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 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.

The Troubled Years, 1970-1974

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.

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.

The Opening Rounds, 1975

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:

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: