I Turbulence Before the Storm
If the relationship between a successful guerilla army and the society it operates within is accurately described by Mao Zedong’s metaphor of “fish swimming in the water,” the P.L.O. was flopping helplessly on dry land in Lebanon on the eve of the 1982 war.
1 Pre-war Lebanese alienation from the P.L.O. cannot be measured precisely, but it had certainly become considerable. At the same time, Lebanese public opinion was volatile and subject to constant shifts. As an example, many Lebanese who were bitterly critical of the P.L.O. before June 1982 fought alongside it. against overwhelming odds during the war.
2 Nevertheless, the poor state of pre-war Palestinian-Lebanese relations had a vital impact on the P.L.O. when the Israeli invasion began and its foes demanded that it leave Lebanon.
It was of particular importance that immediately before the war this alienation had begun to affect communities and groups traditionally well disposed to the Palestinians and which benefited politically from the P.L.O.’s presence. These included the leftist, nationalist, and Muslim parties of the coalition called the “Lebanese National Movement” (LNM), as well as many Shi’a in south and northeastern Lebanon, Druze in the Shouf Mountains, and Sunnis in the coastal cities.
An indication of how serious the situation had become is that in the months preceding the invasion, there were battles between local factions and P.L.O. units in two strategically vital areas. These were the mainly Sunni port city of Sidon, capital of the muhafaza, or province, of South Lebanon, and several Shi‘a villages along the coast road between Sidon and Tyre. Central to P.L.O. defensive dispositions against Israel, both regions were the scenes of fierce fighting when the war broke out. The fighting in the coastal area around Sarafand and ‘Adloun first started between militias of the Shi’ite Amal movement and the Lebanese Communist Party, but P.L.O. forces became involved, and were accused of shelling several villages in the course of the battle. Great bitterness was engendered by these and similar incidents in the south and in Shi’a suburbs of Beirut in which P.L.O. factions and Amal were involved, often as a result of fighting between Amal and groups of the LNM such as the Communists or the Iraqi Ba‘th party.
In Sidon, clashes between small local groups affiliated with different LNM and P.L.O. factions became endemic in the Old City and the port area. The most serious outbreak in Sidon was in late May between two groups, one linked to Fateh and the other to the LNM, and caused massive property damage in the Old City. The P.L.O.’s promise to pay reparations did not assauge the outrage felt by the population of Sidon. It was little comfort that after the occupation, a few of those responsible for initiating the incidents on both sides were revealed to have been collaborators with the Israelis. Although local Lebanese were involved on both sides of these disputes, and often initiated them, they left the ugly and lasting impression that in South Lebanon, Palestinians were fighting Lebanese. This was exactly the belief hostile propaganda had been assiduously trying to create for many years. The intensely negative impact of these clashes paved the way perfectly for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
By this time, traditional Muslim politicians and religious figures had repeatedly made clear their intense irritation with many actions of the P.L.O., as had leaders of the LNM and Amal. One of the most damaging aspects of the May P.L.O.-Amal clashes was the harsh criticism of the P.L.O. by Shaykh Muhammad Mehdi Shams al-Din, Vice Chairman of the Shi’ite Higher Council, broadcast on Lebanese state television just after the fighting ended.
3 As a result, when war began, the P.L.O. found itself opposed by the Maronite militias of the “Lebanese Forces” (LF), and without the support of important sectors of the formerly sympathetic Sunni, Shi’a, and Druze communities.
However, there were major differences between the attitude of the Maronite right and the other forces in the country. While the former had been in open, armed opposition to the Palestinians since the late 1960s, and had ultimately entered into alliance first with Syria and then with Israel to defeat them, most members of the other sects originally looked favorably on the P.L.O.’s presence in Lebanon.
This distinction had practical consequences. On the whole, non-Maronites were reluctant to take up arms against the P.L.O. in spite of grievances against them. This was partly because of the widespread perception that the P.L.O. was needed to balance the power of the dominant Maronites. In addition, there was strong sympathy among Muslims and the left for the Palestinians as refugees and freedom-fighters; the strength of P.L.O. military forces stationed in Muslim areas; and intermarriage between Lebanese and Palestinians, which made relative by marriage loath to resort to arms against one another. The constant pressure of Israel on both Palestinians and Lebanese in South Lebanon reinforced this reluctance.
In view of all this, the clashes in Sidon and the villages along the coastal road on the eve of the war took on great significance: they meant that the P.L.O. had gravely alienated its last allies in Lebanon, and augured badly for its ability to resist the much-awaited Israeli offensive.
II The P.L.O. and the Lebanese Crisis
How had it come about that the P.L.O. was virtually without friends on the eve of its most decisive battle in Lebanon? Welcomed by large sectors of the Lebanese population in the late 1960s, the P.L.O. originally enjoyed extensive popular support. By 1969, however, it had already become deeply involved in Lebanese politics, where its presence polarized even further an already weak and unstable system.
4 While P.L.O. involvement in Lebanese politics was often the result of its own choice it was just as frequently due to its being dragged into internal quarrels by its local allies.
The net effect for Lebanon of the Palestinian armed presence was inevitably negative in the long run, not only because this presence was so destabilizing to the internal Lebanese status quo, but also because it exposed the host country to great danger in view of Israel’s enormous power.
Israel had soon after 1967 begun to apply what amounted to a scorched-earth policy in areas of Jordan and Syria where Palestinian commandos were based. Although this approach was firmly rooted in the Israeli military doctrine of punitive retaliation (as this had been refined far earlier than 1967), it was now applied on a much larger scale than ever before.
5 This policy was increasingly applied to South Lebanon as the P.L.O. established itself there. It involved relentless artillery, air, naval and ground attacks, resulting in heavy Lebanese and Palestinian civilian casualties, and generally in negligible losses to the presumed targets, P.L.O. combatants.
The reason for these apparently anomalous results is simple: Israeli attacks were often directed at civilians, with the objective of alienating them from the P.L.O. and exacerbating Palestinian-Lebanese tensions. Israeli attacks on civilians were nothing new. Responding to a reporter’s question about attacks on civilians during the 1978 invasion of Lebanon, then-Chief of Staff Gen. Mordechai Gur emphatically affirmed that Israeli forces had carried out such attacks regularly for 30 years, whether in 1948, in 1967–70 along the Canal Zone and the Jordan River Valley, or in Lebanon. He added: “Since when has the population of South Lebanon become so sacred? They knew perfectly well what the terrorists were doing.”
6Initially, this potentially grave situation did not pose a major problem for the P.L.O. The southerners shared the Arab world’s post-June 1967 enthusiasm for the commandos, who were seen as the first Arabs to strike back at Israel. Moreover, the south of Lebanon was bound by traditional ties of trade, shared history, and proximity to northern Palestine. To this was added a special sympathy for the Palestinians, who were perceived by many Shi‘a as having taken up arms for a just cause. In the words of a Shi‘a shaykh (who preached resistance to the P.L.O., and after 1982 to Israel), initially the Palestinians “were Moslems and fought for a right cause.”
7As a result, the southerners were generous in their support of the commandos. For many years, the impoverished villagers of the south, neglected by the Lebanese state, continued to shelter and help the P.L.O. in spite of Israel’s massive reprisal raids. This welcome eventually wore out, but the increasingly effective partisan warfare waged against Israeli occupation forces in this same region since 1982 can only be understood against the background of these fifteen years of coexistence in adversity.
8Although by 1982 the P.L.O. faced a major problem in South Lebanon, opposition to its presence did not originate with the initially supportive southerners. It started with the Maronite-dominated political establishment, which rapidly perceived that the P.L.O. was a formidable potential ally for the disadvantaged, and thus a threat to the status quo. To conservative Lebanese, the P.L.O.’s emergence in the wake of the 1967 defeat suggested a form of politics antithetical to the existing traditional structures which they dominated. The radical ideologies of many Palestinian groups only enhanced this effect.
9Not surprisingly, members of have-not sects tended to be more attracted by this vision than were those from sects that benefited the most from the status quo. Further distinctions must be made in this broad scheme. On the whole, the Shi‘a and Druze communities, which rightly perceived themselves to be more radically disadvantaged then the Sunnis, were more affected by the impact of the P.L.O.
At the same time, the traditional upper-classes of all three Muslim sects responded quite differently from their rank-and-file followers. The old politicans saw the P.L.O. as an asset in their conventional bargaining process with the Maronite segment of the elite. They thus sought to exploit this new card in the game, although most were to find it hard to control, and came to regret their attempt to do so.
The P.L.O. leadership bore much responsibility for what followed. For while many Lebanese politicians actively sought their aid, at the outset Palestinian leaders were no less active in involving their organizations in Lebanese politics. This was a considered decision, although most failed to realize its full impact on the Lebanese political arena.
However serious its consequences for the P.L.O. and Lebanon, theirs was not an irrational decision. Members of the P.L.O. had arrived in Lebanon after their traumatic expulsion from Jordan in 1970–71 deeply imbued with the idea that the only way to avoid a repetition of what had happened was to surround themselves with sympathetic formations of the Lebanese left. The theory was that these groups would side with them in any confrontation with the authorities or the Israelis. The theory proved correct, at least initially; but not surprisingly, this approach eventually led to problems.
Clashes with the Maronite militias began as early as 1969. Palestinian leaders were soon convinced that a repetition of “Black September” in Jordan was being planned against them in Lebanon. Whatever truth there may have been to such fears, the frantic expansion and intensive armament of the right-wing militias was largely a response both to the growing P.L.O. armed presence, and to the galvanizing effect this had on their local Muslim and leftist rivals.
Naturally, an arms race was soon launched: as time went on the Palestinians and their allies expanded their own militias and increased their level of armament in response to similar preparations on the Maronite side. The country quickly became an armed camp, with both sides training men and importing and distributing arms feverishly.
However, it was not only on the level of arms that the P.L.O. had an effect. Many Lebanese disenchanted with traditional Lebanese politics saw that it provided new avenues to effect their aims, and joined its ranks. A number were idealistic intellectuals, who perceived in the P.L.O. things that were not there. Some were eventually alienated by its failure to live up to their high hopes. Their abandonment of it led to a serious erosion in Lebanese support, while their renewed adhesions in times of crisis (as in 1975–76, 1978, and 1982) brought sudden, unexpected accretions of strength.
10Certain others who flocked to the P.L.O.’s banners were less principled, seeing it as an irresistible force, and allying themselves with it on the time-tested principle of “ma al-hait al-waqif’ (with the standing wall). In time, as the wall looked less solid, some among them would abandon their support, or even move rapidly to the opposite end of the spectrum. As a result of these two trends, Lebanese popular support for the P.L.O. would often swing up and down dramatically.
This brings us to the heart of the P.L.O.’s problem in Lebanon: any growth of its local strength only multiplied its enemies. At an early stage, its presence was supported by a majority of Lebanese: nearly half a million people, most of them Lebanese, had marched in the funeral cortege of three P.L.O. leaders, Kamal Nasser, Kamal ‘Adwan, and Abu Yusuf Najjar, after their assassination by the Israelis in the heart of Beirut on April 10, 1973.
11 In a country of under three million, such a demonstration constituted an expression of popular emotion which the P.L.O.’s foes could not ignore.
The killing of the three leaders contributed both directly and indirectly to the outbreak of clashes one month later between the commandos and the Lebanese army. Immediately after the Israeli attack, there was violent recimination between Premier Sa’eb Salam and President Suleiman Frangieh over the army commander’s refusal to obey Salam’s orders to confront the Israelis. Salam resigned in protest, after he had been castigated for the inaction of the state security services by an angry crowd of citizens on the site of one of the attacks.
The existence of widespread mass support for the P.L.O. which the funeral demonstrated was particularly explosive, given that discontent within the Lebanese system was growing. Maronite leaders were deeply disturbed, and began to speak openly of the inevitability of an armed confrontation with the P.L.O. Against this background, the Israeli raid of April 1973 finally pushed the Lebanese army onto the offensive. In May 1973, it surrounded and bombarded the Palestinian refugee camps around Beirut, with negligible results.
Thereafter, the Maronite leaders seem to have felt they had no alternative but to fall back upon their own militias for the task of confronting the P.L.O. They undoubtedly realized the limitations of these forces. However, they apparently hoped that the prospect of “ghuraba” (foreigners) battling Lebanese would bring the army into the conflict in force and on their side. Failing that, the only remaining recourse was the intervention of some foreign power in their favor.
This was the background to the 1975–76 conflict.
12 During its first phases, the Maronite militias repeatedly took the offensive against the stronger P.L.O. and its Lebanese allies. They achieved no decisive result, managing only to overrun, destroy, and depopulate isolated neighborhoods located in predominantly Christian regions and inhabited by poor Lebanese and Palestinians, such as Haret al-Ghawarneh, Sibnaye, Karantina/Maslakh, and the Dbaye refugee camp. In all of this, the army failed to intervene.
These repeated massacres in the fall and winter of 1975–76, and the January 1976 siege of the large Palestinian refugee camp of Tal al-Za‘tar, provoked the P.L.O. and its allies into a counteroffensive. For the first time during the war, regular P.L.O. commando forces moved toward Beirut from Syria and South Lebanon, reaching Kahhale just east of the capital along the Damascus road, and simultaneously opening the coast road closed by the right-wing militias. In the process, the town of Damour was overrun by P.L.O. and LNM forces, with attendant destruction and the shedding of much innocent blood in a cruel massacre.
The “Joint Forces” (JF) of the P.L.O. and LNM had won the military initiative. Their offensive was halted not by Maronite resistance, but by forceful Syrian diplomatic intervention. By the time fighting resumed in the spring of 1976, after a brief lull, the Lebanese Army had shattered under conflicting pressures: its high command and mainly Christian units insistently exhorted by the right to intervene in its favor, and its Muslim units pressed by the LNM to support it.
The JF now carried the war northward toward the Maronite heartland, launching an offensive into the Metn. Success in their quest to rid the country of the Palestinians eluded the Maronite right wing until, by a sort of Phyrric dialectic, its successive defeats led to a severe power imbalance and triggered the intervention of Syria and Israel (respectively overt and covert), in its favor.
13The Maronite leaders may have hoped that they could play these two regional rivals off against one another, and thereby make them do their bidding. For a time both powers were willing to go along with them in limiting the ambitions of the P.L.O. and its Lebanese allies. But both soon showed the Maronites how wrong they had been to imagine they could maintain a privileged position in this unwieldy troika.
14Contrary to all expectations, the P.L.O. survived the joint Syrian-Maronite-Israeli onslaught. Indeed it came out of it stronger in some ways. This was in part because it managed to retain the support of much of the Lebanese population in the areas where its forces and offices were located, extending services as government institutions sweemed to wither away.
Already at this early stage, there were mutterings from some Lebanese of P.L.O. heavyhandedness or favoritism. But in the war with the right-wing Maronite parties, the Palestinians were generally seen as aggressed against, and were valued as natural allies, since most of the population perceived these parties to be a threat to them as well. Indiscrimate massacres of Lebanese Muslims, such as the bloody “Black Saturday” killings in the heart of Beirut in December 1975, or the bombardment of residential neighbourhoods (practiced by both sides) only reinforced such attitudes.
Even the Syrian intervention did not not seem to undermine Lebanese popular support for the P.L.O. Many Lebanese were impressed by the ability of the JF to stand up to the combined Syrian-rightist offensive for five months in 1976 while enduring an Israeli naval blockade, and to emerge intact with a narrower but still ample margin within which to maneuver. In spite of its defeat, the P.L.O. was seen by a sizable constitutency as a powerful independent force deeply involved in the Lebanese system, which could be relied upon to help right any imbalance caused by Maronite dependence on external help, and to balance the powerful Syrian presence.
However, the war was by no means a victory for the P.L.O. and the LNM, and resulted in a new situation. The postwar settlement was hammered out in October 1976 at the Riyad mini-summit (attended by the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Egyptian, Syrian, P.L.O. and Lebanese leaders) and then consecrated at the subsequent Cairo summit. By its terms, Syria’s position in Lebanon was legitimized and its forces became the “Arab Deterrent Forces” (ADF). Regular P.L.O. commando units were withdrawn from Lebanon’s cities, where they had been moved beginning in January 1976, and sent back to the south. On their arrival there, the JF found that Israel had set up a militia under former Lebanese Army Major Sa‘ad Haddad as local surrogates, which were expanding their area of control into mainly Shi’a areas so as to create a buffer zone north of the Israeli border. In view of this alarming development, the P.L.O., the Syrians, and the LNM were impelled to reconcile their differences.
There were still scores to settle, however. Heavy fighting occurred in Beirut in February 1977 between Syrian and P.L.O. forces. Kamal Jumblatt, head of the LNM, was assassinated the following month; and Colonel Sa‘id Musa (Abu Musa), commander of the JF in their defense of Sidon against the Syrians, was shot and wounded in Nabatiyeh, both allegedly at Syrian instigation. Nevertheless, in view of the growing Israeli presence in the south, relations between the three parties were soon normalized, at least to the point that minimal cooperation between them became possible.
15III The War for South Lebanon Begins
With the end of the 1975–76 fighting, a new phase commenced. This was the war for South Lebanon, which was still raging at the time of this writing. It was during this post-1976 phase that the P.L.O.’s problems with its Lebanese allies became acute. These problems developed for many reasons. The most basic was that in time most Lebanese, especially those exposed to the brunt of Israel’s firepower, ceased to believe that the P.L.O. was achieving anything positive with its presence in the south, or whether this was worth its high cost.
This was not always the case. After the 1967 war, most Lebanese accepted the presence of the commandos, who were perceived as being in the vanguard of a pan-Arab war of attrition against Israel. Even after Black September in 1970 closed the Jordanian frontier to attacks against Israel, after that of Syria was closed by the 1974 disengagement accord, and after Sadat moved toward peace with Israel, there was little diminution of Lebanese support for the P.L.O. This was partly because it came to be a valuable ally for some Lebanese in their internecine conflicts.
But the five years after the return of P.L.O. forces to South Lebanon in the fall of 1976 were bitter ones for its people. In one period of under six months in 1979, there were 175 Israeli land, sea, and air attacks on the area. Villages were hit repeatedly, their residents made refugees time and again, and it became difficult to see what they or the P.L.O. were achieving from this war of attrition in which civilians paid the main price.
Unlike Palestinians, whether combatants or civilians, South Lebanese villagers at this time felt neither that their very existence as a people was threatened, nor that they had no choice but to fight. Israel was an enemy to be feared, but the P.L.O. presence was increasingly perceived as responsible for having brought this evil down on their heads with such force.
Southerners came in time to believe that they were being involved unwillingly in a conflict which was not their own. Unsuprisingly, their wrath was directed not at the distant, awesome Israelis who tormented them, but rather at the immediate cause of their problems, the Palestinians, who were close at hand and clearly all-too-mortal. P.L.O. failings as regards respect for life and property, which grew to alarming proportions after 1976, reinforced such attitudes.
This summary description encapsulates an agonizing five-year process as families were repeatedly uprooted, driven from their villages to Beirut, and then back again by fighting there, in an unending cycle. By 1982, most southerners were willing to accept nearly any solution which promised relief from their agony of bombardment, flight, and mortal peril.
IV The Transformation of the P.L.O. into a Para-State
Together with what was happening in the south, Lebanese had to contend with a transformation of the P.L.O. which made it harder for them to maintain their earlier supportive attitude toward it. Starting as a radical, ascetic, semiclandestine guerrilla movement, which arrived in Lebanon in the late 1960s riding a wave of popularity throughout the Arab world, the P.L.O. changed beyond recognition in less than ten years.
P.L.O. Chairman Yasser ‘Arafat was now a head of state in all but name, more powerful than many Arab rulers. His was no longer a humble revolutionary movement, but rather a vigorous para-state, with a growing bureaucracy administering the affairs of Palestinians everywhere, and with a budget bigger than that of many small sovereign states. Its role in Lebanon had also changed profoundly, as had Lebanese attitudes toward it.
The initial Lebanese perception of the P.L.O. as an ally motivated by feelings of solidarity for the downtrodden sectors of Lebanese society had disappeared by the end of the 1970s. It was replaced by a view of the Palestinians as motivated by self-interest, sometimes to the exclusion of Lebanese interests, sometimes even at their expense.
Most Lebanese were disturbed by the seeming solidity of the P.L.O. “mini-state” in Lebanon, including parts of the north, the south and the Biqa‘ Valley, and with its “capital” in the Fakhani-Arab University area of West Beirut. These included many who remained basically well-disposed toward the P.L.O. For there was a permanence about its presence which seemed to indicate that the Palestinians contemplated an extended stay in Lebanon, and welcomed an indefinite prolongation of the existing situation.
To Lebanese who found that situation distressing, the fact that the Palestinians were relatively comfortable with it, and indeed stood to lose if it were changed, was intolerable. For Lebanese, the crisis which had begun in 1975 was the worst period in their country’s history. On the other hand, in spite of the numerous dangers facing them, until 1982 Palestinians could look on their situation in Lebanon as marking a high point in the re-creation of their national identity.
Not surprisingly, given these widely differing perspectives, many in Lebanon came to accept in some measure the insidious argument that the P.L.O.’s objective in creating a “state within a state” in Lebanon was permanent settlement there. Ironically, the Arabic word used—
tawtin—comes from the same root as that employed to describe Zionist settlement in Palestine—
istitan.
To anyone within the P.L.O., such reasoning seemed absurd: Palestinians felt profoundly insecure in Lebanon, knew they were outsiders there, and most importantly, were deeply committed to the idea of returning to their homeland. They dismissed out of hand the idea of an “alternative homeland” in Lebanon. But in doing so, they failed to appreciate Lebanese fears fully: the basis for them could be seen in the proliferation of the P.L.O.’s offices, the growth of its para-state services, and its increasing military might.
This entity did not grow up as a result of any clear plan. A comparison of the size of the P.L.O. bureaucracy and the services it offered before and after 1975–76 reveals that the war, and the demands it imposed on the P.L.O., were the main impetus for this growth.
16 The reason was simple: as the U.N. relief agency UNRWA and the Lebanese state ceased to provide services during this prolonged conflict, and as the number of casualties mounted, it became imperative that medical and social services be extended to both Lebanese and Palestinians if morale was to be kept up and the war effort maintained.
At the same time, as vital services affecting the whole society (like telephones, electricity, security, and food and fuel supply) broke down during the war, it was increasingly the P.L.O. which moved into the breach. It often did so unwillingly, but no end of Lebanese resentment was caused by the provision of these services, even where Lebanese experts called upon by the P.L.O. did most of the actual work (as with the efforts to maintain electrical and telephone service). It is thus ironic that the 1975–76 war waged against the P.L.O. by its Lebanese and foreign foes was a primary impetus in the expansion of its presence in Lebanon, which later on became the focus of so much of their criticism.
Several strands were involved here. On the one hand, it was annoying for Lebanese to see the P.L.O. running things, although they would have complained bitterly had it not done so and the situation worsened as a result. In fact, the P.L.O. was in an acute dilemma: when the Organization was too active it provoked charges the Palestinians were taking over the country; when it was not active enough there were complaints that the deterioration of the situation was the P.L.O.’s fault.
On the other hand, the LNM, which might have been expected to provide services in the absence of the state, failed to do so. One reason was the division and disunity that prevailed in the LNM, which was made up of numerous disparate groups, parties, factions, and personalities. More serious was that its leaders could not decide whether they wanted to replace the existing state structure with a new one, take its place temporarily, reform it, or do nothing. Their indecision did not decrease Lebanese popular resentment of the P.L.O. for acting in their stead.
After the temporary calming of the situation in the fall of 1976, most of these central services reverted to the state or other Lebanese agencies, but the impact of the P.L.O.’s wartime extension of its authority lingered on.
17 Moreover, the P.L.O. was now completely in control of the provision of extensive services in the Palestinian refugee camps, and often in their environs. This provided a constant reminder of Palestinian autonomy and power, which contrasted strikingly with the weakness of the Lebanese state. Another contrast was provided by the well-financed operations of the P.L.O.
This phenomenon was of great importance. Many Lebanese were alienated from a now-prosperous movement which they had once supported partly because of its revolutionary asceticism. More important, this wealth seriously corrupted the ideals and practices of the P.L.O. itself, turning many of its cadres into employees, and further offending the Lebanese.
The flow of funds into P.L.O. coffers had increased markedly following the 1974 Rabat Arab summit resolution recognizing the Organization as sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and urging Arab states to support it. As the oil boom made them wealthier, many of these states translated their support into growing financial contributions to the P.L.O., and often to Fateh in particular.
18The effects were twofold. On the one hand, this money, together with funds the P.L.O. generated from its own sources, such as voluntary taxes on Palestinian emigres, contributions from rich Palestinians, and extensive investments, made possible the expansion of vital services. An example was the growth of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) from a one-hospital institution on the eve of the 1975–76 war to an extensive system centered in Lebanon but extending to other Arab countries, including Egypt and Syria. By 1980 the PRCS had nine hospitals in Lebanon, with 684 beds and 637 employees, as well as twelve camp clinics. In the first six months of the following year, it treated 425,682 patients. Over 40 percent of the unaffiliated civilian cases treated during this period were non-Palestinians.
19On the other hand, much money was put to considerably less worthwhile purposes. Before the 1982 war it was a prime grievance of reformers within and critics without the P.L.O. that corruption and gross waste of funds were commonplace in many branches of the Organization. Some of this was a result of the practice of throwing money at problems, which originated during the feverish wartime atmosphere of 1975–76 and continued in ensuing years, with devastating results.
Most harmful in terms of relations with the Lebanese was the spectacle of individual Palestinian officials who had grown rich, or had obtained a luxurious apartment, expensive car, and armed bodyguards because of their involvement with the P.L.O. This offended both Palestinians and Lebanese, who were being asked to accept sacrifices in the name of the Palestine cause, and could not understand how some were not only exempt from such sacrifices, but actually prospered.
Furthermore, the disorder and insecurity in Beirut and the south after 1976 was generally blamed on the P.L.O., which admitted many of these violations (tajawuzat). In time, this issue was effectively picked up by the P.L.O.’s opponents, particularly the Phalange, whose powerful “Voice of Lebanon” radio had a large audience throughout the country. Its propaganda was based on reality, but many “violations,” whether crimes or heavyhanded behavior by armed men at roadblocks, were the work of agents provocateurs or thugs with no relation to the P.L.O. Nevertheless it was blamed for them.
The issue of “tajawazat” became a major sore point with Lebanese public opinion, a legitimate, pressing concern which neither the leadership nor the cadres of the P.L.O. ever fully appreciated. This was far from being a marginal issue. It involved major structural problems of discipline, motivation, and organization attendant on the P.L.O.’s transformation into a para-state in the mid-1970s. Their persistence without any serious attempts at resolution cut deeply into Lebanese and Palestinian popular support for the P.L.O. as time went on.
In spite of P.L.O. efforts to limit its armed presence in inhabited areas, people blamed it for the prevailing near-anarchy more than they did the Syrians and the LNM, who were at least as responsible. This was inevitable in view of the P.L.O.’s clear preeminence in much of the country. It was only aggravated by the stationing of large P.L.O. standing forces in the cities awaiting an Israeli attack which P.L.O. leaders repeatedly warned was imminent.
20V The P.L.O.’s Military Buildup
The P.L.O.’s problems with Lebanese public opinion were compounded by its growing military power after P.L.O. main-force units had returned to south Lebanon in 1976. The situation there and around Beirut was changed fundamentally soon afterward by a renewed confrontation between Syria and the LF (an event linked to the cementing of their alliance with Israel) as well as by Israel’s stepped-up offensive in the south.
After Syrian-Maronite relations soured, the Palestinian strategic assumption had been that the ADF would provide the primary defense of the Beirut area against any possible attack by the LF, and that the P.L.O. could concentrate on the Israeli/ Sa‘ad Haddad threat in the south. Events in 1978 changed that asssumption. In spring of that year, Israel invaded and occupied a large area north of its border, which it handed over to its client forces before withdrawing. Simultaneously, relations between the Syrians and their erstwhile Maronite allies deteriorated to the point of open fighting. The LF were ultimately victorious, driving the Syrians out of East Beirut and the coastal region to the north in fall of 1978. This opened the way for full-scale Israeli-Maronite military cooperation, including the unrestricted importation of arms via the various ports now fully controlled by the rightist militias. As a result, the P.L.O. was now faced with the nightmare prospect which was to haunt it until it became reality in 1982: an Israeli hammer coming up from the south and driving it against the anvil of East Beirut. In addition, it was transparently clear that Syrian support for the P.L.O. in such circumstances would be extremely limited, as would that of the U.S.S.R.
Both powers had reacted only verbally to the 1978 invasion, and few in the P.L.O. had illusions about what could be expected of them in the future. The Soviets were careful to make the limits of their support explicit to the P.L.O. In formal and informal meetings, they stressed repeatedly that they could not and would not do anything on its behalf which violated Lebanese sovereignty, or had not been formally requested by the legitimate Lebanese authorities.
21At the same time, the Soviets repeatedly affirmed to Damascus that they were unwilling and unable to assist Syrian forces inside Lebanon, and that any guarantees they might extend would apply only to Syrian territory. The P.L.O. was made aware of this. It was thus was able to factor into its calculations the cautious reluctance of both Moscow and Damascus to confront Israel and the U.S. on its behalf in such circumstances.
All of this helps to explain why the P.L.O. made its next military moves. In the four years leading up to the 1982 war, it proceeded to upgrade its forces in the south in terms of weaponry and numbers, and transformed them into something closer to a regular army. In preparation for the expected confrontation with Israel, the P.L.O. command stockpiled large quantities of equipment and supplies throughout the country, and stationed significant reserve forces in rear areas, particularly in and around Beirut.
22Work also commenced at this time on a chain of underground command posts in Beirut. A few came to be relatively well known and were used for routine business and even meetings with outsiders, but most were kept secret and remained unused. This process was accelerated after Israel’s aerial bombing of the Fakhani district of Beirut in July 1981. These headquarters-bunkers, scattered throughout the city, were to have decisive importance during the siege of the capital.
When this buildup was completed—or rather was interrupted by the Israeli invasion—the resulting force was far from formidable insofar as Israel was concerned.
23 The heavy arms acquired were obsolete for the most part (e.g., World War II-vintage T-34 tanks and Katyusha rocket launchers). The P.L.O. was able to acquire little technically advanced equipment (which might have made a difference against Israel) such as guided surface-to-surface missiles, anti-ship missiles, or advanced radar-guided surface-to-air weapons.
Nevertheless, the effect of this development was highly visible, particularly in the cities, where the new weapons and the new formations put into the field enabled the P.L.O. to rival the ADF and more than match the LF. In some sense, this was the aim of these measures. After withdrawals of the ADF from East Beirut in 1978 and most of West Beirut in 1980, and the cementing of the Israeli-Maronite alliance, it was necessary for the P.L.O. to prepare for war on three fronts.
In and of itself this might not have been such a problem. However, it was a factor in a new series of conflicts with the Syrians, who could not accept that the P.L.O., humbled in 1976, was once again an independent force to be reckoned with throughout Lebanon. It also led to difficulties with the LNM, which chafed at the heavyhandedness with which the Palestinians, with their newfound military strength, interfered in Lebanese affairs.
Lebanese Muslims and leftists, who had fought with the P.L.O. against the Syrians in 1976, now came to feel that it was becoming just as overbearing as Syria had ever been. There was resentment at the way the P.L.O. leadership played off one Lebanese faction against the other, at the support extended to numerous small Lebanses groups, and at ‘Arafat’s single-handed domination of both P.L.O. and LNM through his command of the JF. At times these practices were as willful and cynical as they seemed. At others, the P.L.O. was caught between competing Lebanese allies or conflicting demands, and any option it chose made it look bad.
Following the murder of the head of the LNM, Kamal Jumblatt, in 1977, this problem was magnified by the absence of a strong leader enjoying unchallenged authority among Lebanese leftists and Muslims. Jumblatt was probably the only Lebanese figure who more than held his own with ‘Arafat and the Palestinian leadership. His death, combined with the growth in military strength of the P.L.O., led to a thoroughly imbalanced relationship.
VI The Last Straw for Israel—July 1981
The P.L.O. thus found itself in an unenviable situation on the eve of the 1982 war. Long hated by the Phalangists, now in open alliance with Israel against them, it had succeeded in amassing a daunting set of new opponents. Traditional Lebanese Muslim politicians resented the P.L.O. for its alliance with radical leftist challengers to their authority, while LNM leaders were unhappy with what they saw as P.L.O hegemony over them. Beyond the grievances of its leaders, Lebanese public opinion was affected by Phalangist propaganda (which seconded that of Israel), much of which it found believable. The net effect was to isolate the P.L.O. dangerously on the eve of its biggest battle ever.
It is worth asking at this point what the P.L.O. leadership was doing to meet this impending peril. Aside from military preparations, which we have already touched on, their efforts seemed to have focused primarily on the international level, at the expense of local and regional considerations which were perhaps even more vital.
Thus the P.L.O. was careful from the outset to cooperate with the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), stationed in South Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1978. It did so even though at one stage this involved forcibly suppressing the activities of P.L.O. and Lebanese leftist groups which were opposed to the ceasefire accepted by ‘Arafat and the P.L.O. leadership after that conflict.
24Similarly, in the wake of nearly six months of escalating cross-border hostilities launched by Israel in 1979 after the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty,
25 the P.L.O. accepted an internationally mediated ceasefire, and enforced compliance on its various constituent groups. The result was nearly two years of relative quiet along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier, which lasted until the summer of 1981, when perhaps the most significant P.L.O. effort to appear “responsible” in the eyes of the international community took place.
The 1981 crisis began with a Syrian-Israeli confrontation in April in the Biqa’ Valley. This was provoked by attempts by the LF, supported by Israel, to build a road to Zahle and thus establish themselves athwart the lines of communication of Syrian forces to the West.
26 This phase of the crisis ended after the installation of Syrian SAM-6 missiles in the Biqa‘, as U.S. Presidential envoy Philip Habib’s mediation in effect froze the situation on the ground rather than resolving it.
Israel then turned its attention to South Lebanon, which had already been attacked during the spring round of fighting. As part of the muscle-flexing which accompanied and followed the Israeli election campaign (and of which the Zahle crisis and the June bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor were part) the Israeli armed forces on July 10,1981 launched a major new series of unprovoked attacks against P.L.O. positions, as well as refugee camps and villages in the south.
27The Israelis were suprised by what happended next. Instead of simply fading away as they usually did when Israel attacked, the P.L.O.’s artillery and rocket units responded in kind to the Israeli bombardments. Over thirty Israeli military bases, kibbutzes, villages, and towns were hit again and again, in spite of the most intensive Israeli efforts to destroy the guns and rocket launchers which were doing the firing.
28Israel then escalated, hitting the bridges connecting the south with the rest of the country. The P.L.O. not only kept up its barrage against northern Galilee, but was able to replace the bridges or devise alternate routes, keeping the flow of supplies and people moving in both directions. Infuriated, the Israelis bombed apartment buildings in the heart of the Fakhani district on July 24, 1981. The paradoxical result was a de facto P.L.O.-Israel ceasefire mediated by the U.N., the Saudi government, and Philip Habib.
The Begin government, incapable of imposing its will on the P.L.O. on the battlefield, was now in effect forced to accept it as a party to a ceasefire. This new reality was perceived by all concerned, although elaborate explanations were issued by both the U.S. and Israel to the effect that they were neither recognizing the P.L.O. nor dealing with it directly. In fact, intensive indirect Israeli-U.S.-P.L.O. negotiations were carried on through the medium of the U.N. and the Saudi government, a precedent for the 1982 war.
For the P.L.O. leadership, this was a high point. Their forces had successfully stood up to Israel militarily for nearly two weeks, they had been grudgingly recognized as a party at the negotiating table, and they were now committed to an internationally mediated ceasefire, which they observed scrupulously for nearly a year. All seemed to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. In reality, it was the calm before the storm.
No Israeli government could be expected to tolerate such a situation for long, especially after what had happened to Galilee. Israel’s policy since 1956, when Moshe Sharett left the cabinet, had been predicated on intimidating the Arabs.
29 If the puny P.L.O. did not fear the might of Israel, what of more serious opponents?
The entry of Ariel Sharon into the Begin cabinet in August 1981 settled the issue, if ever it had been in doubt. It meant that Israel would launch a full-scale war against the Palestinians at the earliest feasible opportunity, so as to prevent this new situation from becoming permanent, and perhaps to create new strategic realities in the region.
30And while the P.L.O.’s leaders were basking in the glow of a backhanded sort of international recognition, what of their alliances? The general positions of the USSR and Syria in case of a major Israeli offensive were known. But instead of trying to improve relations with Syria, the only Arab power with the ability to affect the situation on the ground, for better or worse, ‘Arafat and the Fateh leadership were locked in a bitter dispute with it.
This conflict, which had its roots in the longstanding desire of the Syrian regime of President Hafez al-Asad to establish its control over the P.L.O., had been seriously aggravated by recent quarrels. Among other things, these had to do with the Fahd plan (a stillborn Saudi project for a Middle East settlement named for the Saudi Crown Prince, drawn up in collaboration with the P.L.O., but ignoring Damascus), and alleged Fateh backing for domestic enemies of the Ba‘athist government and for opponents of the ADF in Tripoli and elsewhere in Lebanon. All the specific issues in dispute were symptomatic of a deep malaise in Palestinian-Syrian relations.
31The P.L.O. leadership apparently calculated that Asad was irremediably hostile, and in any case was not about to make any military or strategic sacrifices on behalf of the P.L.O. if it was attacked. They thus seem to have chosen to do as in 1978 and 1981: rely on their own resources to hang on as long as possible, while depending on Saudi mediation with the U.S. to halt the Israelis eventually. This option was based on the wishful assumption, grounded in past experience, that the U.S. would be reluctant to let Israel go all the way.
What they did not calculate was that they were dealing with a Begin-Sharon government, which was much more determined than any before it to finish off the job; that the P.L.O.’s military and diplomatic performance in July 1981 gave the Israelis all the more incentive for doing so; that the Saudis had little real leverage with the Americans; and that Washington was no longer willing or able to urge restraint on Israel.
32 Most ominous, as we have seen, was that the Palestinians had used up the last of the seemingly inexhaustible fund of Lebanese patience and forbearance which had served them in such good stead in the past.
The population of the south and the cities of the littoral had been briefly buoyed up by the creditable performance of the P.L.O. in the July 1981 fighting. They were brought back to reality when they contemplated the results of Israel’s bombing of the south and of Beirut itself. The latter was a massive attack which completely destroyed several buildings and left behind hundreds of casualties, most of them Lebanese civilians. Once again, the civilian population was being made to pay the price in this unequal Israeli-Palestinian war fought on Lebanese soil.
More generally, most Lebanese were fed up with their country’s intolerable situation, and were desperate for a solution. The only voice which offered a clear change was that of the Voice of Lebanon. It told them incessantly that all their problems were the fault of the Palestinians, could be resolved if the P.L.O. were disposed of, and that there now existed those willing and able to do the job.
The P.L.O. was thus in a highly vulnerable position in Lebanon when Sharon finally unleashed the much-awaited “Operation Peace for Galilee”: isolated from the local population and without strong backers, its opponents must have felt that no better time could be chosen for their offensive. Events in the first half of June would appear to bear out this assessment.