Under Siege: P.L.O. Decisionmaking During the 1982 War

As July began, the P.L.O. could turn its attention from the internal front in Beirut for the first time since the beginning of the war. This was because the P.L.O.’s pledge to leave the city embodied in ‘Arafat’s July 2 memo had convinced its traditional Muslim leaders of the P.L.O.’s desire to do anything within reason to spare Beirut from further harm. Moreover, the growing anxiety of many Lebanese about the local imbalance of power which would result from a Palestinian evacuation meant that Lebanese pressure on the P.L.O. to leave was replaced by support for its efforts to hold out for better terms and firmer guarantees from Israel and the U.S.

From late June on there had been a constant improvement in relations between the P.L.O. and its erstwhile allies, as Lebanese leaders from Wazzan and Salam to Jumblatt and Berri accepted that the P.L.O. was truly willing to leave under certain specific conditions and guarantees. They realized, and began to declare publicly, that the delay in obtaining a settlement, and the resulting punishment of Beirut and its population, were the gratuitous result of the stubbornness of Israel, backed by the U.S., in holding to its demands for virtually complete P.L.O. capitulation.¹

If the P.L.O. was a guerrilla fish out of water before the 1982 war, its isolation had never been so painfully exposed as during the first two weeks of that conflict. Yet things could have been worse. Palestinian leaders at one point early in the siege were expecting public Lebanese expressions of discontent in Beirut. After the war, one of them pointed out that it was fortunate that there were no demonstrations by Lebanese in West Beirut demanding the P.L.O.’s departure, adding that such manifestations would have been a terrible embarrassment.² This did not happen for many reasons, one of them the P.L.O.’s rapid acquiescence to the legitimate concern of the people of West Beirut that their city not be destroyed needlessly.

But the P.L.O. had to have more than passive, grudging support from the populace of Beirut for its defense of the city. It was necessary for it to meet their needs for food, shelter, and medical care, to establish security and prevent the occupation of empty homes or the looting of businesses, and to organize services like ambulance stations to meet the demands imposed by the fighting and by Israel’s blockade of water, food, and electricity.

Together with the shared experience of suffering deprivation and surviving under the harshest conditions, such civil defense efforts helped establish a sense of a common destiny among the besieged. From any account of a population under siege, whether that of Leningrad during World War II or Jerusalem during the 1948 war,³ one can see how a siege can lead to cohesiveness among the beleaguered population. All of this was crucial to the P.L.O.’s strategy of continuing to fight in the hope of obtaining better terms. The passionate outpouring of emotion from ordinary Beirutis, and from their leaders, when the P.L.O. left in August showed that something had indeed changed from the bleak days of mid-June.

Another factor in this newfound fellow-feeling was the growing anger with Israel among Beirutis as the siege dragged on. In the years before the war, the Lebanese had tended to forget their traditional hostility to Israel as a result of growing friction with the Palestinians and Syrians. But as the war went into a second and then a third month, and as Israel made clear its intention of staying through the winter, many Lebanese, especially those in Beirut and the south, began to awaken to the fact that their country now had a major problem with Israel independent of that of the Palestinians. They also realized that the siege of Beirut was partly a function of the desire of Israel and the United States to rearrange the Lebanese order in favor of their clients.

But in other areas—the heavily populated central districts of the city where Israeli bombing and shelling caused most of the civilian casualties—there was no such military pretext. Indeed, the claim that P.L.O. weapons were cold-bloodedly sited near civilians for protection is a gross canard.⁴ Such a ploy would never have occurred to P.L.O. commanders because in their ample experience Israel had never in the past shown any compunction about hitting civilian areas, irrespective of whether military targets were nearby. More to the point, most P.L.O., Syrian, and LNM forces and weapons were necessarily stationed in the front lines, where they were badly needed to hold off a vastly superior foe.

The back cover of D. Bavly and E. Salpeter, Fire in Beirut: Israel’s War in Lebanon with the P.L.O.⁵ is a perfect example of the falseness of the claims of Israeli and other apologists for the IDF, most of whom had no idea what was actually going on in West Beirut. The dust jacket shows a section of the Ramlet al-Baida beachfront, including numerous weapons and military emplacements (mainly Syrian: shown is the barracks which was the headquarters of the Syrian 85th brigade), with a caption reading: “Aerial photo of West Beirut, taken in July 1982, showing P.L.O. heavy weapons placed in close proximity to embassies, hotels, churches, mosques, and residential buildings.”

Unmentioned is the fact that the entire Beirut seafront, including the area shown, was part of the siege perimeter. It was constantly shelled and repeatedly bombed, which drove away most of its population, and was the target of three Israeli landing attempts between June 25 and August 4. All were in close proximity to Ramlet al-Baida. This area was crucial to the IDF plan for the penetration of West Beirut that was foiled in early August, when a linkup between seaborne forces to be landed in the vicinity and others driving west along Corniche al-Mazr‘a from the museum was planned. In view of the strategic importance of the area, it would have been surprising if weapons were not emplaced there.

The main reason the P.L.O. did not, indeed could not, site military emplacements in heavily populated areas during the siege is simple: Lebanese and Palestinian civilians were highly sensitive to the presence of potential targets near inhabited residential areas, for they knew the might of Israel, and could see what it was capable of. They therefore protested violently (and usually successfully) to the P.L.O. when they felt that its dispositions were threatening to bring Israeli attacks down on their heads.

An example was the reaction of the people of the Jeanne d’Arc quarter in Ras Beirut when toward the end of the war the P.L.O. radio station, the “Voice of Palestine,” placed its mobile transmitter there. It had to be moved away again because of neighborhood protests.⁶ As the siege perimeter tightened, and as the P.L.O. was slowly driven back from the largely Palestinian southern suburbs into the central and northern parts of the city, finding sites for sensitive communications and command facilities became a major problem. In July, when ‘Arafat himself became a target, his staff had great difficulty finding safe quarters for him which did not endanger innocent civilians.⁷

However, everyone in Beirut, including foreign journalists and the few diplomats who remained, knew perfectly well that most civilian casualties were inflicted in areas with no legitimate military targets nearby. It was common knowledge in West Beirut that many of the bombardments, especially by naval and ground artillery, were indiscriminate, random, and arbitrary, hitting whole regions at a time rather than specific targets. There can be no other explanation for the repeated shelling of every hospital in West Beirut, most embassies and hotels, and whole residential quarters without the slightest strategic importance. As a result of these attacks, the PRCS was forced to relocate its hospitals repeatedly.⁸

While the leaders of the P.L.O. had the dubious satisfaction of knowing that most of the half million or so people left in West Beirut shared their feelings about the Israelis, and accepted the sincerity of their willingness to leave and thereby spare the city if their minimum conditions were met, none of this solved the basic problem of how to change the balance of forces so as to bring Israel and the U.S. to accept their terms. This dilemma was to preoccupy them until the end of the war.

The P.L.O. explored two main avenues in an attempt to improve its position during July. The first was via a project for a Franco-Egyptian draft resolution in the Security Council (which was never formally presented to the Council). This would have linked the Lebanese crisis and the Palestine question, and would have embodied mutual and simultaneous recognition between the P.L.O. and Israel, thus bypassing the U.S. insistence on prior P.L.O. recognition of Israel as a condition for a U.S.-P.L.O. dialogue. Although stillborn because of the unbending opposition of the U.S. (which wanted the P.L.O. eliminated rather than rehabilitated), this draft resolution was central to P.L.O., French, and Egyptian diplomatic efforts until near the end of July.

In spite of this barren outcome, these two episodes reveal how far the P.L.O. leadership was willing to go in the direction of an overall regional settlement, what concessions it was and was not willing to make under extreme duress, and why in the end it finally gave in and accepted the terms which Habib had been trying to force on the P.L.O., essentially unchanged,⁹ since the middle of June.

The French government first transmitted to the P.L.O. what it called a preliminary outline of a draft for submission at the U.N. Security Council on July 2.¹⁰ This was revised again and again, but its basic ideas stayed the same until the end. It included provisions which had been featured in the French draft vetoed on June 26, such as an immediate ceasefire, mutual preliminary Israeli and P.L.O. withdrawals (the Israelis to a distance of five miles from Beirut, the P.L.O. to within the camps), and a separation of forces to be policed by Lebanese and U.N. troops. However, in addition to a call for a total, rapid withdrawal from Lebanon of Israeli forces, and of all non-Lebanese forces except those authorized to remain by the “legitimate and representative” Lebanese authorities, the draft laid down the basic elements of a lasting Lebanese and regional settlement.

It specified that the crisis was to be settled on the basis of security for all states and justice for all the area’s peoples. It also confirmed the sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence, and unity of Lebanon, and the restoration of central government control over all its territory; the right to existence and security of all states in the region in conformity with Security Council resolution 242; and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination, and the P.L.O.’s involvement in the negotiations for a settlement.

The resolution was notable in a number of respects, aside from elements like mutual preliminary withdrawals which had led to the imposition of a U.S. veto on the French draft resolution of June 25. One was the specification that it was up to “legitimate and representative” Lebanese authorities to decide which foreign forces were to remain and which to depart. The implication was clear that the Sarkis regime, operating in an area occupied by Israel, and dominated at this point by Bashir Gemayel and the Maronite right wing, was neither fully legitimate nor representative.¹¹

Among other features of the resolution were its explicit linkage of security for all states in the region (the terminology of S.C. 242) to justice for all its peoples, an unmistakable reference to the Palestinians; the reference to the principles of S.C. 242 and to the resolution itself, of significance in a draft strongly supported by the P.L.O. as a basis for a regional settlement; the mention of legitimate Palestinian rights including self-determination; and the inclusion of the P.L.O. in negotiations based on the French argument that “to be engaged, the Palestinian people must be represented in the negotiation, and thus the P.L.O. should be a party.”

It was to be expected that these features would be anathema to a U.S. administration which accepted fully Israel’s rationale for its invasion, was helping it to achieve its aims, and was irremediably hostile to the P.L.O. The implication that the government in Ba’abda was illegitimate and unrepresentative was naturally unwelcome to the U.S., as was placing justice for the Palestinians on a par with Israel’s security.

More fearsome still was the possibility that via the Franco-Egyptian resolution the P.L.O. might obtain a revised version of S.C. 242 which met its own objections and which it could therefore accept. This would have meant that the Palestinians would at last have met the conditions set down in Kissinger’s secret 1975 memorandum of understanding with Israel for a U.S.-P.L.O. dialogue. It can be seen how embarrassing such a prospect would have been for the U.S. at a time when it was working to eradicate what Kissinger, in June 1982, called the “mirage” that “the key to Middle East peace is to be found in a P.L.O.-Israeli negotiation based on various formulae to ‘moderate’ the P.L.O.”¹²

Neither the P.L.O. nor the French had any illusions as to the tenacity of American opposition to the resolution. Both sides understood clearly that the approach it embodied directly contradicted everything that Washington had done almost since the war began, and that it posed a serious threat to American policy because it was virtually the only alternative approach to Habib’s for solving the Lebanese crisis. However, both were determined to push ahead with it in the hope that American determination would be worn down by the P.L.O.’s resistance.

After the French draft had been placed before the Security Council, Souss reported that both officials of the French Foreign Ministry and advisors to President Mitterrand were convinced that “it is totally unreasonable to ask the P.L.O. to make concessions in Lebanon without giving it substantial political gains.” Given this view, they not surprisingly found that “The USA has still a completely negative attitude.” Souss added that “the American argument is that at a moment when nearly all Arab states consider that the P.L.O. ‘has already disappeared from the international scene’ it seems incomprehensible that France is opening up new horizons to the Palestinians.”

The Americans were not the only ones to have the impression that the Arab states had given up on the P.L.O. The same telex relates a French description of Arab attitudes as “totally ‘passive and marked by impotence,’” and the impression that “Arab envoys to Washington and New York are very much influenced by American pressures.”¹³ The effect of this timid Arab stand was stressed in another message from Souss the same day: “The USA considers that it has no use for the P.L.O. (according to the terms used by the French) in its global strategy in the region and in this attitude the US feels encouraged by relative passivity on the side of the Arab countries.”¹⁴ Arab passivity was often replaced by something worse: active complicity with the U.S. in putting pressure on the P.L.O. and undermining the French role.

An example of this arose a few days later, at a time when the U.S. was engaged in trying to stampede the P.L.O. into evacuating Beirut unconditionally during the very last days of Haig’s tenure at the State Department. In the outgoing Secretary’s own words, “It was essential to maintain the momentum. Above all the P.L.O. must be moved out quickly.”¹⁵ Unfortunately, his haste, and his reliance on the Saudi interpretation of what was happening in Beirut,¹⁶ seem to have led Haig to fail to pay close attention to the actual position of the P.L.O. or to the stand of his French ally.

Unlike the French, who were skeptical of what was coming out of Washington, the Saudis seem to have been very much impressed by the arguments of Haig and his successors. Thus, on July 8, at the height of a wave of reports that the P.L.O. had accepted the Habib terms, the French related to Souss that their ambassador in Saudi Arabia had been called in by Sa‘ud al-Faisal and informed of Saudi “preoccupation and anxiety” because the French were not willing to join an American-organized force to supervise the imminent evacuation of the P.L.O. from Beirut. The Prince insisted to the envoy that a French force must participate.

The French were unmoved by this Saudi pressure, asking Souss to tell ‘Arafat that they considered “that all this information enters into the cadre of the intoxication campaign being waged by Israel and the United States.” They issued a statement the same day stressing that preconditions for sending a disengagement force to Beirut included a Lebanese government request, P.L.O. agreement, agreement of all parties, and a clear definition of its mandate.¹⁷

Refusing to be rushed by the Americans, the French would calmly ask the P.L.O. each time whether one of the many reports they had heard from Washington that a final agreement had been reached was true. Upon being repeatedly assured by ‘Arafat that these assertions were false, they proceeded to ignore requests from Washington that they drop their planned draft resolution and immediately fall into line with U.S. plans by agreeing to provide a force to help U.S. Marines oversee the P.L.O.’s departure.

These French queries and P.L.O. denials regarding exaggerated U.S. claims of the imminence of an agreement eventually came to seem almost ludicrous to both the French and the P.L.O. ‘Arafat’s first denial came in a telex dated July 2; it was followed by two new French inquiries on July 3, two P.L.O. denials the same day, three queries on July 8, and two P.L.O. denials the same day. The last embodied the 11-point summary of the P.L.O. stand, which was to remain the basis of its position until the end of July, and was later transmitted to all P.L.O. offices.¹⁸

By the end of this dizzying sequence, on July 8, French officials had the distinct impression that the Americans were confused; they told Souss the Americans had “fallen prey to their own campaign of intoxication.”¹⁹ A day later, the French told the P.L.O. envoy “that there is a lot of American double, triple, and quadruple play.” Souss added in his telex, “Altogether, the feeling is that there is a lot of American maneuvering to gain time, maybe according to them with the complicity of many parties.” Specifically, the French suspected the Syrians and the Saudis of collaborating with the U.S. Much of this activity, they felt, was aimed at derailing the Franco-Egyptian draft in the Security Council, which Paris was intent on pushing ahead with.²⁰

The French were reassured by ‘Arafat’s transmission to them of the 11 points, which they were told had been given widespread distribution. At a meeting on July 9, Cheysson told Souss that “The French Government has taken into consideration the 11 points … and will deploy all efforts on the international scene on this basis.” Souss further told ‘Arafat that the French would continue to try to push through the Security Council draft as rapidly as possible, “according to your wish,”²¹ although in later meetings French officials expressed some skepticism as to the outcome because of intense U.S. pressure on all delegations in the Council, and even on Egypt, co-sponsor of the resolution.²²

This pressure was being applied in spite of what the French described to Souss as “the absence of the capacity to take clear political decisions on the American side” following the ousting of Alexander Haig and before George Shultz took over. Under Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger did not have the authority to make decisions, the French added, while they perceived the President to be “totally out of the picture.” (Haig’s description of Reagan in his memoirs is not dissimilar.) He was said to be acting on the advice of White House advisors “who are considered by the French to be amateurs.” Apparently, however, Eagleburger and the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, were not hampered by this vacuum at the top in their intensive and successful efforts to “avoid the Security Council” as the main forum for treatment of the crisis.²³

After a full meeting of the Palestinian leadership discussed the latest messages from Paris, a telex was sent to Souss on July 11 to inform the French that after careful deliberation at the highest level, the P.L.O. fully endorsed the line being followed by the Mitterand government, particularly its emphasis on U.N. sponsorship for the international disengagement force.²⁴ This was specified because both parties hoped to prevent what eventually transpired, a resolution mediated solely by the United States, and its resulting domination of the international force sent to Beirut.

It is perhaps coincidental that this message and the last copies of the 11 points were sent to P.L.O. offices abroad on July 11, a date which in the words of the definitive Israeli account of the war “would become a watershed in the conduct of the siege.” On that day a meeting was held in Ariel Sharon’s office in Tel Aviv at which “a critical discussion of the issues took place.” Possibly in response to intelligence intercepts of this unequivocal indication from the P.L.O. leadership that it was holding firm to its stand, Sharon was impatient. He told his assembled generals that the southern part of Beirut, including the Palestinian refugee camps located there, “must be cleaned out, utterly destroyed.” He concluded: “We are not waiting any longer. I want an attack next week!”²⁵

In fact, Israeli attacks had been going on throughout the preceding week, climaxing with heavy fighting on the 11th. This was followed by a 10-day lull, after which the fresh attack ordered by the Israeli Defense Minister was launched exactly as he ordered, in the middle of the following week. There was thus not much time for the P.L.O. to obtain what it wanted before Sharon resumed his efforts to force complete capitulation on his foes with more military pressure, if need be steamrolling the efforts of Habib.

It was argued earlier that this pressure was not decisive in the P.L.O.’s decision to accept the Habib terms. This can be proven only after an examination of the effect of the Sa’ud al-Faisal/Khaddam/Khaled al-Hassan mission in Washington in the following section. But it can be partially confirmed via the assessments of the situation transmitted confidentially to the P.L.O. by a number of French defense analysts, including a senior officer and strategic thinker who was advising Cheysson on the Lebanese crisis, a former head of the Institut d’Études Stratégiques, General George Buis.

If it tried to attack Beirut, however, Israel would have other problems. The first was that although it had the capability to coordinate its air, land, and sea forces for such an operation, and military leaders capable of taking the necessary decisions, “it now lacks (for the first time in its history) the capacity to take a political decision of this calibre.” This was a reference to the acute political differences which beset the Israeli polity and the Begin cabinet over the question of an attack on Beirut. It was probably a correct estimation, if accounts of dissension within the Israeli cabinet and suspicion of Sharon by his fellow-ministers are correct.²⁶

On an entirely different level, an attack would lead to other problems. These would include “intolerable” losses, the inefficiency of Israeli air, land, and sea forces operating on an urban battlefield, and the “tremendous” dissuasive effect of “the presence of the international press and the mobilization of international public opinion.” All of this led the French defense experts to the conclusion that “the P.L.O. cannot now be defeated except by intense diplomatic pressures,”²⁷ a perceptive point apparently realized in Washington, if not by Sharon and his generals. The Americans were soon to exploit this, finding the P.L.O.’s Achilles’ heel in their Arab brethren.

The estimation that a failure to attack Beirut meant a strategic defeat for the Israelis was based on the strong belief by these French analysts that Israel’s objective from the beginning was “the total defeat of the P.L.O., both militarily and politically.” This in turn required that the strategic objective be Beirut, “the only serious objective for Israel.” Souss added in one of his telexes reporting these views: “Again and again I heard the same remark from various personalities: ‘Beirut was the Israeli objective. There could not be any other objective for them.’”²⁸ This view is seconded in the definitive Israeli account of the war, which confirms that Sharon had no other objective than Beirut from the outset, although he took pains to conceal it.²⁹

The French perceived Sharon’s desire to finish the war quickly, as well as the “technical” and political reasons why this did not happen. One of the technical problems was the failure to assign the IDF “a precise and accurate objective task,” which Beirut manifestly was not—a criticism later echoed in Israel. Another problem was that after a certain period of time, as the French correctly observed, bombardments are no longer effective and kill only civilians, “definitely not the military objectives assigned.” Among the political problems was that the P.L.O. was not only a military force, but also, in the words of these analysts, “is first and foremost a tremendous political force in the Middle East.” Souss concluded another of his telexes: “General Buis is convinced that the ‘operation’ camouflaged by Israel as ‘Peace for Galilee’ will be reduced by any historian to ‘a series of secondary tactical successes and a very serious strategic defeat, the first Israel has known’. And again I quote him: ‘But what a defeat.’”³⁰

While such a view seems fully justified in retrospect, it may have seemed hard for the leaders of the P.L.O., besieged in Beirut, and with little prospect of relief, to accept it fully. But this advice, and the unstinting diplomatic support offered by France, helped to reinforce their newfound equanimity in the period beginning in late June. At the same time, the French doggedly continued throughout July to try to convince Washington to offer the P.L.O. a political quid pro quo in exchange for its withdrawal from Beirut, and to accept some of the conditions in its 11 points, while simultaneously warning the P.L.O. when they got word of impending Israeli military operations.³¹

In the course of these exchanges, the French repeatedly had occasion to ask about the latest exaggerated U.S. reports on the progress of the negotiations over the Habib plan. In his reply to one of these queries, ‘Arafat on July 14 told Souss to pass on some details of the negotiations with Habib, so as to show Paris exactly where things stood. ‘Arafat reported Wazzan as having said that Habib was disturbed by what he perceived to be an Israeli game, of which he was the target. What was meant, presumably, was that the U.S. envoy felt he was being used by Tel Aviv to achieve its ends.

The Israelis, according to Habib, were initially unwilling to withdraw one inch, or to have foreign forces arrive in Beirut before a total P.L.O. withdrawal, but he had obtained a modification of their position on these points. In fact, if the Israelis ever made these concessions, they went back on them, for they were to resist both until well into August. According to Wazzan, Habib “affirmed complete guarantees and full responsibility for the safety of the departure and the safety of those Palestinians who stay.”

The same message informed the French that in spite of both Israeli “concessions” and this guarantee, on the evening of July 13, the P.L.O. had informed Habib via Sa’eb Salam of its rejection of his latest terms and its insistence on the P.L.O. plan.³² It is an indication of the level of confidence between the two sides that this was one of the few times that the P.L.O. needed to inform the French fully of the exact tenor of its negotiations with Habib, in spite of repeated incorrect reports about them, which the French eventually came to believe were purposely floated by American diplomats to sow suspicion between Paris and the P.L.O.

This was stated explicitly to Souss by a French official who had just returned from Moscow in late July and who told him: “The Americans have been giving the Soviet Union false and distorted information about France’s position.”³³ Such “intoxication” campaigns, which the French declared Habib had also engaged in on trips to Rome and London late in July,³⁴ did not discourage them. In discussions with Souss on July 24 they stressed “The necessity of insisting always that the problem is not technical but political: the Americans … want the problem to be reduced to a technical one, that of the evacuation of Palestinians forces and the French are insisting that the … whole problem is political, i.e. the Palestinian question.”

He continued that the officials he spoke with were “very convinced” that a solution must “adopt the formula presented by the Chairman of ‘a political plus against any possibility of a military minus.’” To Paris, this meant that “any practical measures which would have an effect on the military capacity of the PLO in Lebanon should be obligatorily compensated by concrete political steps towards Palestinian aspirations.”³⁵

France was deeply committed to this course, as was shown by President Mitterrand’s reception of an Arab League Foreign Ministers’ delegation, including Abu Lutf, on July 15. The group was told that the P.L.O. forces in Beirut had shown themselves to be courageous and steadfast, and to be prepared to die to defend the city. Mitterrand stated that he regretted that the Arabs hadn’t recognized Israel, and that the Palestinians had chosen military means to achieve their ends, but he added that he understood Israel had driven them to it by refusing political solutions, and understood the P.L.O.’s choices. The P.L.O., Mitterrand concluded, must be a basic party in all future negotiations.³⁶

This supportive French position did not change the facts on the ground, however. Although the P.L.O. appreciated France’s efforts, these were clearly not enough to break the deadlock and bring about a shift in its favor. From mid-July on, the Palestinian leadership began to look to the Arab states, and specifically to the trip to Washington of the two Arab Foreign Ministers and Khaled al-Hassan, as a possible avenue for gaining a favorable resolution of the crisis. When this failed, it became clear that the P.L.O.’s only alternatives (assuming it could avoid total defeat) were to keep fighting in the hope that attrition would compel Israel and the U.S. to accept some of its own terms, or for it to accept Habib’s.

When Paris realized that the P.L.O. was on the point of doing the latter at the end of July, Gutman asked Souss to warn ‘Arafat against the “trap” of a U.S.-sponsored evacuation agreement.³⁷ But it was already too late. The Arab states, notably the two which together constituted the key regional axis, Syria and Saudi Arabia, had added their weight to that of Israel, the United States, and their Lebanese clients in putting pressure on the P.L.O. At this point, all factions of the P.L.O. leadership saw no viable option but to accept the Habib offer, before Sharon imposed his own solution by force of arms. How this happened is the subject of the next section, the last episode in the story of how the decision to leave Beirut was taken.

In terms of the depth of heartfelt anger for their role in the war, those most resented by the P.L.O. and the Lebanese and Palestinian civilians besieged in West Beirut were not the Israelis, nor their American patrons, nor those Lebanese who supported them. They were rather the Arab regimes because of their universally perceived complicity in what was happening.

Some expressions of these feelings by the official P.L.O. media—normally very discreet where the Arab regimes are concerned—have been noted previously. But what was printed was no more than a pale reflection of what was said and felt during the siege, a point noted at the time by many foreign journalists in Beirut. In the words of Selim Nassib, covering the P.L.O. evacuation on August 22: “The Arabs. They are the main target for the anger of those who are leaving and those who stay behind. The anger is not directed against Israel. Israel is the enemy, and has behaved as such. It is on their self-styled ‘brothers’ that the anger of Beirutis is focused.”³⁸

This was not simply a popular perception. It was one shared by the P.L.O. leadership, who felt a bitterness identical to that of their followers for the pitiful performance of the Arab states in failing to come to their aid throughout one of the longest Arab-Israeli wars. Indeed, according to a P.L.O. calculation made on the last day of the fighting, its 70 days of continuous combat made the 1982 conflict the longest of all (if the truces during the 1948–49 war are taken into account), and nearly as long as the combined total of less than 90 days of fighting during the 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 wars.³⁹

However the focus of the P.L.O.’s bitterness was not Arab passivity but something worse: tacit complicity and even collaboration with the foes of the P.L.O. Strong though such sentiments may seem, they were heartfelt. In a postwar interview, ‘Arafat described the position taken by most Arab regimes as more than a coincidence:

We did better than all the Arabs in this war. They therefore couldn’t let us win. In the past, against the French, the Italians, the British, there was Arab solidarity, especially as in time the Arabs won. But this wasn’t the case with the Israelis in this war, after they had all been beaten by them. So we were alone. Not just the Syrians: all of them intentionally left us on our own.⁴⁰

This feeling started early on in the war. It began when the conservative Arab states failed to put any meaningful pressure on the United States to moderate its all-out support for Israel. It was reinforced when Syria failed to believe it would be a target of Israel’s offensive, then accepted a ceasefire on June 11, and finally withdrew from the war on June 25 after its forces had been driven out of ‘Aley and Bhamdoun. To some extent, all of this was expected and even accepted: in the past these same states had not done much more. What was new during July was the active and highly unsupportive role played in particular by Saudi Arabia and Syria during and after the Arab League Foreign Ministers’ visit to Washington, culminating in the Jedda meeting of seven Foreign Ministers of July 28–29.

The P.L.O.’s main problems with the Arab states, however, were not with Egypt. This country, only just beginning to emerge from the isolation in the Arab world to which Sadat had condemned it, was eager to win its way back into Arab favor via backing for the beleaguered P.L.O. Egypt was thus generally supportive of the P.L.O., if only weakly so, and with much wavering due to intense pressure by the Untied States and Israel. Although it refused to abrogate its peace treaty with Israel or even to break diplomatic relations with that country during the war, Egypt’s backing of the projected Franco-Egyptian resolution was significant. Egyptian diplomats stated to a P.L.O. envoy at the U.N that this document was specifically meant to put on record Egypt’s departure from those provisions of the Camp David framework and the peace treaty with Israel that related to West Bank autonomy.⁴²

The greatest difficulties for the P.L.O. were with Saudi Arabia and Syria. We have already seen how extraordinarily responsive the former was to U.S. suggestions and advice, even when these were opposed by the P.L.O. This was obviously a grave handicap given that Saudi Arabia was necessarily one of the main avenues of Palestinian-American communication. The problem of its failing to stand up to the United States on behalf of the P.L.O. was to be compounded when Sa‘ud al-Faisal returned to Washington in July.

Syria posed a more serious problem. Ostensibly aligned with the Soviet Union rather than the United States, aggressively radical and Arab nationalist in its public posturing, and hegemonic in its attitude toward its smaller and weaker neighbors, the Syrian regime was not particularly well disposed toward the P.L.O. leadership or its explicit aspirations for an independent policy.⁴³ The personality clash between Hafiz al-Asad and Yasser ‘Arafat was a further complication.

Like most other Arab states, Syria had seemed perfectly willing to see the P.L.O. defeated in Lebanon at an early stage of the war, when the foolish illusion still prevailed that Israeli objectives were limited to dealing with the P.L.O. But the indifference of these regimes turned to concern when Israel’s intentions toward Lebanon and Syria became apparent. This concern grew when the P.L.O. appeared to have withstood the initial Israeli blow and managed to hold out in Beirut, thus embarrassing the Arab regimes by juxtaposition of its resistance with their inaction, and even seemed as if it might achieve a minor victory via the Franco-Egyptian initiative.

Syria, especially, tried to cover up for its defeat on the ground and in the air with a media blitz to convince its own citizens that the Syrian army and air force had done all the fighting in Lebanon. The more successful the P.L.O. was in dragging out the siege, the worse the Asad regime looked; and any prospect of a P.L.O. victory, or even a mere avoidance of defeat, meant a major blow to Syria’s prestige, and its hope to remain the dominant Arab power in the Fertile Crescent-greater Syria region.

The Syrian attitude toward the diplomatic strategy being pursued by the P.L.O. emerged clearly in the first part of July. Not surprisingly, it was entirely negative. The only original thing about it was the logic in which this stand was couched. The kernel of the Syrian argument was that it was a grave mistake to link the question of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon with the broader Middle East crisis, as was done in the Franco-Egyptian draft resolution. This, the Syrians argued, was because such an approach risked perpetuating the former without solving the latter, since at this time the balance of forces between Israel and the Arabs (for which read Syria) was negative.

At a meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Damascus on July 11, the same day the Syrians were informed of the P.L.O.’s 11 points, ‘Abd al-Halim Khaddam told Abu Maher that the French draft resolution was a bad proposal for all these reasons. Although Abu Maher pointed out that there were differences between the text the Syrians had and the one he had been supplied with, the Syrian Foreign Minister was adamant. Khaddam added that the Syrians had asked the Soviets to veto the resolution should it come up for a vote.⁴⁴ The Quai d’Orsay was aware of this obstacle, and though repeated French-Soviet and French-Syrian contacts were devoted to clarifying the resolution and meeting Syrian objections, French diplomacy had some success in Moscow but little in Damascus.⁴⁵

Foreign Minister Khaddam repeated the same arguments at another meeting with Abu Maher on July 13, at which the main topic of discussion was whether Syria would accept the P.L.O. leadership and forces evacuated from Beirut. Khaddam said his country’s official position was to accept the former but not the latter.⁴⁶ This was fine with the P.L.O., since they were in no hurry to leave Beirut, and still had hopes that they could get better terms for their eventual evacuation. This was one of the few occasions during the entire war when Syrian and P.L.O. objectives coincided, although their motives were far from the same.

‘Arafat was naturally unhappy with Syria’s position on the French draft, and tried hard to meet its objections. These were apparently rooted in fears that if an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which Syria considered it vital to obtain, were linked to that of the P.L.O. from Beirut, it might never take place, given the Palestinians’ obvious aversion to leaving the Lebanese capital. This at least was what the Americans were informing the Syrians, according to the estimate of the French. They told Souss on July 13 that they were sure that U.S. Special Envoy Habib’s assistant, Ambassador Morris Draper, had helped to convince Damascus to oppose the Franco-Egyptian draft during a visit there on July 9–10.⁴⁷ In a message sent to Abu Maher for the Syrians, ‘Arafat replied to Khaddam’s arguments against the resolution, pointing out that it included provisions for a ceasefire, disengagement, and a total Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.⁴⁸ These points should have overcome Syrian objections, but did not.

A final meeting in Damascus for P.L.O.-Syrian coordination before Khaddam’s departure for Washington brought this out clearly. Abu Maher reported the Syrian minister as saying bluntly that he was “opposed to relating the withdrawal from Lebanon with the Palestinian cause, because that is a dangerous thing, and we have to give priority to Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.” What should be done in Washington, Khaddam said, would be to discuss the Palestine question “in general” and to ask the U.S. to recognize the P.L.O. and Palestinain rights. He refused to discuss the matter of a solution to the Arab-Israeli dispute in Washington “in view of the current balance of forces.” Pressed further, Khaddam in effect cut off the discussion by saying he was “not entitled by the leadership to enter into negotiations with the U.S. over broader questions.⁴⁹

However reasonable Khaddam’s position may have seemed, it effectively sabotaged the P.L.O. strategy of trying to get a broader political quid pro quo in exchange for a withdrawal from Beirut. This meant that the two Arab ministers would in effect confine themselves to vague generalities about a settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute and an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon on the one hand, and what would be no more than a discussion of the mechanics of getting the Palestinians out of Beirut on the other. This amounted exactly to the circumscription of the discussion to technical details which the French had repeatedly warned the U.S. was trying to achieve, and which they and the P.L.O. had been trying to avoid.

The Saudis meanwhile maintained their position of sowing doubt as to P.L.O. commitment to the Franco-Egyptian draft, insinuating that the P.L.O. was on the point of reaching an agreement with the U.S. through Saudi good offices and via the intermediary of their political ally in Beirut, Sa’eb Salam. This provoked ‘Arafat to send a firm message to Souss and Zuhdi, affirming “We asked Saud al-Faisal before he left for the U.S. to support the French initiative. We are with it, with our amendments (the 11 points), which we insist on. The crux of the resolution is the rights of the Palestinian people … and we insist on French participation … [while] the U.S. wants to act alone.”⁵⁰

At the same time, the Syrian position continued to be one of unremitting opposition to the entire approach followed by the P.L.O. This was probably as much because Egypt was a co-sponsor of the resolution which was the vehicle for this approach, as because a P.L.O. victory via the resolution would be a defeat for Asad in the ruthless zero-sum game of inter-Arab politics. The Saudis, meanwhile, timid as ever, were reluctant to stand up to the United States on this issue. They too were jealous of the Egyptians, and were probably loath to see Yasser ‘Arafat and his battle-hardened commandos emerge into the Arab world after the inferno of Beirut with a political victory largely of their own making.

Since the P.L.O. had to suffer the frustration of using an intermediary to communicate with the United States, the visit of the two ministers was vital if a breakthrough were to be achieved in Washington. But it was doomed to failure given the lukewarm support of both Syria and Saudi Arabia for the P.L.O. position, combined with the unbending hostility of the Reagan administration. In the circumstances, the failed visit became the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as the P.L.O. was concerned, and finally forced its leaders to acquiesce in the Habib plan they had resisted for so long, but which their Arab “brethren” accepted with almost indecent alacrity in Washington.

Khaled al-Hassan proposed to ‘Arafat in a confidential telex from New York on the 17th that the resolution of the crisis required the Chairman himself to restate publicly the P.L.O.’s position. The idea at this stage was relatively simple:

Al-Hassan affirmed optimistically that “On the whole, situation in our favour if we act prudently as stated above.” The same telex expressed concern that in the negotiation process in Beirut “some facts are lost in the process of transmittal between mediators,” and suggested that a check be made on what Habib was being given and what was received in Washington, and also on the proposals being made by the U.S. envoy. He concluded, “On this matter I sensed some preoccupation here.”

In his next message to ‘Arafat from Washington two days later, Khaled al-Hassan maintained his positive tone, and his insistence that a personal initiative from the P.L.O. leader was necessary if his mission to the U.S. was to make headway. He reported Sa‘ud al-Faisal’s “successful” meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and that the Prince’s information as to the favorable situation in Washington coincided with his own. Al-Hassan added that in view of “the change to our benefit both in the Congress and the White House,” it was possible to win the battle for Beirut as well as the Palestinian struggle for self-determination “if we know how to take advantage of the momentum and if we know how to direct it.”

As a member of the Fateh Central Committee and a founder of the movement, Khaled al-Hassan could allow himself to be forceful in urging a course of action on ‘Arafat. He thus told him, “Now we are at a point where we have to make policy and not diplomacy,” adding, “the usual Arab approach of ‘wait-and-see’ should be avoided.” To continue a reactive policy, he went on, would be a “fatal mistake.” All of this led up to a major new proposal for action by the Chairman, which al-Hassan stated was needed “very urgently,” specifically within the following 14 hours (i.e., before the two Arab ministers saw Reagan).

The proposed statement, of which a draft was submitted, was to be issued by ‘Arafat personally and stressed that the P.L.O. had “no objection to 242 regarding the full withdrawal of the Israelis from all the territories occupied in the 1967 war,” which would be “acceptable to us if the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people is connected with it.” The statement also called for the opening of a dialogue with the U.S. and for face-to-face negotiations with Habib.⁵²

The difference between this suggestion and that made two days earlier is noticeable. Originally, all al-Hassan was calling for was a public restatement by ‘Arafat of P.L.O. support for the Franco-Egyptian resolution, with its balanced combination of a repetition of the principles of 242 with an affirmation of the Palestinian right to self-determination. The provision in al-Hassan’s first proposal to ‘Arafat that the U.S. vote for the draft would in effect have meant supplanting 242 with a new text more acceptable to the P.L.O. But now, after meeting the Saudi Foreign Minister, Khaled al-Hassan was advocating something entirely new and far less favorable. This was an open acceptance of 242 by the P.L.O., conditional only on its linkage (in an unspecified fashion) to the principle of Palestinian self-determination.

Not surprisingly, there was intense skepticism in Beirut about this new proposal. A participant described a meeting of the P.L.O. leadership to consider al-Hassan’s suggestion on the night of July 19, the eve of a meeting Sa‘ud al-Faisal and Khaddam were to have with Reagan. At one point, after being urged by a Fateh Central Committee member to respond positively to al-Hassan’s message, ‘Arafat turned to a colleague, saying: “You see what they are trying to get me to accept? If I go out on a limb like this what guarantee do I have that we will get anything at all in return? You see what kind of pressure I am under? I will not do it.”⁵³

At 3:30 A.M. Beirut time, after extensive deliberation, an unconvinced ‘Arafat carried the day. A telex was sent to al-Hassan pointing out that there seemed to be no guarantee that P.L.O. acceptance of 242 would be linked to a binding process whereby the Palestinians’ right to self-determination could be achieved. The key phrase used in the telex (a literal translation from the Arabic) was that the proposal left Palestinian self-determination as “a fish in the water,” with absolutely no assurance that it could be landed.⁵⁴

Al-Hassan responded immediately, declaring that those who had suggested the proposal to him were sure that there would be a positive response. He added that the proposed statement could initially be in the form of a nonbinding offer rather than an ironclad commitment. Al-Hassan perhaps revealed the quarter which influenced this proposal when he stressed that Sa‘ud al-Faisal concurred in thinking this was a wise idea, and that the Prince expected a positive response after seeing the new Secretary of State, George Shultz, on the morning of the 20th.⁵⁵

Before those in Beirut had a chance to respond, however, al-Hassan sent another telex asking them to delay action on both of his messages until further notice, which he expected to be able to give them the following day. After the war, the Fateh leader explained his change of advice by saying that he was getting contradictory suggestions from different quarters in Washington, with Sa‘ud al-Faisal and others proposing the P.L.O. accept 242, and semiofficial U.S. contacts discouraging P.L.O. concessions. Al-Hassan indicated that certain moves by the U.S. toward the P.L.O. were hinted at during these semiofficial contacts, but then the idea was dropped for unknown reasons.⁵⁶

None of this was known at the time in Beirut, where July 20 came and went with no word, and ‘Arafat sent a telex to Washington saying he was “awaiting together with brothers” al-Hassan’s current opinion on his earlier proposals.⁵⁷ They were also anxiously awaiting the results of the meeting with Reagan and Shultz that day, but inexplicably recevied no report on it from their envoy either on 20th or the next day. On the 21st, ‘Arafat sent al-Hassan two urgent telexes demanding written clarification of what he had apparently reported in summary form by telephone. The P.L.O. leader’s irritation was evident:

Until now we have not received anything regarding the discussion except what you said on the phone to Abu Jihad. I want something documented and official so as to move in light of it. Please insist that Prince Saud knows that so as to act in light of it in our moves and discussion with the Lebanese and Habib. We cannot move in light of a telephone conversation.⁵⁸

‘Arafat and the P.L.O. leadership had to wait until the following day to receive a report on what had occurred in Washington from al-Hassan, and they got it only via the P.L.O. New York office, which fulfilled an urgent request to repeat the text of a highly confidential message sent originally (and inexplicably) to Abu Lutf in Damascus rather than to Beirut.⁵⁹

In his telex, which contained a detailed report of all his activities in Washington, Khaled al-Hassan noted that he had met Sa‘ud al-Faisal on Monday the 18th and had given him a copy of the P.L.O.’s 11 points, and that he met him again after the Prince and Khaddam met with Shultz on the 19th, and once more after the two ministers’ encounter with the President and Shultz on the 20th.

According to al-Hassan’s account, based on what he was told by Sa‘ud al-Faisal, during the initial meeting with the two Arab ministers Shultz restricted himself to insisting on the withdrawal of Palestinian forces from Lebanon, while his interlocutors stressed the necessity for linkage between a settlement of the Beirut issue and a comprehensive settlement of the Palestine question.

The later meeting with Reagan and Shultz, Khaled al-Hassan reported, had resulted in an agreement on a number of points. These included a ceasefire; the presence of an international (U.N.-sponsored) or multinational force to disengage the opposing forces; a regrouping of P.L.O. forces and simultaneous Israeli withdrawal from around Beirut and from the P.L.O.’s routes of withdrawal (this was the first and only time any mention was found in any source that the U.S. had accepted such a condition); a redeployment of P.L.O. forces in Tripoli or the Biqa‘ Valley, or both, until an Arab League decision on their final disposition; Syria would host the P.L.O.’s leadership, its administrative staff, and 1000–1500 of its troops, in addition to the P.L.A. brigades originally from Syria; other aspects of Palestinian-Lebanese relations were to be agreed upon between the parties.

In light of the disappointing nature of what was being offered by the United States, it can perhaps be seen why the proposal on 242 was not raised again by al-Hassan, why it took him so long to respond to ‘Arafat or to report on these meetings, and why when he finally did so it was via a telex to Abu Lutf in Damascus. For ‘Arafat had been completely correct in his skeptical initial reaction to the proposal regarding 242. According to al-Hassan’s account of the meeting, there was to be no U.S. quid pro quo, and no guarantee of a favorable U.S. response, not only regarding Palestinian self-determination, but even on the far less sensitive matter of an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

The Sa‘ud al-Faisal/Khaddam/Khaled al-Hassan mission had been a total failure as far as P.L.O. interests were concerned. However, the full depth of this failure is apparent only when this account of the meeting between Reagan and the Arab ministers is compared with another, considerably fuller, version. This was published after the war in a Paris Arabic-language magazine, Kul al-‘Arab, and later reprinted in the Beirut daily al-Safir. According to a reliable source, this text originated with a senior Saudi diplomat in Washington, and constitutes a complete and accurate transcript of the meeting.⁶¹

A number of important points emerge from it. The first is Ronald Reagan’s single-minded insistence on eliminating the P.L.O. from Beirut, and on seeing it as the exclusive cause of the war and source of the troubles of Lebanon which preceded it. Characteristically, the President ignored the historical record. The obsessive stubbornness of the President on these points was the rock on which the optimism of Khaled al-Hassan and Sa‘ud al-Faisal was to founder. It is as clear from this transcript as it is from Haig’s memoirs or the speeches of Jeane Kirkpatrick in the Security Council during the war that there was never any realistic hope of changing the United States’ intransigent stand toward the P.L.O. Any other view was wishful thinking.

More important, it is striking that at no stage during the lengthy meeting did either Arab minister even mention the P.L.O.’s 11-point plan, or the concept of a political quid pro quo in exchange for its withdrawal from Beirut. The closest they came was Sa‘ud al-Faisal’s attempt to obtain assurances that the Palestinians would eventually return to their homeland “because those people are homeless, Mr. President, and there must be a resolution of their problem.” This humanitarian approach had no more effect than that of Khaddam, who after conveying Asad’s “warmest greetings” to Reagan, launched into a lengthy disquisition on the history of the conflict and other matters. He devoted most of his presentation to stressing Syrian security concerns regarding Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and the future situation of that country.

In fact, regarding the central question of the siege of Beirut, both ministers implicitly accepted the U.S. approach, which divested the issue of all its political implications, narrowing it down to the bare technical problem of when the P.L.O. was to leave and where to. More than two thirds of the discussion was devoted to this subject. While Sa‘ud al-Faisal focused on a compromise solution involving an intial move to Tripoli and the Biqa‘, Khaddam’s main concern was to avoid “moving the problem to Syria.” He expressed his government’s fear that the Palestinians would become “foci of terror in the Arab world … creating a very serious security problem” for the entire region as a result of their fourth exodus in 30 years, not to speak of “the security problem for Syria this would constitute.”

On the other hand, much was missing from Khaled al-Hassan’s report, including points important only because they showed the narrow limits of what was possible with the U.S. administration, such as Reagan’s insistence (before a roomful of people who knew better) that the P.L.O. had always initiated cross-border exchanges before the war; or his statement that the Palestinians in West Beirut were “terrorists responsible for acts of terror all over the world, … [and] an obstacle in the path of the peace we all want.” Other missing points were substantive ones, such as the major divergence between the actual line taken by the two ministers and that of the P.L.O., or the failure of the U.S. to address any of the central concerns of either the P.L.O. or the Arab ministers.

Worst of all, the P.L.O. was to get the impression from al-Hassan’s delayed report (and presumably from the Saudis) that some sort of agreement had been worked out between the Arab ministers and the United States,⁶² when in fact that was not at all the case. A careful reading of what Reagan and Shultz actually said shows that all they wanted from the Arab side was support for the stand the U.S. had held firmly since the war began. Specifically, they wanted Saudi help in putting pressure on the Palestinians, and Syrian acquiescence to hosting the P.L.O. after its evacuation from Beirut. This they obtained, without giving anything in return.

It remained for the French, once again, to put events into the proper perspective. They told Ibrahim Souss a few days after the Washington meeting that:

Their information is [that] one of the reasons behind the lack of any expediency [sic] on the part of the Americans to deal with any “Palestinian gesture of overture” is that both Reagan and Shultz found Faisal and Khaddam “cool” and “rather not in a hurry to deal with the Palestinian issue as a global political question”, thus opening horizons for the solution of the Lebanese crisis.⁶³

Little more needs to be said regarding P.L.O. wartime decisions. By the end of July, the Arab states—or at least the leading powers among them—had adopted the view of the United States, Israel, and the Sarkis government that all the issues raised by the war could be addressed by solving the technical problem of the P.L.O.’s evacuation from Beirut. In a certain sense the decision had thus been made for the P.L.O. by its “brethren.”

The Jedda conference adopted a six-point plan: (1) a ceasefire; (2) the P.L.O. to move its forces from Beirut under Lebanese government guarantees for their safety and for the security of the camps; (3) the siege of Beirut was to be lifted with the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces; (4) the Lebanese government was to ensure the security and safety of the citizens of the city of Beirut and its suburbs, including the Palestinian camps; (5) an international force was to participate in the entire operation; (6) the Arab states would help Lebanon obtain implementation of Security Council resolution 508 and 509 in their entirety.⁶⁵

There are strong grounds for assuming that these six points, drafted largely by Sa‘ud al-Faisal and Khaddam, were based on the mistaken belief that the U.S. had agreed to the points raised in Washington by the two ministers.⁶⁶ Such an impression is reinforced by the inclusion of matters such as the lifting of the siege of Beirut, a partial Israeli withdrawal, and the implementation of SC 509, which called for a complete, immediate, and unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Mention of them in a document issued by an inter-Arab meeting would have been meaningless had U.S. assent to them not been obtained.

However, when the fog of Arab diplomacy had dissipated, it was apparent that nothing at all had been agreed in Washington or settled in Jedda. Thus, at the end of July the P.L.O. leadership in Beirut found itself under intense Israeli military pressure, and confronting the task of coming to terms with the Americans without the slightest assistance from the Arab “brethren.” The latter had indeed made their task all the harder. In the harsh circumstances, this meant that the P.L.O. had little alternative but to accept the hated Habib plan.

This bitter pill was finally swallowed in the last three days of July, although the exact date is hard to pinpoint. The intensive bombardment of Beirut from air, land, and sea, and the attacks on P.L.O. headquarters and meeting places all over the city, made it harder and harder for the Palestinain leadership to meet, while even consultation was often difficult because of communications difficulties. By the end of July, however, the P.L.O. had already presented Habib and the Lebanese government with a working paper including a timetable for withdrawal.⁶⁷ This is the first concrete indication that it had accepted the approach that had been pushed by Philip Habib since mid-June.

The fact that the leadership had reached this point was not widely known within the P.L.O. There was surprise when the Jedda communique was published, and distress when the daily operations reports in late July provided more and more detail on the advanced stage of the negotiations. But as the Israeli attacks reached a new intensity in the first twelve days of August, it became clear to everyone in Beirut that there was no alternative to evacuation. The gallant attempt to hold out and explore every possible avenue for obtaining better terms than Habib’s was over, and the decision of their leaders was quickly accepted by all within the movement.

Even the minority opposed to a withdrawal, led by Abu Saleh, at this point accepted the inevitable. At a July 21 meeting of the P.L.O. leadership, Abu Saleh had urged making a last appeal to the Soviets and to Syria. ‘Arafat thereupon stalked out of the meeting in disgust, refusing to associate himself with the proposal because of his certainty that nothing could be expected of either power. The two messages were then drafted and dispatched.

The Soviet response was rapid: there was nothing the USSR could do, since it could act only via Syria, and this was not possible. Asad did not reply directly: apparently embarrassed by a direct appeal in which the P.L.O. told him they would hold out in Beirut if he told them to do so, he let it be known on August 10, via the director of the Office of the President, that he would not respond. Well before this, nearly everyone in the P.L.O. had reconciled himself to leaving: but after August 10, the P.L.O. decision was unanimous.⁶⁸

It remained only to ensure that Israel would not prevent the safe departure of the P.L.O. forces, and that adequate guarantees could be obtained for the safety of those who remained behind, a subject which had preoccupied the P.L.O. leadership from the first. In the infernal atmosphere of the incessant Israeli attacks of the first twelve days of August, this was not an easy task. However, properly speaking, no further important P.L.O. decisions were required. The last stage of the negotiations is therefore part of another story, that of broken promises and trust betrayed which forms the ugly background to the Israeli occupation of Beirut and the Sabra and Shatila massacres.