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The Lebanese War
The Lebanese war is very complex and has many
dimensions so is not considered, as some have claimed,
to be a 'civil war' as many non Lebanese nationals were
very heavily involved, indeed armies of neighbouring
countries took part in much of the fighting. It is
unfortunate that there is reference to 'Christians' and
'Muslims' in the following account as this may cause
those unfamiliar with the events to think that the war
was one of religion. This would be unfair and simplistic
as religion was just used as a convenient umbrella to
stereotype and group the many factions and thus divide
them between two opposing sides. There were many
'Muslims' on the 'Christian side' and vice versa. The
opposing sides were not fighting each other simply
because of their religion but as a result of major
differences of opinion on matters such as who should run
the country and how the country should be run. It was a
war about ideology, identity, nationality, insanity, and
stupidity.
The dimensions of the war comprised of a
Lebanese-Palestinian war, a Lebanese-Lebanese, a
Palestinian-Syrian, a Palestinian-Israeli, a
Lebanese-Syrian, a Syrian-Israeli, and a
Lebanese-Israeli war. Add to these dimensions Libyans,
Iraqis, Americans and Russians, and the resulting
chaotic soup of well over seventy groups fighting in
Lebanon would confuse the most ordered of minds.
The War of 1958
After the
National Front coalition of Kamal Jumblatt and Saeb
Salam received major setbacks in the parliamentary
elections of 1958 the coalition and its Druze and Sunni
supporters decided to take to the streets and turned to
violence through open rebellion against the government.
With the aid of some Arab powers, these left wing forces
which were inspired and encouraged by the February 1958
unification of Egypt and Syria, agitated to make Lebanon
a member of the new United Arab Republic. The pro
western government of Lebanon was disliked by the
Syrians who plotted to destabilize the country and so
encouraged and greatly assisted the rebels through
mainly covert operations. Syrian covert action became so
obvious and widespread that the Lebanese government
lodged a complaint with the UN Security Council in June
1958. ("Speech of Dr Malik before the UN Security
Council," 6 June 1958, S/823, 823rd Meeting, Security
Council Official Records, 1958, p. 4) Press reports
and government documents alike confirm a massive covert
Syrian intervention that included supplying arms to the
opposition, training paramilitary forces and using
Syrian soldiers to carry out terrorist attacks.
Further confirmation
came from a seemingly unusual source, the Syrian
Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP). The SSNP believed
that the leftist rebels wanted to liquidate them as part
of a communist inspired plot because the SSNP opposed
the plans of President Nasser of Egypt for union with
Syria. In a press conference on May 19, 1958 Assad El
Ashkar, the head of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist
Party stated:
"As for the actual
intervention of the United Arab Republic, our comrades
at Idbil could clearly hear dialects of Syrians and
Egyptians when they fought with the attackers face to
face. The Syrian Army sent to Irsal (a Lebanese village
on the borders near Nabi Osman) several mortars. Major
Hassan Hiddaa of the Syrian Army entered the Lebanese
town of Irsal in an armored car and stayed there for a
couple of hours, where he inspected the forces of
rebellion. The source of arms of all rebels in the
Baalbec-Hirmel district is the Sarraj Deuxieme Bureau.
Abdo Hakim, another Syrian officer at Homs is in charge
of supplying the rebels with arms and amunitions. He
himself lead some of the caravans which carried arms to
Al-Kassr (another Lebanese village in the Hirmel
District)."
In a memorandum to Mr.
Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United
Nations Organization the SSNP said:
"The arming of the
rebel tribes in the Hirmel district started on the 27th
of March 1958, in the Syrian village of “al Hamam” on
the Syrian frontier bordering the Hirmel district in
Northern Bikaah.....The Syrian Lieutenant Abdu Hakeem
was personally in charge of arming the rebel tribes. He
himself used to distribute arms and lead convoys into
the Lebanese territory......The attack on Halba, Accar,
was launched from Al-Kasser in Hirmil. Abdu Hakeem
harangued the rebels, then before the attack was started
many Syrian conscripts took part in the
attack.....Another main centre of rebels and
infiltration is Orsal (a Lebanese frontier village). It
is the headquarters of the Syrian Major Hasssan Hiddah,
In charge of the Orsal-Baalbeck area. Recent information
point out that ex-Colonel Ali Hayyari, expelled from the
Jordanian Army in 1957, is in charge with Major Hiddah,
of military rebel operations in Bikaah. On June 1st,
1958, Major Hiddah held in Orsal, a general meeting for
all Syrian conscripts participating in the rebellion.
The meeting took place near the house of the Mukhtar
Hujjeiry......Syrian arms were distributed to the
village of Rassem Al Haddath, Shath, Younin, Makheh,
Brital, Hour Takla, Al Ein, Al Labweh, Dar el Wassia.On
May 31st, Tawfic Halo Haidar, received from Major Hiddah,
through the Nabec - Orsal road, 300 machine guns and on
June 8th, 1958, the rebel tribesmen, Tahan Dandash,
Salih Nasser-el Deen, Khudur Saadoun, went to Damascus
and came back with 900 guns. The number of guns smuggled
through the Bikaah borders up till that date, reached
approximately 3500 guns including machine guns, Bazooka
guns and other varieties. Big sums of money were also
paid by the Syrian authorities to rebel tribes."
The memorandum
continues:
"Deir El Ashayir (a
Lebanese village on the Syrian frontier) is the main
centre for arming and training of the rebels. Syrian
officers are in charge of their military training. Major
Tawfic Janial of the Syrian Deuxieme Bureau is in charge
of arming the rebels of the Rashaya district. Naassan
Zakkar, officer in the Syrian Deuxieme Bureau is in
charge of the military operations. All the
above-mentioned officers work under the direct command
of Captain Burhan Adham who is in charge of the Syrian
Deuxieme Bureau. Syrian army squadrons are camping in
Mankaa al Tufaah on the Syrian border where rebels are
being trained. Route of infiltration in this area starts
at Mankaa alTufah and continues through Deir el Ashayer,
Khirbit Rouha (now a meeting centre of infiltration and
rebels), Ba'lool, Lala, Ain Zebdi and then to the rebel
Shouf district; Jumblat forces mainly come from Houran
(in the Syrian region)."
Although the war took
a toll of some 2,000 to 4,000 lives, it was regarded by
many as a comic opera, especially when 5,000 United
States Marines were landed on the beaches near Beirut
and waded ashore among sunbathers and swimmers. The
Marines' role, in a situation described by the
Department of Defence as "like war but not war" was to
support the legal Lebanese government against any
foreign invasion, specifically against Syria. The
Marines were summoned because General Shihab, commander
of the Lebanese Army, believing that units of the small
Lebanese army would mutiny and disintegrate if ordered
into action, had disobeyed President Chamoun's orders to
send in the army against leftist rebels.
Although the crisis
passed quickly, it was a sign of things that were soon
to come.
The 1975 -
1990 War
The Prelude
to the 1975 War and the Cairo Agreement
Fouad Shihab became president
after Camille Chamoun and although he built up the
Lebanese intelligence service, called the Deuxième
Bureau, the army was almost ignored and remained
powerless, small, and was becoming weaker and weaker as
time went on. The army's inactivity continued under
Shihab's successor, Charles Helou, who became president
in 1964. Helou and his army commander refused to commit
Lebanese troops to the June 1967 war as an armitice
agreement had been signed between the two countries in
1949 and the Lebanese Army was far too small and weak to
get involved. This enraged many Lebanese Muslims as well
as Syria, the mortal enemy of Israel. Immediately after
the Arab defeat of 1967 Syria started sending
Palestinian guerrillas into Lebanon to attack Israel. As
soon as the PLO came to Lebanon, the violence that was
to destroy the country began. The PLO set about
attacking Israel from South Lebanon and the Israelis
started to retaliated against them with the Lebanese
becoming caught in the middle. Lebanese civilians in the
south bore the brunt of the retaliations.
In December 1968, the Lebanese
government was humiliated when Israeli commandos landed
at Beirut International Airport and destroyed thirteen
Middle East Airlines and TMA aircraft with impunity. The
Israeli strike was in retaliation for a series of
Palestinian hijackings carried out by Palestinian
terrorists based in Lebanon. The Lebanese army did not
interfere with Israeli attacks and so the army and the
Deuxiéme Bureau, and the government were charged with
collusion with Israel by the Lebanese left. Kamal
Jumblatt led the anti government chorus and demanded
that Lebanon supports the guerrillas .
A few months later, on 15 April
1969, fighting broke out again between the Lebanese Army
and infiltrating guerrillas in the southern village of
Deir Mimas. Disturbances were also recorded in several
Palestinian camps. Four days later, another clash took
place between army troops and armed Palestinians in the
villages of ‘Odeiseh and Khiyam, resulting in several
casualties. Demonstrations also took place in Beirut and
in other major cities. On 22 April 1968 clashes were
renewed in the south in which several guerrillas were
injured and others detained. Clashes became recurrent as
the number of guerrillas operating in Lebanon increased.
According to Lebanese security sources, the number of
guerrillas based in the south by mid-1969 was
approximately 4000. The majority belonged to Sa’iqa and
Fateh.
Confrontations with government
authorities were part of a Fateh strategy to establish a
permanent military presence in Lebanon. According to
George Hawi the head of the Communist Party, Arafat was
uncertain about the precarious state of affairs that
prevailed in Jordan in 1969 as well as about the PLO’s
ability to take over Jordan, as advocated by some
Palestinian leaders. New alternatives had to be
explored. One such alternative was to strengthen Fateh’s
presence in Lebanon and create ‘new realities on the
ground' especially since the situation seemed favourable
both inside the camps and in the growing popular support
for the PLO within the ranks of the Lebanese left wing
parties.
The more serious clash,
however, took place not in remote areas near the
Lebanese—Israeli border but in Sidon and Beirut. No
sooner had the country recovered from the Israeli raid
than it found itself engulfed, in April 1969, in a
crisis over the Palestinian problem in its Arab and
Lebanese dimensions as opposed to the more predictable
Israeli dimension. The occasion for turmoil was a
demonstration called for by several Lebanese Leftist and
Arab nationalist parties led by Kamal Jumblatt to
protest against ‘the reactionary policies of the
Lebanese government towards Fedayin action’ and to call
for ‘the opening of southern borders for guerrilla
operations against Israel'. On the surface, the
demonstration looked like yet another episode of arm
twisting between government authorities and
pro-Palestinian groups. In reality, however, what
happened was a Fateh-instigated confrontation with the
Lebanese government. Such a confrontation would provoke
a crisis which, in turn, would bring the issue of PLO
armed presence into the open.
On the 23rd April in Sidon,
armed demonstrators coming from Ayn al-Helweh camp
stormed the municipality building in the city and
clashed with security forces. In Beirut, the clash
started in the Barbir area as demonstrators tried to
force their way through internal security forces
deployed on the scene. According to a Leftist activist
who took part in the demonstration, shooting started
when a man in his early twenties in sportswear walked
towards the front row of the demonstration, about
fifteen minutes after it started, and opened fire at the
security forces. He then ran away as the security forces
started shooting. In the process, two people were killed
and many others were injured. While the identity of the
agent provocateur was not known, it was clear that the
intention was to provoke turmoil. Clearly, the
demonstration and the bloody confrontations that
followed in Beirut, Sidon, Tripoli and the Beqa were not
an accidental show of force. Clashes resulted in 11
people dead, including five Lebanese security forces and
more than 80 injured.
What made the demonstration
qualitatively different was its political significance.
It signalled, in the words of Mohsin Ibrahim head of the
Organisation of Communist Action, ‘the decision to open
the battle’ with the Lebanese government. Equally
important was that it was viewed by the Left in Lebanon
as a revolutionary event of unprecedented importance.
For Lebanese Communist Party ideologue Mahdi ‘Amil, the
‘April 23 uprising’ (‘Intifada’) was a political and
ideological achievement of ’historic significance’, with
it, ‘Lebanon's class struggle began’ and a new political
force was born ‘to break the hold of the
bourgeoisie-controlled’ political system and ‘to protect
the Palestinian Resistance.
Reacting to these events, the
government imposed a four day nation-wide curfew.
Several demonstrators were detained, including pro-Iraq
Ba’th Party leader Abdul-Majid al-Rafi’. On 24 April,
the Sunni prime minister, Rashid Karame resigned in a
show of support for the Palestinians and the search for
ways to end the crisis began. It was to continue for the
next seven months until a formula of ‘coexistence’
between the Lebanese state and the Palestinian
revolution was found.
On October 20, 1969 large
numbers of Palestinain guerrillas began gathering on the
western slopes of Mount Hermon in the Arqub region of
Lebanon a few days later on the 29th these Palestinians
fired on a Lebanese army patrol which resulted in the
deaths of three Lebanese soldiers and the death one
guerrilla with two injured. Imediatley Voice of
Palestine broadcasts from Cairo started to warn the
Lebanese not to interfere with Palestinain raids into
Israel. Following the calsh a meeting was held on 16
November to discuss the matter. The meeting included the
Lebanese Army commader Emile Boustany, Cheif of Staff
Yusif Shmayet, Intelligence Chief Gaby Lahoud and
representatives of Palestinian organisations.
Palestinian officials stated that their intention was to
attack targets in Israel and that to achieve this they
needed to pass through Lebanese territory. To that
Boustany replied that Lebanon would not allow such
infiltrations. He then stated the Lebanese position on
such military activities and stressed the following:
(i) Lebanon signed an armistice
agreement with Israel in 1949; it was still in effect
and Lebanon could not violate it; (ii) Military
operations between Israel and the Arab countries are
part of military strategy under the United Arab Command.
Lebanon cannot allow turmoil on the Lebanese—Israeli
border without co-ordination with that military body,
and (iii) Attacks carried out by the Fedayin
(guerrillas) from Lebanon would lead to violent Israeli
retaliations against civilians in Lebanese villages.
The army and its Deuxième
Bureau was not able to control the flow Palestinian
guerrillas infiltrating Lebanon from Syria, an attitude
that angered Christians who saw the Palestinian armed
presence as a mortal threat to Lebanon.
Lebanon was still paralized as
the President found it impossible to form a new
government as the Sunni leadership refused to do so
unless Lebanon started a policy of coordination with the
PLO. That formula was the Cairo Agreement. The situation
forced army commander General Emile Bustani to sign the
an agreement in Cairo in November 1969 with Palestinian
representatives. The Cairo Agreement granted to the
Palestinians the right to keep weapons in their camps
and to attack Israel across Lebanon's border and for
their part the Plaestinians had to respect Lebanese laws
and Lebanon's sovereignty. By sanctioning the armed
Palestinian presence, however, Lebanon surrendered full
sovereignty over military operations conducted within
and across its borders and became a party to the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
Given the prevailing internal
and regional considerations, the Cairo Agreement
provided relief for all parties who regarded it as a
face-saving arrangement and an expedient truce short of
better alternatives. For most Christian leaders, the
Cairo Agreement was the ‘lesser of two evils’. For
Camille Chamoun, what counted were Palestinian
intentions and their willingness to abide by the
agreement when put to the test. Another Christian
response was that of Pierre Gemayel who saw the Cairo
Agreement as ‘a middle ground solution’ between two
divergent views on the PLO in Lebanon. While
acknowledging that military operations would eventually
lead to Israeli raids, Gemayel explained that it ‘would
still be easier to cope with such raids than with a
civil war between the Lebanese’.
Raymond Eddé was the only
Lebanese leader who had consistently opposed the notion
of supporting the Palestinians and, subsequently, the
Cairo Agreement. He never missed the opportunity to
reiterate his position and to argue that such an
arrangement hurt the interests of both Lebanon and the
PLO. But Eddé’s views, and his call for the deployment
of United Nations troops along the Lebanese—Israeli
borders, went unheeded. Another strong reaction to the
Cairo Agreement came from Maronite Patriarch Méouchy,
who submitted a memorandum to the president in which he
voiced concern over the military provisions of the
agreement.
Those who stood to benefit most
from the outcome of the events that marked the stormy
year of 1969 were Kamal Jumblatt, Leftist parties and,
in a different way, the Sunni political establishment.
Indeed, the Cairo Agreement met the demands voiced by
the Sunni political and religious leadership. On the eve
of the Cairo talks, Sunni Mufti Hassan Khalid convened
two meetings attended by Lebanon’s leading political and
religious figures and issued a statement calling for the
freedom of guerrilla action. An attempt tp convene a
meeting by Shiite cleric Musa al-Sadr in support of the
guerrillas was not successful as the meeting was
boycotted by leading Shiite figures.
For his role in forcing through
the Cairo Agreement Jumblatt was rewarded with the post
of interior minister by Rashid Karame. Jumblatt
proceeded by replacing the army presence in the camps
with internal security forces who were under his command
and was therefore able to assist them in their arms
build-up.
Nearly three weeks after the
signing of the agreement clashes between the guerrillas
and the Lebanese Army were renewed this time in the
Nabatiyeh camp in the south. The Cairo Agreement was
violated from the start and it became irrelevant.
The Troubled Years,
1970-1974
Despite Arab support for the PLO
and the international attention it was able to generate,
the PLO would not have been able to operate as an
autonomous movement in the absence of the sanctuary it
found in Lebanon. The autonomy it enjoyed in Lebanon
could not be found in any other Arab country. In the
years following the loss of its Jordan base, the PLO
came to view its Lebanon base in strategic terms. As a
result, Lebanon was no longer a place where the PLO
would be content with limited political and military
presence. In the early 1970s, Palestinian organisations
displayed little willingness to abide by agreements,
which in reality were no more than hasty deals mirroring
the balance of power of the late 1960s.
Beginning in 1970,
Palestinian-Israeli raids in the south intensified, as
did the clashes between the Lebanese Army and the
guerrillas. One of the early clashes after the Cairo
Agreement occurred in March 1970 in the south, resulting
in several casualties. Violence began to drive local
inhabitants to seek shelter outside their villages,
particularly in the suburbs of Beirut.
Demonstrations were held in
Beirut to protest the policies of the Lebanese
government towards Arab causes’ and the Palestinian
revolution. The confusing setting of Arab politics was
clearly apparent in the slogans the demonstrators
raised, comparing President Helou to Nun al-Said, Iraq’s
strong man under the Hashernite monarchy, and calling
for his overthrow.
A serious confrontation
involving PLO guerrillas occurred in March 1970. Clashes
began in the Maronite town of Kahhaleh and spread
immediately to the outskirts of Beirut. While
disturbances lasted only three days, they had
unprecedented confessional overtones.
The incident began on 25 March,
following an exchange of gunfire between Palestinians
escorting a convoy of cars passing through the Christian
town of Kahhaleh (located on the major Beirut-Damascus
road) on their way to Damascus to bury a Palestinian
commando officer. On their way back, the Palestinian
convoy, which was larger and more heavily armed than the
previous one, came under heavy fire as it passed through
the main road in the town. Gunfire went on for
forty-five minutes and resulted in several casualties.
Immediately after the incident,
attempts at reconciliation began. Jumblatt, in his
capacity as minister of the interior, conferred with
delegations representing the Palestinians and
representatives of the inhabitants of Kahhaleh. Despite
these efforts, fighting spread to other areas around
Palestinian camps in the areas of Dikwaneh and Harit
Hreik. In these two localities, largely populated by
Christians of lower and middle class backgrounds the
guerrillas had already begun to expand their military
presence outside the camps where they would set up
roadblocks and harass passers-by. In Dikwaneh, where the
Tal-Zatar camp was located, Palestinian guerrillas
raided a local office of the Kataeb Party. But more
importantly they kidnapped Pierre Gemayel’s younger son,
Bashir, who, at the time, was not yet directly involved
in party politics. Although Gemayel, along with his two
companions, were released the same day from a Fateh
office on Hamra street, the symbolic significance of the
episode was clear. From that day Bashir Gemayel would
get involved in politics.
In the summer of 1970 Sulayman
Franjieh (also Frangieh) was elected president.
Believing that the Deuxième Bureau was staffed with
Shihab loyalists, Franjieh purged it and stripped it of
its powers. But the Deuxième Bureau had been the only
governmental entity capable of monitoring and
controlling the Palestinians, and Franjieh's action
unintentionally gave the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), commanded by Yasser Arafat, more
freedom of action in Lebanon. Franjieh, who came from
Zgharta in northern Lebanon, was accused of promoting
his own power and catering to the interests of his
clansmen instead of confronting Lebanon's growing
security problems. Meanwhile, the PLO made a bid to
topple Jordan's King Hussein, but it was crushed and
evicted from the country after fierce fighting, an event
known in the Palestinian lexicon as
"Black September."
Therefore, the PLO leadership and guerrillas moved their
main base of operations from Jordan to Lebanon, where
the Cairo Agreement endorsed their presence. The influx
of several hundred thousand Palestinians including many
tens of thousands of guerrillas upset Lebanon's delicate
confessional balance, and polarized the nation into two
groups, those who supported and those who opposed the
PLO presence.
Public order deteriorated with daily acts of violence
between Christians and Palestinians. To counter
Christian political resistance the PLO set about
isolating the Christian community and distorting
Christian image and goals. The Christians were branded
as isolationists, traitors, rightists, fascists, anti
Arab, and Israeli collaborators. The PLO media machine
which controlled most of the press activity of Beirut
did such a fine job distorting the truth about their
Lebanese opponents that to this day the Lebanese
Christians are having difficulty in shaking off the
isolationist label given to them by the PLO.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force launched raids
against the Palestinian refugee camps in retaliation for
PLO terrorist attacks in Western Europe. On April 10,
1973, Israeli commandos infiltrated Beirut in a daring
raid and attacked Palestinian command centres in the
heart of the capital, killing three prominent PLO
leaders: Kamal Nasir, poet and the PLO's official
spokesman; Muhammad al-Najjar, head of the Higher
Political Committee for Palestinian Affairs in Lebanon,
member of the PLO Executive Committee and Fateh Central
Committee; and Kamal Udwan, also a member of the Fateh
Central Committee. The absence of the Lebanese Army
during the Israeli attack angered Lebanese Muslims.
Prime Minister Saib Salam claimed that Army commander
General Alexander Ghanim--a Maronite--had disobeyed
orders by not resisting the Israeli raid, and he
threatened to resign unless Ghanim were stripped of his
rank. Because Ghanim was allowed to remain as army
commander (until he was replaced by Hanna Said in
September 1975), Salam did resign and was succeeded by a
series of weak prime ministers.
Friction between the guerrillas and the security
forces increased rapidly thereafter. On April 14 1973
the US-owned oil terminus at Zahrani was bombed,
allegedly by the PFLP-GC; on April 27 three men were
arrested with explosives at Beirut airport, where a bomb
was found the next day; on April 30 several armed DFLP
members were arrested as they drove past the US Embassy.
In response, two Lebanese soldiers were kidnapped on May
1st which finally forced the Lebanese Army into action
against the PLO. The refugee camps were then surrounded
and attacked by the army. In response to Palestinian
shelling of the airport, the Lebanese Air Force was
ordered into action against the Burj al-Barajina camp in
Beirut. A state of emergency was declared throughout the
country.
As the fighting intensified, the PLO appealed to
external allies for support. Algeria, Libya, and Syria
promptly condemned the Lebanese government's actions.
All three, together with Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq,
the United Arab Emirates, and the Arab League offered to
mediate. Egypt and Syria-now planning what would become
the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War-were particularly
anxious to contain the conflict, and exerted
considerable pressure to that end. This included the
closure of the Syrian-Lebanese border on May 8, and the
movement of Fateh and Sa'iqa forces from Syria to a few
kilometers inside Lebanon. Fearing a Syrian invasion,
the Lebanese looked for a way to end the fighting.
On May 17, after some seventeen hours of negotiation,
the two sides announced that they had reached agreement,
the "Melkart Protocol". This Melkart Agreement, on the
one hand obligated the PLO to respect the "independence,
stability, and sovereignty" of Lebanon but on the other
hard gave the PLO virtual autonomy, including the right
to maintain its own militia forces in certain areas of
Lebanon. These provisions of the Melkart Agreement
differed greatly from the Cairo Agreement, which
preserved the "exercise of full powers in all regions
and in all circumstances by Lebanese civilian and
military authorities."
Lebanese Muslims believed that under the Melkart
Agreement Palestinian refugees in Lebanon had been
accorded a greater degree of self-determination than
some Lebanese citizens. Inspired by this, they organized
themselves politically and militarily and encouraged by
the Palestinians tried to wrest similar concessions from
the central government. In 1974 Druze leader Kamal
Jumblatt established the Lebanese National Movement
(formerly the Front for Progressive Parties and National
Forces), an umbrella group comprising antigovernment
forces.
A military build-up was underway. Following the 1969
events, Kataeb Party members were involved in occasional
military training. The turning point, however, occurred
after the 1973 confrontations between the Lebanese army
and PLO forces, when Christian-based parties began to
acquire heavy weapons and were engaged in organised
training. The most organised and disciplined
Christian-based party was the Kataeb. With its para-military
structure and large following in various parts of the
country, the Kataeb Party was, as Frank Stoakes
indicated, ‘a valuable auxiliary of the state’ and
always ready to come to its defence in times of crisis.’
Other parties began to organise militarily, notably
Chamoun’s National Liberal Party and a small elitist
group of young professionals called al-Tanzim, headed by
physician Dr. Fouad Chemali and Georges Adouan.
Lebanese parties, of all persuasions, Christian and
Muslim, Left and Right, lagged behind the PLO. Not only
did they lack a similar military and security
infrastructure, they had limited financial resources.
Leftist and Muslim-based parties operated closely with
the PLO and received heavy financial and military
support from Arab countries, notably Libya, Syria and
Iraq. Christian-based parties, for their part, relied
mainly on private financial support. They also received
military assistance, beginning in 1973, from the
Lebanese army, which consisted of training and light
weapons.
On the eve of the war in 1975 the military balance in
the country was largely in favour of the PLO. Of the
eight PLO organisations, with a total strength of 22,900
troops, Fateh had the largest number of fighters (7,000)
and was the best equipped, followed by Saiqa (4,500).
The fighting force of other major organisations was of
almost equal size, numbering about 2500 each. The
distribution of armed men in seven major camps in
October 1975 was as follows: al-Rashidiyeh (7,300), Ayn
al-Helweh (4,500), Tal-Za’tar (3,225), Shatila (2,500),
Nahr al-Band (1,700), al-Burj al-Shimali (1,625) and
Borj al-Barajneh (1,300). Therefore, the largest
concentration was in the south and the Beirut area.
The Lebanese army was 19,000 strong. Only about half
that number was a fighting force. The largest number of
militiamen was that of the Kataeb Party (8,000),
followed by the Lebanese Communist Party and the
Progressive Socialist Party (5,000 each) and by the
Syrian Social Nationalist Party and the National Liberal
Party (4,000 each). Leftist, nationalist and
Muslim-based parties, which were part of the LNM, had a
total number of 18,700 militiamen and with the PLO the
anti government forces numbered some 41,600 while
Christian-based parties had 12,000. The break up of the
army made the ratio worse for the Christian based
parties as the result was 46,600 left wing troops
against 15,000 right wing troops.
The Kissinger Plan
"My country's history, Mr.
President, tells us that it is possible to fashion unity
while cherishing diversity, that common action is
possible despite the variety of races, interests, and
beliefs we see here in this chamber. Progress and peace
and justice are attainable. So we say to all peoples and
governments: Let us fashion together a new world order."
- Henry Kissinger, in address before the General
Assembly of the United Nations, October 1975
Many claim that the crisis in
Lebanon was brought about by Henry Kissinger. In the
50's and 60's Henry Kissinger served in the State
Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA as an
advisor. By the time war broke out in Lebanon he was
Secretary of State. He published widely read papers and
books, including "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy"
and "The Necessity For Choice." In all his jobs however
he was the front man for the Council on Foreign
Relations. His diplomatic victories astounded the world:
negotiating the settlement of the Vietnam War, limiting
the aftermath of the wars between Israel and the
surrounding nations, and restoring diplomatic relations
between the United States and China. He was hailed as
"The Man of Wonder," and the news media even proposed
Henry Kissinger be elected "President of Planet Earth."
Henry Kissinger's involvement
with the Council on Foreign Relations and the "New World
Order" as he puts it has been well documented for many
years. However, little is known of his role in the
Middle East and how he has influenced the events there
to help the New World Order gain control over this area
of the world by attempting to execute what has been
widely refered to as the "Kissinger Plan".
From the beginning with the oil
crises of the 1970s, the United States began selling
arms, and creating military alliances in the Gulf in and
attempted to increase its influence in the region. James
Akins, a former U.S. diplomat and ambassador to Saudi
Arabia during the first oil crisis in 1973, called it
the "Kissinger Plan." In short, the Kissinger Plan
outlined how the Gulf oil fields should be taken over in
order to solve U.S. domestic economic and political
problems. Akins learned of the Kissinger Plan when he
read an article about it in a 1975 issue of Harper's
magazine. Although he admits that the substance of the
article must have come from a deep background briefing,
he went on television and pronounced the plan to be the
work of "either a madman, a criminal, or an agent of the
Soviet Union." He was fired later that year after
learning that the background briefing had been conducted
by his boss, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The Kissinger Plan was a plan
to reshape the the Middle East in a way that suited
Kissinger's new world order and was not limited to the
GUlf but also involved Lebanon and Israel.
The late Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin met Kissinger when he was the U.S. secretary of
state and Rabin served as the Israeli ambassador to the
U.S. from 1968-1972. It was during this time that they
built a strong friendship and later Rabin would state
that Kissinger was his role model.
During the Yom Kippur War,
Kissinger refused to supply much-needed arms to Israel
unless Golda Meir resigned as prime minister and
supported Rabin as the next Labor Party candidate for
the post. At that time, Rabin had never even been a
Knesset member and was listed far down on Labor's
Knesset list. After the war, Meir appointed Rabin as
Minister of Labor and supported his candidacy for party
chairman, paving his way to become prime minister in
1974.
During his first term as
premier, Rabin and Kissinger redrew the map of the
Middle East, which included Lebanon being absorbed by
Syria. It was this plan which reportedly caused Ariel
Sharon to resign as Defense Minister under Rabin's
government. Many claim that the Lebanese war instigated
in order to accomplish this goal by allowing Syria to
enter and annex Lebanon. The Palestinians would then
settle in Lebanon and the the State of Israel would have
its problems solved. The surviving Lebanese Christians,
small in number, would be resettled in the West,
primerily in Canada and France.
Whatever the truth behind the
Kissinger plan, the Lebanese were not about to stand by
and allow the PLO and their Arabs allies to take Lebanon
without a fight.
The Opening Rounds,
1975
By the mid 1970s PLO conduct in
Lebanon had reached incredible lows. Arafat's realm
within Lebanon became known as the Fakhani Republic
named after the district of Beirut where he had set up
his headquarters, in large areas of Lebanon his
authority was supreme. In a flagrant violation of
Lebanese sovereignty the PLO set up road blocks, issued
passes and travel documents, took over entire buildings,
operated extortion rackets, protected criminals fleeing
Lebanese justice, stole cars, expelled residents, and
opened unlicensed shops, bars, and nightclubs. They even
raped and murdered at will. Despite repeated pleas from
his old guard and from Lebanese Christian leaders,
Arafat did nothing to control the behaviour of his
Palestinians.
In a memorandum submitted to
the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies on 7th November 1975 by
the Standing Conference of the Superior-Generals of the
Monastic Orders of Lebanon, they state:
'The Palestinian resistance
interfere in Lebanese politics, in alliance with such
groups as it believes can be of advantage to it, and
openly try to bring them to power by calling upon them
to cause disturbances even such as involve the use of
arms, using external pressure on the Lebanese state
through certain Arab countries when it seems to be in
its interest to extract from the Lebanese authorities
such privileges as have not been extracted before. The
resistance also believes itself entitled to call openly
upon the Lebanese to deny their political system,
impeding the normal course of the constitutional and
administrative institutions (the army, for example) by
openly appealing to one or other of the Arab countries,
which then pours in its money to direct the information
media (and the press in particular) as it wishes, and,
indeed, to mold them and to undermine their national
role so as to suppress the expression of any opinion
favorable to Lebanon in its own interest, providing a
base and a refuge for international terrorism
which can only be injurious to Lebanon."
A year later, on 14th October 1976 Edward Ghorra, the
Lebanese AmbAssador to the United Nations described the
actions of the Palestinians to the UN General Assembly:
"The Palestinians had transformed most, if not all,
of the refugee camps into military bastions around our
major cities. Moreover, common-law criminals fleeing
from Lebanese justice find shelter and protection in the
camps. Palestinian elements belonging to various
splinter organizations resorted to kidnapping Lebanese
and sometimes foreigners, holding them prisoner,
questioning them, and even killing them. They committed
all sorts of crimes in Lebanon and also escaped Lebanese
justice in the protection of the camps. They smuggled
goods into Lebanon and openly sold them on our streets.
They went so far as to demand protection money from many
individuals and owners of buildings and factories
situated in the vicinity of the camps."
Even strong supporters of the PLO had been moved to
comment on the behavior of the Palestinians. In his
book, I Speak for Lebanon, written in 1977 shortly
before his death, Kamal Jumblat the main ally of the
Palestinians in Lebanon wrote:
"It has to be said that the Palestinians themselves,
by violating Lebanese law, bearing arms as they chose
and policing certain important points of access to the
capital, actually furthered the plot that had been
hatched against them. They carelessly exposed themselves
to criticism and even to hatred. High officials and
administrators were occasionally stopped and asked for
their identity papers by Palestinian patrols. From time
to time, Lebanese citizens and foreigners were arrested
and imprisoned, on the true or false pretext of having
posed a threat to the Palestinian revolution. Such
actions were, at first, forgiven, but became
increasingly difficult to tolerate. Outsiders making the
law in Lebanon, armed demonstrations and ceremonies,
military funerals for martyrs of the revolution, it all
mounted up and began to alienate public opinion,
especially conservative opinion, which was particularly
concerned about security.... I never saw a less
discreet, less cautious revolution."
It is interesting to note that throughout the war,
and despite the close alliance between the Druze PSP and
the Palestinians, the PSP would not permit the
stationing of significant numbers of Palestinian troops
in Druze-held areas of the Shuf Mountains.
Trouble began to brew very early in 1975 when a
Lebanese Army barracks in Tyre was hit by 8 rockets
fired from a nearby Palestinian camp on January 20th.
Matters came to a head in February 1975 when the
Lebanese Communist Party and other leftists organized
violent demonstrations in Sidon on behalf of fishermen
who were threatened economically by a state monopoly
fishing company. The Lebanese Army was called in to
restore order, but, in the volatile atmosphere, armed
clashes erupted. Muslim politicians protested that the
use of the army was a violation of the demonstrators'
democratic liberties and asked why the army was shooting
at civilians rather than defending Lebanon's borders
against Israeli incursions. Sunni leaders also faulted
the channels used for ordering the army into action.
General Ghanim had assumed charge of the army's conduct
and reported directly to President Franjieh, ignoring
Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Rashid as Sulh (also seen as
Solh). Meanwhile, thousands of students in mainly
Christian East Beirut demonstrated in support of the
army. These serious splits were exacerbated when Maruf
Saad, a pro-Palestinian Sunni populist leader, died in
March of wounds suffered during the Sidon clashes.
Long-standing concerns that the army would disintegrate
if it were called into action were vindicated when
intense fighting broke out between Maronite and Muslim
army recruits.
The various nationalistic, pro government, mainly
Christian parties as they watched the authority of the
Lebanese government collapse, organized themselves into
militias in an attempt to counter the threat from the
Palestinian presence. These various parties such as the
Phalange, the Ahrar, Etienne Sakr's Guardians of the
Cedars, and George Adwan's Tanzim, realizing that they
were out numbered and out gunned combined politically
and formed the Lebanese Front.
On April 13, 1975, unidentified Palestinian gunmen
opened fire at a congregation outside a Maronite church
in Ayn ar Rummeneh, a Christian suburb of Beirut. Later
in the day, members of the Christian Phalange Party
ambushed a bus filled with Palestinians that had overrun
a check point, claiming 26 dead. According to the
Phalange version of events, the bus contained armed
Palestinian Arab Liberation Front guerillas, firing
weapons. Some PLO accounts describe the passengers as
civilians and other reports as guerrilla trainees.
However, the Phalangist version was confirmed by Abd
al-Rahim Ahmad of the Palestinian ALF who stated in an
interview in Amman, 28th December 1986, that those on
the bus were indeed armed Palestinian ALF members. That
night, at 10 pm, mortar shells slammed into Ayn ar
Rummanah catching the people by surprise. The next day
saw hit and run raids against the Lebanese Army by
Palestinian groups led by the DFLP and also fighting
between the Phalangists and the Palestinians which
resulted in around 35 deaths and by the April 15 a full
artillery duel had started in Beirut. One of Lebanon's
many cease fires was announced on April 16 but was not
to last. Within the next couple of days heavy fighting
resumed between the Palestinian forces and the Lebanese
Front. Kamal Jumblatt and hs leftist allies voiced
continuous support for the Palestinians.
While death and torture were suffered in the streets,
the political battle went on, most heatedly between
Pierre Gemayel and Kamal Jumblatt. Jumblatt drew up a
list of fourteen demands. They included one that Lebanon
be declared an Arab state, another that the Christians
give an undertaking not to indulge in any ‘confessional
provocation’, another that ‘full respect’ be paid to the
‘Palestinian movement’, and a yet another demand was
that two Maronite ministers resign and it was to this
demand only, Pierre Gemayel agreed. The result was that
the government fell. Therefore, on May 23, Franjieh took
the unorthodox and unprecedented step of appointing a
military cabinet. Muslim Brigadier Nur ad Din Rifai,
retired commander of the Internal Security Force, was
named prime minister. Rifai selected the controversial
Ghanim as his minister of defence; all other cabinet
ministers except one were also military officers.
Franjieh's motives were difficult to discern. Some
believed his move was part of a plot to cement Maronite
dominance of the government. Others believed he was
attempting to force the recalcitrant army to intervene
in the fighting. Perhaps Franjieh sincerely thought that
a strong inter confessional military government with
unquestionable authority over the army could avert
widespread conflict, although Lebanon's democracy would
be sacrificed. Indeed, Syrian foreign minister Abdal
Halim Khaddam reportedly warned Lebanese politicians
that the Lebanese Army was capable of uniting its ranks,
staging a coup d'état, and imposing a military
dictatorship.
Nevertheless, Lebanon's first and last military
government was short lived, resigning two days after its
inception. Rashid Karame, the man who had forced the
Cairo Agreement upon Lebanon became prime minister once
again. Even when installed in the government, the army
proved unwilling or incapable of exerting authority in
Lebanon. The resignation of the military government
demonstrated the power vacuum in Lebanese politics and
served as the catalyst to conflict. From June to
September a six-man cabinet ‘ruled’ by emergency powers.
Officially a ceasefire prevailed, but there were
constant outbreaks of fighting. Hundreds of acts of
terrorism were perpetrated against the Christians,
kidnappings, murders and mutilations. The Kataeb
interpreted the terrorism as part of the plan to keep
the hate, the desire for revenge, the sectarian
hostilities alive and active. They believed that
criminals were hired to do this work: by whom they could
only conjecture, but their suspicions fell on Iraq and
Libya.
By September fighting resumed and soon clashes
erupted in the Christian city of Zahle in the Beqaa and
in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second
largest city. In both places, clashes were instigated by
skirmishes between armed individuals. By then, tension
was so high that even the slightest verbal exchange
between two armed individuals was sufficient to provoke
violence which would quickly spread to various parts of
the country. In Zahle, local armed men clashed with
heavily armed Palestinian guerrillas who for some
bizarre reason were trying to enter Zahle. The fighting
continued for several days and resulted in the deaths of
twenty-eight people and the injury of many others. The
more serious confrontation occurred in Tripoli and
spread to surrounding localities.
Tripoli-Zgharta
Battles
Heavy fighting was soon to
erupt between Tripoli and Zgharta. Clashes here were
instigated by a car accident involving a driver from
Tripoli and another from the neighbouring Maronite town
of Zgharta. This led to the shooting of the Muslim
driver from Tripoli. Soon afterwards armed men in
Tripoli began kidnapping Christians from Zgharta. In
retaliation, armed men from Suleiman Frangieh's Zgharta
based militia Marada, commanded by his son Tony, set up
roadblocks on the outskirts of Tripoli and did their
share of kidnapping. This wave of violence was
temporarily contained following the release of the
detainees. The next day clashes erupted in Tripoli as
Palestinians, seeking an escallation, attacked Lebanese
army positions, a Lebanese army barracks in the city was
even the target of direct shelling from Palestinian
positions. Eighteen soldiers were injured. Three Greek
Orthodox priests were also kidnapped that day in
Tripoli, but were later released. Shelling and rumours
of kidnapping and counter-kidnapping kept many armed
individuals alert. Disturbances broke out in the nearby
Kura region, where skirmishes took place between Zgharta
armed men of Marada and supporters of the Syrian Social
Nationalist Party and the Lebanese Communist Party. As
local leaders succeeded in containing the Kura feud,
another violent incident occurred in Darayya, near
Tripoli. A bus carrying kidnapped people back to
Tripoli, as part of the exchange agreement made between
Zgharta and Tripoli leaders, was fired upon by an armed
man from the Frangiyeh family, killing twelve and
injuring seven others. The assailant had just learned of
the killing of his brother in Tripoli.
Heavy fighting spread to the
outskirts of Tripoli as Palestinains tlaunched an
assualt against Zgharta. Permanent demarcation lines
separating the Palestinians attacking from Tripoli and
the Marada defending Zgharta were now in place. Attacks
and counterter-attacks in which Palestinians took part
alongside leftists Tripoli militiamen continued for
several days, as did the sectarian killings. Palestinian
guerillas belonging to the factions of George Habash and
Nayef Hawatmeh entered the village of Beit Mellat
(Millat) in north Lebanon and started killing civilians
and the moved on to Deir Ayache on 3rd September 1975.
Three old monks aged 60, 78, and 93, the only occupants
of the monastery of Deir Ayache were ritually murdered,
the Christian occupants of the village managed to flee
but their village was destroyed. Two days later, the
small Maronite village in ‘Akkar, Beit Mellat, was
tacked again by Palestinian gunmen who went on the
rampage, destroying property, killing several people.
Further confrontations took place in the region, notably
an attack on the Christian town of Qbayyat in ‘Akkar
many of whose inhabitants served in the Lebanese army.
The town was besieged. The siege of the town provoked a
strong protests and a rebellion by officers and soldiers
from Qbayyat based in an army barracks in Jounieh who
wanted to deploy and halt the fighting.
Emergency cabinet meetings were
held and when Christian ministers insisted on the army
to be sent into action to restore order the Muslim
ministers objected stating that they did not want the
army to get involved in action against Lebanese
citizens. Finally it was agreed that army would set up a
buffer zone between Tripoli and Zgharta. Unhappy with
the use of Lebanese army units, Kamal Jumblatt, who had
emerged as the leader of the leftist alliance, called
for nation wide Muslim protest strikes.
A few days later, on the night
of September 14, 1975, army troops clashed with several
armed followers of Faruq Muqaddam, the leader of a
Tripoli-based Fateh-backed guerrillas. Fourteen
guerrillas were killed. The incident occurred while
armed men attempted to force the way through an army
checkpoint on their way back to Tripoli after they had
tacked a beach resort near Tripoli, owned by a man from
the Frangieh family The next day several Christian-owned
shops and houses in Tripoli belonging individuals from
Zgharta were bombed and looted. At this stage, Karame,
while still opposed to army intervention, called upon
the Syria controlled Palestine Liberation Army to bring
order to the city. Karame’s decision was taken at a
meeting of cabinet ministers in the Sérail, without
informing the president. Also upon Karame’s request
three guerrilla battalions were transferred from the
south to Tripoli. Far from restoring order, these units
joined the assault against Christian Zgharta and as a
result hundreds Kataeb troops were rushed from Beirut to
help Marada in the defence of Zgharta. Offensives
against Zgharta would be launched many times over the
following months but Zgharta refused to fall.
Deeply divided, ineffective and
weak, the government by now ruled only on paper.
Christian leaders saw one last alternative to halt the
process of disintegration: a forceful intervention by
the army.
As a consession to Karame,
Frangieh replaced army commander General Alexander
Ghanim with a low-key officer, and having agreed to
restructure the army command, Frangieh and other
Maronite leaders hoped that Karame and other Sunni
leaders would support a forceful army intervention,
particularly in Beirut and Tripoli. But this was not
forthcoming. But even if some Sunni leaders were willing
to support a limited army intervention in Beirut,
Jumblatt and the PLO-supported Left were categorically
opposed to any kind of army action. Shiite leaders, for
their part, were in favour of army intervention. For
Musa al-Sadr, the army intervention in Tripoli was ‘a
natural and proper measure'.
Faced by a strong Sunni—Leftist
opposition even to a limited army intervention, Maronite
leaders took matters into their own hands and went on
the offensive. Pierre Gemayel who for months had been
asking the government to deploy the army to restore
order, issued an ultimatum on 16th September. If the
army did not immediately go into action, the Phalange
would have to take matters into their own hands. The
next day the Phalange launched an offensive into central
Beirut in an attempt to restore order.
The Sacking
of Downtown Beirut
Although over 1,000 people were
killed in the early fighting, many Lebanese still viewed
the nascent war as a transitory phenomenon that would
soon abate, like past security crises. Up until now, the
war had mainly been a Palestinian and Lebanese Front
affair but events took a sudden turn for the worse when
well organized leftist Muslim militias sided with the
Palestinians and attacked the downtown Kantari (Qantari)
district in late October 1975, causing heavy loss of
life and massive property damage, many inhabitants of
Beirut realized for the first time that the war was a
serious affair. The Palestinians and leftists eventually
took Kantari and occupied the forty story Murr Tower,
the highest building in Beirut.
Now that the leftist National
Movement openly joined Fatah; the carnage was massive.
Deaths from the fighting averaged about fifty a day.
National Movement fighters and youths from the camps
looted and destroyed the stores in the heart of Beirut.
Dead and mutilated bodies lay everywhere in public
places: corpses of sexually violated women and children,
and of men with their genitals cut off and stuffed into
their mouths. Shop windows were shattered and their
contents looted by a multitude of beggars, many of them
small ragged boys out of the camps, who would offer the
goods for sale on the streets, wildly setting their own
prices on items whose value they could not imagine.
Garbage piled up in the streets. Piped water and
electric power were cut off more often than not. People
were afraid to leave their apartments and seek safety
elsewhere, knowing they would lose everything to the
looters, who would even tear window frames and plumbing
fixtures out of the walls.
To add to the terror and
destruction, the Syrian based Palestinian guerrilla
group, Sa’iqa, began its own campaign of bomb explosions
in the commercial centre of the city. As this was a
mixed area, its targets were indiscriminate. PLO offices
and men were hit. It was the covert beginning of a
direct Syrian assault on the weakening state. Before the
end of 1975, President Assad had started to deploy the
Yarmouk and Hittin brigades of the PLA as well as
Egyptian based 'Ayn Jalout Bridage' in the Beqaa in
support of the Palestinians and the LNM. Syria's role in
the fighting was tipping the military balance even more
in favour of the PLO. Syrian troops had already been
active in fighting alongside PLO units in the north of
Lebanon.
After the battle was of Kantari
was over the two sides settled down to desultory
exchanges of fire in a pattern that was to become
familiar over the months — reserving the nights for the
real attempts to take territory or score victories. Soon
a huge pall of smoke rose over the commercial district
of the city, a mile to the east. This was the area of
warehouses, banks, airline offices, the Bourse, all the
myriad facets of the service economy on which Beirut
depended. It was the area, too, of the souks, the
labyrinth of narrow streets each housing all the
practitioners of the same trade. There was the vegetable
souk, the clothes souk, the meat souk and so on. Above
all, there was the gold souk, two glittering streets
where every shop front was a treasure house of bangles
and rings, chains, lockets and precious stones. Many of
the gold dealers were Armenians, there were a few Jews,
and some Maronites. In the other souks, Moslems and
Christians traded side by side. But whatever the
religion of the stall-holders and shop-keepers, everyone
recognized that the souks played a major part in the
economic life of the city. Local people did all their
shopping there, it was a regular attraction for
tourists, and the traders imported and exported as well
as carrying on their retail business. By any standards,
the souks of Beirut belonged to everyone and were of
benefit to everyone. Now the souks began to be ravaged
by looters from all sides.
The Phalangists then began
pouring in mortars and rockets into the souk district,
raking the shops with heavy machine-gun fire from their
positions only a hundred or so yards away, and doing
everything they could to destroy the area in what seemd
to be a scourched earth policy. It seemed senseless,
though in fact it was part of the general Phalangist
strategy. Their aim in Beirut was not only the classic
military concept of destroying the enemy—the Left-wing
forces and the Palestinians—it was also to involve as
many people on their side as possible. In particular,
the Phalangists wanted the Army brought into the
fighting.
The Lebanese Army, a mere
twelve thousand strong, was still the most powerful
force in the country, with tanks, armoured cars,
personnel carriers, artillery and all the other
equipment any modern army must have. It was the one
properly organized group, with a command structure, good
communications, adequate reserves of ammunition, and men
who were well-trained and obedient. The Phalangist
calculation was plain, though it was never spelt out. If
the Army could be embroiled, then no matter how much its
neutrality was proclaimed, or even if the Command did
actually try to remain impartial, inevitably the troops
would be forced to fight on the side of the Phalangist
militia—the experience of half a dozen different clashes
in the past had shown that this was always the case.
Afterall, the Lebanese right was fighting to preserve
Lebanon and the Lebanese way of life while the lefist
pan Arabists were fighting to destroy Lebanon. The
Phalange felt that sooner or later the army would have
to join them and the sooner the better.
Rashid Karami, the Sunni Moslem
Prime Minister had set his face firmly against any
involvement of the military. At the end of the 1958 war,
only two institutions of the State had emerged unscathed
and had formed the basis on which the country had been
able to build anew: the Presidency and the Army. The
Prime Minister knew that if he did unleash the Army in
Beirut he would be accused by all Moslems in the country
of siding with the Right, and would lose what influence
he still had. On these two counts Karami was determined
that the Army should stay out; so, despite the pleas of
the Right-wing members of his own cabinet, led by
Camille Chamoun, the Minister of the Interior, and the
wanton destruction being spread by the Phalange, Karami
held out against the pressures and refused to give the
orders which would have permitted the Army to move.
The destruction of the souks
went on, with fires smouldering by day and new salvoes
of mortar bombs and rockets crashing in by night. The
hard-pressed Beirut fire brigade tried to put out the
worst blazes, but the frequently heroic firemen could do
little. Often they could get nowhere near the fires
because of constant sniper fire, deliberately aimed at
them by one side or the other to ensure the destruction
of some particular place. There was the beginning, too,
of the division of the city which was soon to become
complete, and the discrimination based on the religion
of a man shown on his identity card.
So all over the commercial
district and even in the port, the fires raged unchecked
as both sides joined in the orgy of destruction started
in this particular case by the Phalangists, as they
tried to pursue their strategic aim, through a
deliberate scorched earth policy which probably caused
as much damage to their own supporters and members as it
did to the property of their opponents.
But one souk would not be
allowed to be destroyed. Somehow, the gold souk had to
be saved and on both sides of the line the powerful men
who owned the shops were applying pressure. It was a
demonstration of another facet of the Lebanese
situation, now Moslem and Christian owners of shops in
the gold souks joined with Jews and Armenians to plead
with both sides to save their capital and their
livelihood. Their powerful collective voice was listened
to with respect, and soon a commando group of the
Lebanese Army, one-hundred-and-fifty-strong, was on its
way to the souk under a promise of safe conduct and no
molestation from either side. The soldiers got there
just in time, for others, too, had heard of the plans to
clear the treasure from the souk. As the soldiers were
hurrying by back ways to the entrance to the souk at the
top of the Place des Martyrs, a fifty strong band of
gangsters had shot their way in, killing the few guards
still on duty and braving the fire of the Phalange on
one side of the square and the Leftists on the other.
While most of the robbers took up positions ready to
hold off anyone who tried to interfere, others tore off
the shutters of the shops or blasted their way in with
dynamite. They were hastily filling sacks with gold
ornaments as the Army arrived. And in this first
engagement it was the Army which quickly came off best.
The soldiers, with their armoured vehicles, could go
right up to the entrance to the souk with impunity as
they poured in machine-gun and cannon fire. Within
minutes those thieves who were not killed had fled, and
the Army had scored a notable victory in a dubious
cause.
Under the protection of the
guns of the military, the waiting merchants arrived to
load their treasure into cars and trucks. Many of them
were unwilling to take such a tempting cargo far, so
they did no more than drive half a mile to the main
office of the British Bank of the Middle East. There
they hastily packed their gold into the strong-boxes
that they had previously rented, then went on their way
carrying only a few items they thought they might be
able to sell in the makeshift souks which were beginning
to appear in other parts of the city.
The fighting in the mainly
Muslim western side of the city intensified as the PLO
and the LNM battled against the Kataeb. The
commander-in-chief of the Kataeb, Pierre Gemayel’s son
Bachir, moved his men into the tourists’ hotel quarter
of the city near the sea front, to try to defend the
harbour and the business centre against the LNM and the
PLO. Therefore in late 1975 and early 1976, fierce
fighting engulfed Beirut's high rise hotel district,
this fighting was a logical consequence of the leftist
sacking of the Kantari district.
The expanded scope and
intensity of the combat increased casualties greatly,
with over 1,000 killed in the first weeks of the new
year, 1976.
Check Point Killings and
Black Saturday
In the first week of the war
some hundreds of motorists, halted in a traffic jam in
Beirut at a Palestinian check point, witnessed the
execution of a man by the PLO. The captors and their
victim stood on a piece of open ground at the side of
the Avenue Sami al-Solh. Other captured Lebanese,
probably Maronite, were guarded by Fedayeen armed with
‘klashens’ (AK47s). The captives’ hands were tied behind
their backs. One was singled out for special attention.
Around his neck the PLO militiamen tied sticks of
explosives. People in their cars looked and waited
uneasily for the arrival of the special police in red
berets whose business it was to deal with violent
incidents in the streets, but they did not appear. One
witness amongst hundreds, Janet Wakin, the respected
American wife of businessman George Wakin reported 'the
victim stood still, with strange quietness and dignity’,
while the fedayeen prepared literally to blow his head
off. They set a fuse, and ran back from the man, who
continued to stand where he was, quite still, until the
explosion came. Not only was he decapitated, but the
rest of his body was blown to pieces. News of this sent
shock waves across Lebanon's communities casuing the wat
to rapidily take on a sectarian character.
On the 30 May 1975 an incident
occured that was to start the darkest and perhaps the
most horrific aspect of the Lebanese war. In retaliation
for the death of a Palestinian in east Beirut, 30
Christian civilians were rounded up in west Beirut, most
dragged out of cars, and murdered in cold blood on the
street. This was the first major check point massacre of
civilians in the war and started a vicious cycle of
kidnapping, revenge and retaliation.
Districts of Beirut became ‘no
go’ areas for all but those whose religion let them in.
A person’s religion was enough to condemn him or her to
abduction, humiliation, rape, mutilation or murder. It
was not long before a brisk trade in false identity
papers was underway. A person moving through the city,
and before long anywhere in the country, might depend
for his or her life on correctly identifying which
roadblock lay ahead, getting the right papers ready to
show the militiamen (many of them boys in their early
teens), and remembering whether to give a Christian or a
Muslim name. Often those who made mistakes were killed
on the spot.
The next major event of this
murderous cycle was on December 6, 1975, "Black
Saturday". Four Christians were murdered and one wounded
in a car outside the Lebanese Electricity Company
headquarters in east Beirut by a Muslim militia raiding
party. They had been hacked by axes in a most brutal way
and shot. These murders took place on the eve of Pierre
Gemayel's visit to Damascus. A Lebanese reporter by the
name of Joe Saady was the father of one those murdered
and some weeks before he had lost his other son who had
been abducted from his racing car during a rally and
murdered. When news that his other son had been murdered
reached him Joe Saady went on the rampage and started
randomly stopping cars and killing Muslim occupants.
For many Phalangists (Kataeb)
fighters this was the least straw, they wanted
retaliation for this and numerous other recent acts of
terror against the civilians of East Beirut. Discipline
completely collapsed as Phalangist fighters set up a
road block on the ring road and also started killing
Muslims. Other fighters went to the port area and
started killing Muslim dock workers. There are reports
in some sources that the revenge murders started because
the Gemayels had ordered the killing of 40 Muslims in
retaliation for the 4 dead Christians but it would seem
that such reports are untrue. A number of senior
Phalangist officers including William Hawi,
Commander-in-Chief of the Kataeb Military Council, ran
out of the nearby Kataeb base and tried to stop the
murders but such was the rage that they were fired on by
the rampaging fighters.
When news of this action
reached west Beirut, Muslim militias along with their
Palestinian allies set up road blocks and began killing
Christians. In the hours that followed a total of around
200 civilians from each side had been murdered.
Anarchy in West
Beirut
The number of dead and maimed
mounted in Beirut. Snipers on roofs or at high windows
picked off victims in the streets, in their homes, in
shops, and in Offices. A common site was an open truck
bearing a Soviet heavy machine-gun known as a ‘Douchka’,
the gunman holding its grips with both hands to keep his
balance as the vehicle hurtled through the streets and
careened round corners. (It reminded onlookers of
bronco- riding, or water-skiing, and the gunmen came to
be known as ‘water- skiers’.) Everywhere in the city
‘armed elements’ sauntered in public places wearing
masks, balaclavas, or squares of cloth covering all
their features, or carnival papier-mâché faces, comic or
grotesque, under cowboy stetsons, helmets, or any kind
of headgear. Feather boas were seen draped round necks
and shoulders under masked faces, and bits and pieces of
all kinds of uniforms were worn:jungle camouflage
fatigues, jeans and T-shirts. Guns were carried as an
indispensable necessity, even in restaur-ants and on the
beaches, by women as well as men. The masking was done
often out of a genuine need for fighters to conceal
their identity and so avert possible vengeance. But a
certain illicit excitement in the freedom to kill with
impunity filled the streets, and the ‘adventure’
attracted adventurers from far beyond the shores of
Lebanon.
Many a 'franc tireur' toted his
gun in the ranks of the fedayeen and the Marxists. Also
bourgeois idealists, youths from Europe, most of them
die-hards of the New Left’s militant ‘peace-movements’
of the late 1960s and now playing at revolution, and
some of them neo-Nazis, were drawn here from the safe
societies of the West to revel in the ‘real thing’. The
parasitic PLO state in Lebanon was a subversives’
honeypot. Here they had licence to shoot and kill in an
alien world, with no consequence to themselves. Would-be
heroes of ‘the Revolution’, playboys and playgirls of
terrorism from West Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and the
Netherlands, came to dress up, strut, blow up, and gun
down. It was a masquerade with a cruelty all too real.
The adventure required the suffering and dying of
multitudes of helpless people. It was a carnival of
death.
To add to the theatricality of
the scene, convoys of cars with guns protruding from the
windows, armoured vehicles and motorcycles would scream
through the streets accompanying Arafat or Abu Iyad on
their visits to politicians, foreign envoys, allied
commanders of the revolution-ary forces. Then, in some
office or apartment block or public building, dozens of
men armed with ‘klashens’ would push down the corridors
ahead of the great man: Arafat wearing his kafliyah
pinned back from his face, dark glasses, a three-day
growth of beard; or Abu Iyad, another short stout man
dwarfed by huge bodyguards.
The PLO Camps
In an effort to consolidate its
presence in Lebanon, the PLO put out a plan to make
efficient use of the camps in Beirut and in the suburbs
in crisis situations. Among the camps located in
Christian areas, Tal al Zaatar was the largest and the
most important both as a political and military base.
This camp also contained there guerrilla training bases.
The functions of the camp included the following: (i) to
recruit workers from nearby factories in Dikwaneh and
Mkallis for the Lebanese branch of Fateh. The person in
charge of this operation was Ali al-Asmar. He was also
the workers’ representative in the ‘Cortina’ ice cream
factory; (ii) to purchase apartments in Dikwaneh and use
them as surveilance posts; (iii) to link Tal al Zatar
logistically to the nearby smaller but still substantial
camp of Jisr-Basha and establish military control over
the crossing of Mkalis, and (iv) To link Tal-Zaatar to
the nearby area of Nabaa which had a large Shia
population, where Palestinian and leftist groups were
active. This plan to link the camps in times of crises
would in effect completely envelope East Beirut's
eastern flank and cut it off from the rest of Lebanon.
The Dhayeh camp, located near
the largely Christian city of Jounieh was inhabited by
Palestinian Christians and had a minor military
function. It was used as a surveillance and intelligence
post within the Christian region. The camp had a
training base. Intelligence operations were condticted
in association with the Syrian Socialist Nationalist
Party, which had some supporters in the Metn region.
Another important base was the area of Maslakh and
Karantina located at the northern entry of East Beirut
and inihabited by Palestinians, Kurds, Syrians and Shia.
Fateh and other Palestinian organisations had a strong
presences this area. Karantina also had one training
base.
The Borj al-Barajneh camp,
located in the southern suburb of Beirut, was the main
military base in west Beirut. This camp had three
training bases. As early as 1970, small munitions
factories were established there. The Borj al-Barajneh
camp, by virtue of its strategic location, controlled
access to the main road linking Beirut to the airport as
did the nearby camps of Sahra and Shatila, which later
served as the Fateh headquarters in Beirut.
Battle of
Karantina
With the outbreak of
hostilities the PLO tried to activate their plan to link
the camps of East Beirut and encircle the Christians.
Whilest the majority of right wing fighters were tied
down in downtown Beirut the Palestinians moved to
isolate East Beirut as fighetrs from the camps tired to
take control of access points into the city. In response
to this the Lebanese front surrounded the camps of Tal
al Zaatar, Jisr al Basha and Karantina on 4th January.
To counter this move the PLO and their allies surrounded
and launched an attack against the Christian town of
Damour some 20km south of Beirut on January 9th. These
tit for tat moves reulted in the Palestinian camp of
Dbayeh being attacked by the Lebanese Front. On January
14 1976 the Dbayeh falls to the Guardinas of the Cedars
and the Ahrar after a five day siege. The Karantina camp
(and the nearby Maslakh), a slum district named after
the old immigration quarantine area, was occupied and
controlled by a large PLO detachment. This was therefore
site of the another major episode in the war as the
Lebanese Front tried to break out of East Beirut and
link with the rest of Lebanon. The first attempt to
expell the PLO from this area was in July 1975 but the
Kataeb assualt on the camp was repelled by a joint PFLP
and leftist force.
On January 18, 1976, a combined
Lebanese Front force composed of Guardians of the
Cedars, Ahrar and Kataeb took Karantina after a fierce
battle in which the Palestinians held out for three days
and fought to the last man in the Sleep Comfort
furniture factory. Many Palestinian civilians were
killed in the chaos of the assault and some in cold
blood by the attackers who were enraged by the events
the occurred four months earlier in the north of the
country. Randal reports that accordibg to Lebansese
survivors the Palestinians would not allow the civilians
to leave the camp. After the battle the camp residents
were evicted on buses and taked to west Beirut.
Syrian Intervention
Having diverted forces to Beirut and other zones of
combat, the Lebanese left wing National Movement was not
equipped to pursue its siege of Damour against Maronite
resistance. Palestinian forces were of limited
assistance, since most of them were still deployed in
the South, close to the Israeli border. Kamal Junbalat
became increasingly anxious, and in a meeting at the
home of the Sunni Mufti, Hasan Khalid, in Aramun, he
joined other LNM and traditional Muslim leaders in
initiating an appeal for Syrian assistance.
Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad later cited the
appeal of the Aramun summit as evidence that Syria's
intervention in Lebanon was purely invitational. In an
unusual and highly revealing speech delivered on 20 July
1976, (Hafiz al-Assad, Text of speech delivered on 20
July 1976 (in Arabic), Al-Baath, Periodic Publication,
no. 10, 4 August 1976, pp. 2-3.)President Assad
explained the Syrian rationale in responding to the
LNM's appeal. Assad relates that in mid-January,
Lebanese Muslim and leftist leaders sent urgent "signals
of distress" to Syria, due to the military collapse of
LNM Resistance forces. The members of the Aramun summit
urged Syrian Foreign Minister Khaddam to request
President Assad to contact President Faranjiyih and try
to stop the fighting.
Assad portrays himself as reluctant to comply with
the request, not because of unwillingness to make the
effort, but because he considered the demand
unreasonable. He explains that the LNM and the
Resistance had more weapons at their disposal than the
entire Lebanese Army, let alone the Kataib and National
Liberals. He therefore told Khaddam that "they must hold
out" and that he would not contact Faranjiyih. However,
Assad relented after Khaddam repeatedly called him to
describe the desperation of the appealers, who feared
that with the fall of Karantina and Maslakh, the
Kataib's next move would be to occupy West Beirut. Assad
called Faranjiyih on 18 January and arranged a
cease-fire for that night, but the agreement did not
hold and fighting escalated instead. At this point,
Assad met with "some of our comrades in the leadership"
to determine what might be done "to rescue the
situation." Having already supplied arms and attempted
mediation, the Syrians decided that "nothing remained
but direct intervention."
The outcome of deliberations by the Syrians was a
decision for a higher level of commitment in Lebanon.
Assad explains the decision to intervene "under the
banner of the Palestine Liberation Army," but later
mentions that Syria moved in the PLA "and other forces"
whose identity is not specified. He asserts that when
the PLA began its entry into Lebanon, no one was aware
that this was occurring. The autonomy of the Syrian
decision is underscored by his remark that:
"We did not consult with them [i.e., the Palestinian
Resistance] and we did not consult with the nationalist
parties, and naturally not one of them was prepared to
discuss with us any measures [that they took]. The
important thing is that they requested us to carry out
what [i.e., whatever] would rescue them." (Assad, Speech
of 20 July 1976, p. 4.)
The approximately 3,500 men that entered Lebanon from
Syria on 19th January were primarily affiliated with the
Yarmuk Brigade, one of the PLA units stationed in Syria.
They were responding to a Syrian command to move
forward, although officially all PLA units were subject
to the direct command of Yasir Arafat. Whereas the issue
of PLA loyalties would later arouse acrimonious
Syrian-Palestinian dispute, in this instance the PLA
intervention clearly furthered the goals of the PLO in
Lebanon and of the Lebanese National Movement. Most of
the PLA forces from Syria were initially concentrated in
the Biqa Valley, but the presence of these
reinforcements enabled Arafat to draw on his forces in
Southern Lebanon and move them north for the siege
against Damour.
The indirect Syrian intervention quickly shifted the
Lebanese military balance to favor the
anti-establishment leftist PLO coalition.
One early opponent of Syria's diplomatic and military
role was Camille Shamoun of the National Liberal Party.
In his capacity as Minister of the Interior, he
announced, upon hearing of the PLA intervention, that
"forces of the Syrian Army have entered Lebanese soil .
. . [and] this intervention threatens this part of the
Middle East with a new war." When asked why he equated
the PLA forces with the Syrian Army, Shamoun replied:
"It is very hard to differentiate between the Syrian
Army and those military formations which are commanded
by a number of Syrian officers and in whose ranks an
additional number of Syrian officers fight unofficially.
Let us not forget that all of the equipment and military
supplies are given by Syria. . . . It is perhaps less
official than aggression by the Syrian Army, but the
result is exactly the same." (Al-Nahar, 20 January 1976)
Destruction of Damour
Two days later, January 20, 1976, Palestinians and
their leftist allies launched their final assualt on the
Christian town of Damour which lay across the Sidon -
Beirut highway about 20 km south of Beirrut. The
relentless pounding the town received resulted in the
deaths of many. In the siege that had been established
on 9 January the Palestinians cut off food and water
supplies and refused to allow the Red Cross to take out
the wounded. Infants and children as well as the elderly
died of dehydration.
On January 16, 1976, Minister of Defence Chamoun
called in the mostly Christian manned Lebanese Air Force
to bomb leftist positions near Damour in an attempt to
halt the Palestinian attack. The use of the air force
caused a government crisis as the Prime Minister Rachid
Karame went out of his way to stop its intervention.
A plan was devised to evacuate Damour's civilians and
fortunately the majority of the population of Damour was
evacuated by sea but about 500 civilians defended by
some 20 mostly Ahrar troops did not make it out in time.
Damour was captured, the defenders were executed, the
civilians were lined up against the walls of their
houses and shot, their houses were then dynamited. Many
of the young women had been raped and babies had been
shot at close range at the back of the head. 149 bodies
lay in the streets for days afterwards and 200 other
civilians were never seen again. In all about 582
civilians had been murdered. The horror did not end
there, the old Christian cemetery was next, coffins were
dug up the dead robbed, vaults opened, and bodies and
skeletons thrown across the grave yard. Damour was then
transformed into a stronghold of Fatah and the PFLP
(Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). The
massacre and destruction of Damour is best described by
Becker in the book "The PLO".
The massacre induced Muslims residing in
Christian-dominated areas to flee to Muslim held areas,
and vice versa. Whereas most Lebanese towns and
neighbourhoods previously had been integrated, for the
first time large-scale population transfers began to
divide the country into segregated zones, the first step
toward de facto partition.
The Break-up of the Lebanese Army
Syria’s increasing influence in Lebanese politics had
now reached the Sunni leadership. To counter this,
Arafat sought to promote Sunni and Leftist supporters of
his own. One concrete manifestation of his policy was
the announcement of his alliamnce in early 1976 of the
Beirut-based Sunni militia, al-Murabitun, led by Ibrahim
Qoleilat. A former Nasserite activist, Qoleilat was
implicated in the assassination of the journalist Kamel
Mrouweh in 1966 and was very much a local Beirut thug (qabaday).
Trained and armed by Fateh, al-Murabitun, which included
Palestinian and Lebanese fighters, received Libyan
money.
For Arafat, the al-Murabitun alliance met three
objectives: (i) It gave Palestinian military operations
in Beirut an internal Lebanese Muslim cover; (ii) It
undermined the influence of the Sunni political
leadership on the ‘street’, particularly in Beirut;
(iii) It underlined Sunni opposition to Syrian policy in
Lebanon. Being largely dependent on Fateh, al-Murabitun
was a useful instrument of military operations used by
Fateh for escalation of warfare in Beirut 1976.
Rather than seeking a direct military confrontation
with the Syrian regime, Fateh opted for another move
aimed at undermining Syrian influence in Lebanon. On
15th January 1976, the Palestinians entered Kab Elias, a
mixed Christian-Muslim village located in Békaa. Ten
days later, 16 Christian civilians were killed and 23
others wounded in an unprovoked attack causing a mass
exodus of the Christians from the Bekaa towards Zahlé,
Beirut and Jounieh. It was at this juncture that the
Army Lebanese began to disintegrate completely.
Palestinians, mainly of the PLA had for days poured
across the border from Syria and attacked in force the
Christian villages in the Bekaa, when the Lebanese Army
was sent in to stop the fighting, Lieutenant Ahmad
Khatib mutinied and with his men he joined the PLA and
then surrounded and bombarded Zahlé. The main
orchestrator of the rebellion was Fateh leader Abu
Jihad. Libya, Iraq and Fateh provided financial support
for the Khatib movement.
The Movement of Ahmad al-Khatib,’ later known as the
Arab Army of Lebanon (AAL) or the Lebanese Arab Army
(LAA), was announced on 21 January 1976. The rebellion
began in the Lebanese army barracks at Hasbayya, and
quickly spread to other barracks in various parts of the
country, especially in the south and the Beqa. For
Syria, the rebellion was directed against its
‘stabilising role in Lebanon’.
Two days later the army underwent yet another split.
This time it was led by Colonel Antoine Barakat, who
declared loyalty to Frangieh. A Maronite from Frangieh’s
hometown Zgharta, Barakat controlled a major army
barracks near the defence ministry. Another officer,
Major Fouad Malik, supported the Barakat-led faction, as
did Major Sad Haddad, who took over in Marja’youn in the
south.
The Lebanese Army was ripped into sectarian pieces.
Army officers and troops entered into combat alongside
the warring factions, while others remained under the
nominal command of Army Chief Hanna Said. The latter
commanded little authority even before the break-up of
the army. Still others went home and did not take part
in the fighting. Officers of the LAA commanded units in
various parts of the country, particularly in the south
and the north (Tripoli and ‘Akkar), where two Sunni
officers, Ahmad Butari and Ahmad Mamari, were in
command. The LAA was involved in brutal acts of
kidnapping and sectarian killing in areas under its
control in the north, south and the Beqaa.
The intervention of the Khatib's Lebanese Arab Army
on the side of the PLO was a disaster for the Lebanese
Front. Ahmad al-Khatib was a cousin of a socialist
deputy named Zahir al-Khatib, who was a friend of Kamal
Jumblatt. (‘A patriotic young officer with a good sense
of politics,’ Jumblatt said of Ahmad Khatib.) As a close
ally of the PLO, he moved his units southwards, in
pursuit of the Christians who had fled that way to join
their co-religionists when the war was raging in Beirut
and the north; he intended to hunt them to extinction.
His men, most of them professional and well-equipped
soldiers, emptied or besieged the Christian towns and
villages. It cannot be told how many people they killed,
only it is certain they amounted to thousands. And as
thousands more fled the country, Lieutenant al-Khatib
came near to satisfying his highly publicized ambition
of wiping out the entire Christian population in that
part of Lebanon.
In desperation, as more officers and troops joined
the Khatib movement, on 11 March another army officer,
the Beirut garrison Brigadier ‘Aziz al-Ahdab, staged a
‘television coup’ and demanded the resignation of
President Frangiyeh and announced that the Lebanese Army
was stepping in to take over the government and restore
order. A Sunni from Tripoli, Ahdab was the military
commander of the Beirut district. Ahdab’s troops
numbered fewer than a hundred, and hardly controlled
their own command headquarters in Beirut. Whether or not
Ahdab had the tacit support of the army command to force
the cabinet to resign and help reunite the army, he
definitely went too far by demanding the resignation of
Frangiyeh. Although initially seeking to halt the
breakdown, Ahdab’s action had the opposite effect. His
ill-conceived move hastened the disintegration of the
army and confirmed Syria’s suspicion of Palestinian
involvement in this show of force. Indeed, if Abu Jihad
was the man behind Khatib, Abu Hassan Salameh, Arafat’s
close associate, was behind Ahdab. According to Abu
Iyad, Ahdab was supplied with a Fateh escort to the
television building where he announced the ‘coup’.
Ahdab's move came too late and with too little support,
and he was derisively nicknamed "General Television" by
militia leaders, who commanded far more men.
On the surface, the LAA rebellion seemed spontaneous
and reflected Muslim discontent within the army. In
reality, however, the rebellion was orchestrated by
Fateh and had well-defined objectives. For Fateh
leaders, the Lebanese Army had always constituted a
military threat to the PLO, not Lebanese militia forces.
In early 1976, the situation seemed ripe for a large
scale military action within the army. On that objective
Palestinian leaders, notably Arafat, Abu Iyad, Abu
Jihad, Abu Hassan Salameh, were in agreement. Fateh
leaders Abu Jihad and Abu Hassan Salameh were in control
of the LAA, and were assisted by military commanders. As
the war intensified members of the LAA began to realize
that they had been played and used by the PLO and so the
LAA shrank from approximately 3,000-4,000 troops in
March 1976 to a few hundred by the end of the year by
the end of the year and the LAA was completely
marginalised, as was the role of Ahmad al-Khatib (Syrian
authorities detained Khatib on 18 January 1977).
The Great Bank Robbery, The Hotel
District, and the Green Line
At some point during March or April the Palestinians
realized that they had gained effective control of Bank
Street and so the stage was set for the biggest bank
robbery in modern history. General looting of the banks
was followed by disastrous attempts to dynamite the
vaults causing serious injuries to the Palestinian
thieves, so they decided to bring in professional
safecrackers from Europe, possibly supplied by the
mafia. Of the eleven banks robbed, the worst hit were
those with safe-deposit vaults, the British Bank of the
Middle East, Banca di Roma, and Bank Misr-Liban. The
Guinness Book of Records claims the BBME alone lost a
minimum of $20 million but probably $50 million, that is
equivalent to $175 million today. Saiqa, the pro Syrian
wing of the PLO were identified with the Banca di Roma
thefts and marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Palestine was deemed responsible for the theft of the
BBME. At one point a fire fight broke out between the
two factions as Saiqa tried to steal the DFLP loot.
The fighting that had been raging on in the hotel
district was reaching its climax. For months the
Phalange had been perched defiantly in the twenty seven
storey Holiday Inn hotel repelling attack after attack
by Palestinian and leftist forces, giving the 'Battle of
the Holiday Inn' legendary status. On 21st March 1976, a
major assault by a special Palestinian commando units
using armoured vehicles lent by the Khatib's Arab Army
and supported by the leftist Muslim militias finally
dislodged the Phalange. The leftist militias who had
been handed the hotel by the Palestinians for propaganda
purposes got so carried away celebrating that the
Phalange was able to sneak back in at dawn the next day.
The Palestinians therefore had to do the job all over
again on the 22nd of March, and over the next few days
the Phalange were pushed back to their defensive line at
Martyrs Square.
As the weeks went by it was becoming apparent that
the Lebanese Front were losing the war as the
Palestinian-Muslim-leftist alliance forced them to
retreat farther into East Beirut. The Lebanese Front had
grossly underestimated the strength of the Palestinian
forces in Lebanon and the support the Palestinians would
receive from some Arab countries. The Christian militias
of the Lebanese Front now began combining their military
strength becoming known as the Lebanese Forces, the
various component militias however maintained their own
identity. The Christians felt it imperative to retain
control of Beirut's port district and constructed an
elaborate barricade defence at Allenby Street. As the
Christians tried to stave off the
Muslim-Leftist-Palestinian assault on the port district,
the Lebanese Army finally entered the fray. Christian
officers and enlisted men from the Al Fayadiyyah
barracks outside Beirut came to the aid of their
beleaguered coreligionists, bringing armoured cars and
heavy artillery. The left wing Muslim-Palestinian
advance was stopped, and the front at Allenby Street
evolved into a no man's land, dividing Christian East
Beirut from Muslim West Beirut. Vegetation that
eventually grew in this abandoned area inspired the name
Green Line, and cut the city in two until the end of the
war in 1990.
But in East Beirut, right in the Maronite heartland,
was the Palestinian ‘camp’ of Tall al-Za’tar. For many
months before the outbreak of hostilities, Maronite
businessmen driving from their offices in the city to
their homes in the mountains had been stopped on the
road through the camp by armed Palestinian boys and
forced to show their identity papers. And now, from
their strongholds in Tall al-Za’tar, the PLO forces were
shelling the factories and offices of the eastern
Christian suburbs of the city. The Kataeb and their
allies marked Tall al-Za’tar for destruction.
The Israeli Connection
Israel had cultivated a relationship with Lebanon's
Christian community almost from the advent of the
Zionist movement. Some Zionist politicians had envisaged
a Jewish-Maronite alliance to counterbalance Muslim
regional dominance. After Israel's independence in 1948,
some Israeli leaders advocated extending the northern
border to encompass Lebanon up to the Litani River and
to assimilate the Christian population living there. In
1955 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and General Moshe
Dayan conceived a plan to intervene in Lebanon and
install a Lebanese Christian president amenable to
improving bilateral relations.
The patriarchs of Lebanon's Christian community,
particularly Pierre Gemayel and Camille Chamoun, were
tempted by Israeli offers of assistance, but they
nevertheless resisted entrusting the security of the
Maronites to Israel and abjured close contact with
Israel. But in 1976, threatened by the escalating War, a
new generation of Lebanese Christian leaders turned to
Israel for military support against the ascendant PLO
and the Muslim left. After a series of clandestine
meetings between Mossad, the Israeli foreign
intelligence agency, and militia leaders Bashir Gemayel
and Dany Chamoun, Israel supplied US$50 million to arm
and equip the Christian fighters.
The Constitutional Document
For some weeks efforts for a negotiated settlement
had been underway. The idea for a negotiated political
settlement to end conflict through Syrian mediation had
been on the mind of the Syrian leadership since November
1975. Damascus was using a ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach
with the Maronite leadership. Syrian support for
Palestinian, Leftist and Muslim forces was intended to
keep the Maronite leadership under pressure to reach a
settlement that favoured Syrian interests. To pursue
that course of action, Damascus called upon an associate
of Frangiyeh, Lucien Dahdah, then the Chairman of the
Board of the Intra Company. Dahdah, who had family ties
with Frangiyeh and old acquaintances in Syria, was
contacted in Paris, where he was staying. With
Frangiyeh’s approval, Dahdah met with Syrian officials.
Talks went on for about four weeks and resulted in a
draft, which was the basis for the Constitutional
Document. Dahdah held meetings with Syrian officials,
including seven with Assad. When negotiations started
relations between Assad and Frangieh had been strained
for several months, following Syrian army intervention
in the war. Frangiyeh had presented evidence to Damascus
confirming Syrian troops’ involvement in the war,
particularly in the north.
The Constitutional Document was a convenient
balancing act. It stipulated a more balanced
confessional representation in government office and
provided a formula to contain the internal dimension of
conflict. It addressed grievances though without
undermining the confessional foundations of a political
system. One such grievance was Lebanon’s Arabism. The
document proclaimed Lebanon’s Arabism but stated that
Lebanon is a sovereign, free and independent country.
Of the seventeen points stated in the Constitutional
Document, five dealt with Muslim grievances. By and
large, they were aimed at curtailing presidential power.
They are as follows: (i) Seats in parliament would be
distributed on a fifty-fifty etween Muslims and
Christians, and proportionately within each sect; (ii)
the prime minister would be elected by a 51 per cent
majority of the Chamber of then the prime minister
should hold parliamentary consultations and the list of
ministers in agreement with the president; (iii) All
decrees and draft laws should be signed by the president
and the prime minister. This did not apply to the
decrees appointing the prime minister, accepting his
resignation, or dissmissing his government. The prime
minister should enjoy all the powers custumarily
exercised by him; (iv) The distribution of posts on a
confessional basis be abolished, although the principle
of confessional equality should be maintained at the
level of senior posts; (v) The naturalisation laws
should be amended.
By contrast, only one provision addressed Christian
demands. It affirmed the distribution of the three
presidential posts, which allocated the presidency of
the republic to a Maronite, the presidency of the
Chamber of Deputies to a Shiite and the premiership to a
Sunni.
Kamal Jumblatt and the PLO were heavily opposed to
this document as an end to the war did not suit them.
Jumblatt saw in this document a re-enactment of the 'no
victor, no vanquished' formula of 1958, something which
he was not willing to accept. Compromise was not
appealing to Jumblatt and the PLO at a time when the
military balance was in their favour. Therefore they
looked for ways to intensify the fighting.
The Mountain Offensive
In March 1976, the leftist forces and the
Palestinians launched an offensive across Mount Sannine
to invade the Christian heartland. The PLO head
strategist, Salah Khalaf, announced as Palestinian
forces climbed the eastern flank of Mount Sannine to
attack Christians in their historic mountain villages,
that the road to Palestine lay through 'Uyun Al Siman,
Aintoura, and even Jounieh itself'. These Christian
areas are to the north of Beirut not towards Israel in
the south, the Palestinians had decla |