and declared that negotiations with Israel ‘should be started immediately, before all the land is confiscated. If we wait until the Israelis take all our land, then we will be left without anything to negotiate.’41 Fatah itself was divided on whether to attend a peace conference aimed at arriving at a final settlement.42 Within Fatah there were also serious attempts, led by Marwan Mufid and Abu Yusuf Kayid, to replace Arafat. He was accused of incompetence and mismanagement and one Fatah leader, Haj Hassan, even wanted to kill him.43
Fighting on so many fronts weakened Arafat considerably. In particular, the lack of unity among the Palestinians and leadership crises within the PLO and inside its various components was occupying much of his time. Raids into Israel and retaliation against his forces were the order of the day, but Israel was getting the upper hand and leaving him with little room for manoeuvre. On several occasions he ordered all activity against Israel to cease, but was forced to rescind these orders when his fighters became restless and turned their attentions to their impotent leadership. The hitherto calm leader began to shout abuse at anyone who got near him, and his undignified outbursts became a part of PLO folklore. None the less, his anger was matched by his continued incredible ability for hard work and, remarkably, he showed no signs of despair. His passionate belief in what he was doing remained intact, and so did his inventiveness.
Arafat was in danger of losing the one thing he had always sought: the power to veto all attempts to solve the Palestinian problem without the full participation of the Palestinians themselves. Many recent revelations provide additional confirmation that the great improviser’s decision in favour of a negotiated solution showed a remarkable instinct for events around him. It may have been cynical but it was also serious, and he never went back on it. Ever the manipulator, Arafat followed his pursuit of peace without turning his back on Fatah’s original ideas. He knew he needed to produce some results before openly changing direction. It was a situation which suited him; his contradictory behaviour has always led him to adopt conspiratorial ways, and at this time he was in the middle of a conspiracy against Fatah’s policies and the hopes of the Palestinian people who accepted and followed them.
In 1970, Arafat had told the USSR that he would participate in a peace conference in Geneva as long as the PLO was accepted as the representative of the Palestinian people. In January 1971, the PLO quietly let it be known that it was not totally opposed to Egyptian efforts aimed at reaching a peaceful solution.44 The following year Arafat informed US Congressman Paul C. Findley that he would accept a Palestinian state comprising the West Bank and Gaza.45 More tellingly, between 1971 and early 1973 the PLO Legate to London, Said Hamameh, published a series of articles in The Times supporting a peaceful solution based on a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. All these decisions were Arafat’s alone. On occasions when Fatah and PLO members challenged his right to make such statements or adopt these policies he responded in one of three ways: he denied responsibility for them, feigned ignorance or, when pressed hard, threatened to quit and leave the PLO leaderless and rudderless. Hamameh insisted that he was acting in a private capacity, but he undoubtedly had Arafat’s approval. The PLO chairman was adept at using aides to float ideas, which lessened the impact in the event of failure. It was Arafat’s old friend Abu Iyad who opposed what the PLO’s man in London was attempting, because it did not agree with the organization’s declared policy. Arafat just blamed everything on Hamameh.
By late 1972, Arafat wanted to cooperate with his erstwhile enemy King Hussein in the latter’s efforts to negotiate a solution which would guarantee him a primary position, but other members of the PLO command objected.46 On discovering such strong opposition, Arafat retreated without much fuss. Soon afterwards he convened a huge Palestinian Popular Congress in Cairo, attended by Palestinian leaders from the occupied territories and the Arab countries. They confirmed him as a leader and symbol of Palestinian identity, something he always loved. He used this show of support to strengthen his personal resistance to all opposition, including that of Abu Iyad. It was a classic case of ‘now you see him, now you don’t’. He used secrecy and willing aides to move things forward by himself, but stopped when the challenge to his activities was too great. In the end, he tried to build an image of sufficient stature to overcome all challenges.
The semi-public moves towards peace by Arafat were cautiously made and showed nothing of the doggedness with which he pursued the undercover ones. The Nabil Sha’ath initiative of 1969–70 was a mere sample of what was to follow. Beginning in the early 1970s, immediately after the defeat in Jordan, Arafat approved contacts between Ali Hassan Salameh of Black September and the CIA’s Beirut station chief, Robert Ames. Because the PLO was ostensibly committed to armed struggle and the USA held a firm line against terror, both sides kept this a close secret. But neither the original Sha’ath contact nor the Salameh-Ames one compared in importance with Arafat’s effort to set up negotiations with America through US special envoy William Scranton.
Scranton arrived in Beirut in early 1973 on a fact-finding tour for the Nixon administration. Following the advice of his brother-in-law, Time Inc. President James A. Linen, he used Time correspondent Abu Said Abu Rish (my father) as an on-the-spot consultant. Hearing this, the Palestinian construction magnate Kamel Abdel Rahman, a contributor to Arafat’s coffers and a close associate, asked Abu Rish to organize a meeting with the American politician. Scranton accepted but, fearing exposure, had the meeting set up in a neutral place, Athens. The Palestinians were represented by Abdel Rahman’s partner, the quiet, studious Christian businessman Hasib Sabbagh. It was the first high-level contact between the two sides, and Scranton reported to Abu Rish that the PLO’s demands ‘were modest’.47 The contacts with Scranton continued for more than two years.
Arafat’s performance between 1967 and the October War of 1973 was symptomatic of his strengths and weaknesses. His instincts were behind Karameh, but his attachment to consensus politics within Palestinian ranks and failure to understand Israeli and international politics produced a major defeat in Jordan. After that, his position of leadership was endangered by Arab and Palestinian adoption of new policies which did not agree with his and Fatah’s proclaimed ones. His penchant to act alone and his inability to organize added to his problems. Never one to listen to others except under duress or when his position was threatened, he now became even more inclined to act alone, to undermine old colleagues and to rely heavily on incompetent aides.
Arafat realized ahead of others that any form of military victory was beyond his capabilities and those of the Palestinians. He opted for peace after the PLO had lost much of its support among the Arabs and had become divided internally. To his long-time associate Jaweed Ghosein what happened in Jordan and its consequences were clear: ‘We established an identity, that’s all.’48 But even with the Palestinian identity firmly established and the decision in favour of peace in place, Arafat could not pursue peace openly because of what he had promised his people in the past. Admitting that he had been wrong or that the identity factor was not enough to change Palestinian fortunes was unpalatable to him. Very much like the Mufti before him, Arafat no longer distinguished between Palestinian national ambitions and personal glory. Others wanted to stop him from becoming a dictator; the October 1973 War solved his problems and paved the way for further consolidation of his hold on the leadership of the Palestinians.