PLO Policy in Lebanon: Legacies and Lessons

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

• Lebanon has long occupied a particularly important place in the Palestinian struggle. Over 350,000 Palestinians reside there, it borders on Israel/Palestine, and for some twelve years-from 1970 until the Israeli invasion of June 1982-Lebanon served as the political and military center of gravity of the Palestinian movement. It did so, in one sense, in the classic manner of all external guerrilla sanctuaries: it provided shelter, a logistical base, and a departure point for military activities. More importantly, however, Lebanon offered the Palestinian movement-long constrained by the interests and interventions of others-its first period of sustained political freedom. In Lebanon, the Palestinian movement grew uniquely free to construct its own institutions, to promote its own identity, and to choose its own, Palestinian paths to the dream of national liberation

• It is undeniable that the PLO was successful in overcoming many of the formidable obstacles it faced in Lebanon. After the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Palestinian fida'iyyin exploded onto the regional scene, winning mass support not only from their people but also from the broader Arab population

• From 1969 to 1973, and especially after the loss of its position in Jordan in 1970-71, the importance of Lebanon to the PLO grew. When a second attempt to suppress the PLO was made by the Lebanese army in 1973, the Palestinian resistance, coupled with internal and external support from its Lebanese and Arab allies, was such that the authorities were forced to accept a return to the status quo ante-the Cairo Agreement, as interpreted by the so-called "Milkart protoco

• From May 1973 to April 1975, tensions in Lebanon mounted. When civil war erupted, the PLO's military defense of its positions, together with its internal alliance with the parties of the Lebanese National Movement and assistance from external Arab allies, succeeded in safeguarding the security of the Palestinian refugee camps during the first nine months of fightin

• n deteriorated in January 1976 with attacks by the Lebanese Front (LF) on Palestinian camps in Beirut. In response, the PLO and the LNM launched a counteroffensive, securing a partially effective cease-fir

• The most important casualty was Lebanese public opinion. In 1969, widespread public support for the Palestinian movement in all Lebanon's confessional communities had effectively hamstrung the Lebanese govern- ment's attempts to suppress the fida'iyyin. Lebanese progressive parties played a particular role in mobilizing this support, and in turn found their growth catalyzed by the Palestinian presence. But even many conservative leaders, and especially the traditional Sunni urban leadership, had little choice but to echo cries for "freedom of action for the fida'iyyin" if they were to not risk their own political base

• By the eve of the 1982 Israeli invasion, however, a significant degree of alienation between the PLO and its traditional Lebanese supporters had set in. Constant Israeli military pressure on Lebanon, resulting in the deaths of thousands and the displacement of hundreds of thousands from the south, was a major, perhaps the major, reason for thi

• As Rashid Khalidi has noted, the weakening of the PLO's popular Lebanese position had "a vital impact on the PLO when the Israeli invasion began."9 But it was to be in the aftermath of the August 1982 evacuation of PLO personnel from Beirut that the full legacy-and cost-of earlier PLO policy in Lebanon made itself fel

• . More fundamentally, however, the Palestinian resistance move- ment was dangerous to the Lebanese system itself. However much the "revolutionary" nature of the PLO (and more specifically, its Fateh mainstream) may have been questioned by some, 12 the very presence of a militant, generally progressive, and avowedly non-sectarian popular move- ment in an unequal laissez-faire society wherein the privileges of a relatively small number of leading families were sustained by a precarious sectarian political order, was clearly a destabilizing element.

• In response, the PLO/Fateh mainstream adopted two main sets of policies designed to reduce tensions with the Lebanese government and conservative parties. The first of these-what might be termed a strategy of Palestinian "self-restraint"-involved limitations on potentially provoca- tive Palestinian activities. Beginning in the early 1970s, the PLO an- nounced (but rarely adhered to) a series of temporary freezes on cross-border activity in south Lebanon. It also attempted to regulate the behavior of Palestinian guerrillas through its own military police (the Palestine Armed Struggle Command), judicial system, and internal security forces (Force 17). At the same time, dialogue was initiated with the Phalange party and Christian leaders, in an effort to ease the Christian right's concerns over the Palestinian armed presence

• , such policies were limited in what they could achieve. Although the overall cost of the Palestinian presence to Lebanese decisionmakers might be mitigated by reducing transitory PLO-related costs-Israeli retaliation, Palestinian misbehavior, and so forth-the struc- tural component of this cost represented by the PLO's role as a revolution- ary catalyst was in essence irreducibl

• In the south, a related problem marred Palestinian relations with the Lebanese Shi'i movement Amal. The Shi'a of south Beirut and south Lebanon had, in the late 1960s, been among the primary supporters of the Palestinian movement. Fateh had been a major sponsor of Amal when it was first established by Imam Musa Sadr in the 1970s. But as the scale of Israeli destruction in the south grew, many Shi'a began to resist the deployment of Palestinian forces around their farms and villages. Amal increasingly became the umbrella for this resistance. Conflict between elements of the Shi'i community and LNM groups also arose as a result of Libya's perceived involvement in Sadr's 1978 disappearance, the Iran-Iraq war, and political competition for supporter

• This latter point-that the importance of Lebanon to the PLO was political, not military-was fully understood by then-Prime Minister Menahem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who confronted it directly in June 1982. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon sought to weaken the PLO's politico-military power and its territorial and political autonomy

• If Israel's scorched-earth policies in south Lebanon were doing serious and intended damage to the PLO's position in Lebanon, almost equal damage was being done by the behavior of the Palestinian movement

• . For some Lebanese militias, emerging from the qabada'i (strong-arm) tradition of Lebanese politics, looting, extortion, and smuggling represented as much their raison d'etre as did any political objectives or beliefs. This was not the case for Palestinian organizations, which as organizations formally condemned such behavior. Still, a significant number of cadres and leaders alike did exploit the situation for personal gain. Their conspicuous wealth at a time when ordinary Palestinians and Lebanese were facing bombings, shellings, and social hardship had a severely corrosive affect on the PLO's status, largely overshadowing the popular image of a decade earlier of the self-sacrificing fida'i struggling to regain usurped rights.

• os. Arab regimes continued to use Palestinian and Lebanese organizations to settle scores on Lebanese territory. Several bouts of fighting between Palestinian organizations themselves resulted in dozens of Lebanese casualties. And last, but by no means least, the situation was constantly fuelled by Israel and the Lebanese Front which, in the early 1980s, embarked on a sustained terrorist campaign of car bombings against Joint Forces-controlled ar

• Tajawuzat (excesses) was the generic title given to such militia lawless- ness, corruption, extortion, internecine fighting, violations of the Cairo Agreement, and friction arising from Palestinian military deployments in the south

• s. One effect of this has been to encourage clique formation among Fateh subgroups, and the use of patronage and private structures of authority to assure policy compliance. In Lebanon, fealty often came to be prized over competence; corruption by local Palestinian (and Lebanese) commanders and ill-disciplined behavior by guerrillas was over- looked in the interests of power. This approach was eventually applied to Lebanese politics too, with damaging consequences to both the LNM and the PLO-LNM alliance.

• Such behavior was criticized by the PFLP and the DFLP. In contrast to Fateh, in which tajawuzat were usually the product of its loose organization, the DFLP and PFLP were less vulnerable to this by virtue of their Leninist internal structures. But they were not entirely innocent of such practices either

• , disregard for Lebanese law, and a lack of sensitivity to the religious sensibilities and moral conservatism of the south Lebanese peasantry.

• April 1987 also saw the reunification of the PLO at the eighteenth session of the Palestine National Council in Algiers. The political resolu- tions adopted by the eighteenth PNC made specific reference to the PLO's position in Lebanon, calling for "reinforcing the unity of action regarding the situation in our camps in Lebanon"