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CAIRO AGREEMENT 1969 |
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CAIRO AGREEMENT 1969 |
America's open support for Israel in the 1967 Six Day War confirmed its status among Arab nationalists as an enemy of the Arabs. Anti-American feeling spread in the Middle East and contributed in Lebanon to renewed internal polarization. The situation was exacerbated by the breaking of diplomatic relations between Egypt, Syria, Iraq and other Arab states, and the US, and the relocation of a number of US diplomatic, business, and intelligence operations to Beirut under a government still friendly to Washington. Beirut quickly gained a reputation as an outpost of "American Imperialism", and "progressive forces" led by emergent Palestinian guerrilla movements and leftist Lebanese parties, with support from like-minded governments in Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad, set out to do battle with the imperial hegemon on Lebanese soil.
Lebanon quickly lost its political integrity as a nation-state. South Lebanon became a battleground in the War of Attrition that developed in 1968-69, and the growth of Palestinian armed power in Lebanon, with Arab backing, led to a gradual collapse of state sovereignty. This situation was recognized quasi-formally in the Cairo Agreement of 1969, masterminded by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in which the Palestinians, organized by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), were allowed special military and political privileges in Lebanon.
On November 3, 1969, a Lebanese delegation headed by Army Commander General Emile al-Bustani, acting under the authority of the then President, Charles Helou, met with a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) delegation, headed by Yasir Arafat, chairman of the organization. The meeting took place in Cairo in the presence of the United Arab Republic (Egyptian) Minister of Foreign Affairs Mahmud Riyad, and the War Minister, General Muhammad Fawzi. They reached an agreement that effectively endorsed PLO freedom of action in Lebanon to recruit, arm, train, and employ fighters against Israel. The Lebanese Army protected their bases and supply lines.
Fatah and other Palestinian Arab factions had long been active among the 400,000 Palestinian Arab refugees in Lebanese camps. Through the 1960s the center for armed Palestinian Arab activities, PLO and factions, had been in Jordan. Then, in 1970, King Hussein of Jordan decided to evict the bulk of armed PLO terrorists in three weeks of bloody fighting in what the Palestinian Arabs call "Black September." One of the major results was the forced migration of a large number of PLO fighters from Jordan to Lebanon. There they based their military and economic activities in the fertile environment of the refugee camps. Soon the Palestinians were well on their way to creating what the Lebanese called "a State within the State."
The Cairo Agreement was ostensibly designed to regulate Palestinian activity in Lebanon. But the Agreement failed in that respect and the PLO guerrillas enjoyed essentially free rein in the south, out of Beirut's control. Many of the most infamous Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks of the 1970s originated in Lebanon, or were at least planned there. The border area became a launching site for Palestinian attacks against Israel and blistering Israeli reprisals.
The US was alarmed at the rapid advances made by the Palestinian Arab radicals and soon lent its political support to a tougher Lebanese stance in which the Lebanese would deal with the Palestinians as King Hussein had dealt with them in Jordan. This was referred to as the 'Ammanization' option. President Franjiyyeh, elected in 1970, seemed to have the required tough-man characteristics to do the job, but proved unable to act decisively.
The Cairo Agreement of 1969 forced Lebanese authorities to let the Palestinian Arabs bear arms so that they could carry on their war with Israel. Increasing tensions within Lebanon, between Christians and Muslims, Lebanese and Palestinian Arabs, and other factional disputes, led to a complete breakdown and civil war in the mid-1970s, and eventually to invasion by Israel when it acted in 1978 to stop attacks originating from Lebanon. Although the Cairo Agreement was officially canceled in 1987, Lebanon has in actuality been unable to reduce the presence of the armed PLO terrorists who continue to run the refugee camps as their own independent entities.
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