Gamal Abdul Nasser
A Political Testimony
Cairo Agreement 1969
Deeds and Legacy of an Arab Leader
Battling to Control the P.L.O.
The Six Day War - June 1967
Black September, The PLO's attempt to take over Jordan
Events in the Middle East and North Africa Since the End of WWII
PLO/Fatah's Nazi training was CIA-sponsored
Nasser's role in The Arab-Israeli Wars 1948 - 1973
The Arab-Israeli Wars: Roots
See also
Gamal Abdul Nasser
Gamal Abdul Nasser was a
Egyptian revolutionist that successfully drove
British out of his country after 72 years of rule, under his presidency
Egypt came out of intense poverty to prosperity, he became famous all
around the Arab Peninsula after standing firm against the western
nations and his efforts of combining the Arab power to combat
anti-Muslim forces mainly the Israel.Childhood January , 15th 1918. Gamal Abdul Nasser Hussein was born in Banny Mor Asyout,Egypt. One year before the 1919 revolution against the English Colonization. He lived 8 years there where he learnt the South Egyptian strict and generous traditions. He moved then to Asyout city, then to Alexandria, then Cairo. All of these moving were because of his father’s job as an inspector in the ministry of Post. His mother passed away on 1926. Gamal spent 10 years in Cairo until he received his high school diploma from “Nahda” school in 1937. At these years Gamal was part of many demonstrations against the English colonization where he was injured in one of them and got a scar in his face that stayed until he died. 1937 was the year when Nasser joined the military school where he graduated on 1938 to join the third platoon in Asyout where he met Anwar El Sadat, and Zakaria Mohyi El Deen who later joined him in the “Free Officers” organization. 1939 Nasser was transferred to Alexandria where he met with Abdul Hakeem Amer who became his best friend, and played a controversial role in his life.
Free Officers Revolutionary organization
Egypt was a kingdom ruled by English and the figure head of the country was the Puppet King Farouk , thousands of English army men were on Egyptian soil to protect United Kingdom interests in the region. Not to repeat the 1882 army revolution, or the 1919 revolution, the UK worked hard to prevent any development of the Egyptian army. Corruption was spreading with each government, the royal palace aided by the English interference in the internal affairs. Such environment gathered a group of young officers to fight corruption and work for the development of Egypt and Egyptians.
1942 Nasser was transferred to Sudan with Abdul Hakeem Amer where their friendship became stronger, and they exchanged their rebellion ideas about the future of Egypt. While serving in the Sudan during the late 1940s, he and other three other officers founded the secret Free Officers revolutionary organization. Their objective was the overthrow of the British occupying regime and the puppet Egyptian king.
The 1948 war was the ignition for the “Free Officers Organizations”. It gave the free officers the time to meet, and share their thoughts about the future of Egypt and quoted from Nasser diaries “…We were fighting in Palestine, and our dreams were in Egypt. Our bullets were targeting the enemy but our hearts were with our nation who was left for the wolves”.Such war added a lot to Nasser’s personality, it gave him confidence, and it added more to his rebellion nature for Freedom. Nasser gained his leadership reputation after the battle of “Falouga” where he managed to fight with no backup support, and under siege against the Israeli armed forces, he was also wounded. The confidential organization became active on 1949, started by a committee of young officers that included Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kamal El Deen Hussein, Hassan Ibrahim, Khaled Mohey El Deen, and Abdul Menim Raouf. New officers were also added to this.
In 1950, Nasser was chosen president for the Free Officers organization. They faced Lots of obstacles like being monitored by the “political police” which was responsible to stop any action against the royal palace or the English personnel. This made the attempts of recruiting new officers a difficult task; lots of investigations were to take place before adding a new officer to the organization.
In November 1949 The Organization distributed their first “flyer” which discussed the Defeat in Palestine War. The flyers continued to be sent by Mail and to be delivered by hand according to the sector that the free officer who is delivering it (Air Force, Infantry...etc).
In1951 the Organization started a newspaper called “the voice of the free officers” which was sent to 700 Egyptian officers by mail. The royal palace had information about such organization, and King Farouk tried to destroy it before it threatens his crown.
Yet the Organization kept working for its goal, and more officers were drafted until July the 1952 date of revolution.
The Revolution
After becoming a mature organization, the free officers started publishing their demands by the mailed flyers. They requested a strong Egyptian army, where its duty to protect Egypt not to be used for serving the royal palace, nor the English interests in the region. They demanded quick solutions for the starvation of the Egyptians. The need of a revolution against the royal system became a nation’s dream after the poor standards that the citizens suffered, and increasing of corruption. 26th January 1952, named “black Saturday” when a huge fire burnt downtown Cairo destroying stores, factories, houses and killing tens of innocent Egyptians. Corruption was the main cause of such tragedy. The failure to pin point the responsible of such fire was a knock out for “The Wafd” party who were in charge of the Egyptian government for years before such incident. King Farouk tried to calm the Egyptians but failed. At that time, the Free officers were well known by the palace, and the political police exerted lots of effort to neutralize them, such environment pushed ahead the date to start the revolution. Days before the 23rd of July 1952, the officers started their plan to rebel against the current system and change it. The plan was to move at the night of 22nd of July to capture the main base of the army, followed by taking charge of the whole army and controlling them from there. Then the Free officers controlled the telephone systems, Airport, train stations and the Egyptian radio station. Controlling such major buildings allowed the officers to give false information to the palace in Alexandria where King Farouk was residing. The revolution managed to capture the Army central bases in Al-Areesh and Rafah, by doing so the officers controlled most of the army platoons which eased their mission in controlling Alexandria. The revolution succeeded in their plan, and Anwar El Sadat announced the evolution of a new Era that will work for the sake of development of Egypt cleaning all the corruption caused by the royal palace. King Farouk was exiled with none of his assets, and brigadier Mohammed Nagueeb was given the authority to be the leader of the Army and the political authority in Egypt. In 1953, the Egyptian constitution changed and the royal system was cancelled and replaced by the republican system. . Gen. Muhammad Naguib became the nominal head of the government, but Nasser held power through his control of the Revolutionary Command Committee. In 1954, following an attempt on Nasser's life, he arrested Naguib and became premier of Egypt
Presidency and rise to a Outstanding Arab Leader
Soon after Nasser took power, the British became aware of there fall and thus signed an agreement , ending their 72- year presence in Egypt.
Nasser introduced new political system, it was called Arab socialism, with a one-party system and with Islam as its official religion. With this program he confiscated 243,000 hectares (2,430 km²) farm land from a small group of rich landowners and distributed it evenly to the population Later on in his presidency he nationalized banks and industries. In July,1956,Nasser announced to a huge cheering crowd in Manshia, Alexandria and, via Cairo Radio, to the rest of the Arab World that he was nationalizing the Suez Canal Company and creating the an Egyptian Canal Authority to manage the Canal. The entire Third World was thrilled and delighted. There existed no potent symbol of Western colonial domination and a legend of the Western imperialism and hegemony more than the Suez Canal. But there was worry about the consequences; the West would surely not allow Nasser to succeed. USA and Britain withdrew a promised support for the construction of a new Aswan. He also continued his purchases of military equipment from Soviet bloc countries. He had gone there after being turned down by the West, which suspected plans to use the weapons against Israel.
The nationalization of the Suez Canal was met by an Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula and an Anglo-French invasion of the Canal Zone. Although Egyptian forces suffered military defeat but with Nasser’s diplomacy, the invading forces were put under pressure from the UN and United States, and had to withdraw. Egypt kept the full ownership of the Suez Canal With US assistance the Canal was cleared and reopened in April 1957. All the British and French property in Egypt was sequestered. About 3,000 British and French nationals were expelled, and more thousands decided to leave. Britain and France attempted to retaliate by imposing an economic blockade of Egypt, but the gesture was ineffective, he also managed to get Soviet support for the construction of the dam, which was completed 14 years later. Due to his economic policies specially construction of Dam and the Canal to take water to un-irrigated land, Egypt emerged from poverty stricken country to a prospering nation.
By this time Nasser had become a hero in the Arab world. In 1958 Syria and Egypt united under his presidency, forming the United Arab Republic ,hoping that one day all the Arab nations would join, but the Egypt-Syria union, however, broke up in 1961 after a military coup in Syria.
By 1967 the Arab-Israeli situation had deteriorated. After the UN peacekeeping force, at Nasser's request, had been withdrawn, and Egyptian guns blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli ships, Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula up to the Suez Canal ( Six-Day War) in just six days.After humiliating defeat of Egypt’s forces, Nasser, taking responsibility for the debacle, resigned, but the thousands of people took to the streets, demanding his return to government. He stayed in power for 18 years even in the face of a large number of domestic competitors and opponents .On September 28, 1970, he died suddenly of a heart attack.
Even after his death till now he is still remembered by Muslims as a man who stood up to Western Dominance and lead his country from a poor slaved British Colony to a Free Progressing Nation. Even his harshest critics which accuse him of turning Egypt into a police state with controlled rule, censorship, still beyond doubt see him as the foremost Arab leader, who restored Arab dignity after the long humiliation of Western domination.
Nasser's ideas were laid down in his book of 1959, The Philosophy of the Revolution
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President Gamel Abdel Nasser
On 23 July 1970
On 23 July 1970
On 23 July
1970, Gamel Abdel Nasser addressed the 4th National Congress
of the Arab Socialist Union in Cairo. It was to be his last official
speech, and can be read as his political testament, in which he clearly
sets out the course for Egypt to follow - a course the spirit of which
he defined in his interview for the New York Times in March 1969: "As you know, we have not been able to realise all our dreams during the last 17 years because of a variety of problems: the occupation, the 1967 aggression, etc. My dream above all is the development of the country, electricity in the villages and work for everybody. I have no personal dream. I have no personal life. There is nothing personal about me."
Political Testament: The Struggle for the Renaissance
On this memorable day, the anniversary of the 23 July revolution, after 18 years of that revolution, we must pause to consider two distinct lines in the UAR {United Arab Republic} if we are to understand the essence, the objectives and the forces which have animated our struggle. The first line is to the south, on the Nile; I refer to the High Dam, construction of which was completed today. The other line is to the north, along the Suez canal.
It is the battlefront on which the Egyptian people and the national army are engaged in the noblest and most violent of conflicts. To the south, on the Nile, there rises the High Dam and the giant power station whose twelfth and last turbine began turning today, thereby signalling the completion of one of the biggest electric power stations in the world.
By now, 836,000 feddans of low lying land have been fully irrigated; a further 850,000 feddans have been improved and added to our arable land area. Improvement work proceeds apace. 10,000 million kWh have been added to national grid. There are now 500 kWh per head, whereas in 1952, the figure was barely 40 kWh.
On the green line, to the north, along the Suez canal, the Egyptian army is fighting. Every day Egyptian youth is giving a fine example of military and national honour.
The Egyptian army, its officers and its commanders, have deployed extraordinary efforts to reconstitute themselves, in circumstances that were amongst the most difficult our national struggle has faced. This army, which the enemy thought finished for decades, has managed to take up the combat again with a rapidity which impartial historians of this period will consider truly miraculous.
The sincere co-operation of the USSR, which was one of the key factors in the construction of the High Dam, has provided the army with the equipment and experts necessary to its reconstitution.
The endless efforts deployed by hundreds of thousands of our men and young people who have had the honour of serving in the army in the critical phase has enabled us to achieve a level of combat readiness that neither our friends nor our foes would have envisaged three years ago. The Egyptian Army is today engaged in a battle of special importance, the battle against Israeli air superiority made possible by US assistance following the 1967 aggression. The enemy wanted the Egyptian front to remain open so that his aerial superiority could be used freely. Everyday the enemy carries out raids that last for several hours. Enemy planes fly over our positions and on some day s drop up to a thousand tons of explosives, costing nearly a million pounds sterling. The enemy has concentrated his offensive on our anti-aircraft defences, so as to prevent their fulfilling their role to the front.
But the enemy has not succeeded... Between the lines across the Nile, at Aswan, and the green line to the north, along the Suez canal, the entire Egyptian nation is resisting, confident, sincere and convinced of attaining its goal. That is the domestic front....
The value of agricultural production increased by 15% between 1967 and 1969. Exports of agricultural products over the same period grew by 40%, despite the war....
These are only some aspects of the agricultural activity of our peasants, who form the great working potential of this country and the fundamental pillar of the popular working forces. These figures are far from the whole story, but I felt they are worth quoting, since our enemy's press media and those of their supporters claim that while we may have resisted militarily, our economy is collapsing.
I want to stress, to you and to the whole Arab nation, that when the Egyptian people decided to resist, in 1967, it also decided to work. Production has increased in every sector, in agriculture and everywhere else. If we turn to industry and to the workers who form the other part of the popular working forces, the picture that emerges against the backdrop of war and danger is just as splendid and honourable.
In 1966-67, the value of industrial production was œE1,077, 678,000, and represented no substantial increase over the previous financial year. In 1967-68 it reached œE1,169,419,000, an increase of œE91,801,000, or 8.5%. In 1968-69 the value of industrial production rose to œE1,322,698,000, an increase of œE345,800,000 or 22.8%. In 1969-70, it rose to œE1,424,987,000, an increase of œE344,639,000 or 32%.
These increases are increases in real production, that is, they exclude any price rises. The increases have been quantitive and effective; they have been achieved not only despite danger and war conditions, but also at a time when one of our most important pre-war industrial regions, the canal zone, has been seriously affected. The phenomenon is particularly notable in that our industrial exports have grown by 63% in wartime, from œE82 million in 1966-67 to œE134 million in 1969-70.
The Egyptian people have not stood alone facing war, danger and terror during this admirable and historic period. The entire Arab nation has been beside them, fulfilling its role in the struggle while recognizing its right to assume the greater part of the costs of the battle for the future.
Above all there were the masses, confident in the knowledge that the freedom of the Arab nation was the only objective, and victory for that freedom the only requirement. The Arab masses were aware of every step taken; they rejected all attempts to divert them and remained faithfully committed to their own fundamental freedom. In the first and last resort, this cause, this freedom, this imperative need for victory belongs to them.
The Arab masses have been exposed to psychological warfare in which the enemy has used the most modern methods, great intelligence and much duplicity. But the Arab masses have not succumbed to this psychological warfare. They have attentively followed each stage of the military confrontation and have refused to be tricked by the phoney solicitude of their enemies.
The masses proved capable of distinguishing the windbags and word merchants from those who face death on the battlefield. The masses realised the decisive importance of military action and the full need for political action. They realise that although the objective was clear and unambiguous, the movement pursuing it needed complete freedom of action to cope with a highly mobile enemy, a world preoccupied by the Middle East conflict and an international force comprising both friends and enemies.
The Arab masses did not simply observe all this passively; they did everything they could to help while they awaited results....
The Palestinian resistance made its presence felt and managed to transform the Palestinian people from a refugee people into a warrior people. The Palestinian action made its mark throughout the world, and the Al-Fatah organisation which launched the action, accepting martyrdom in the service of the liberation of the Palestinian people, has won massive support in the Arab world. The resistance organisations have now managed to agree that a united central committee will in future co-ordinate their actions and objectives.
For my part, I believe that the enemy will seek to sow discord amongst the resistance fighters and amongst all the children of Palestine. But until now, the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance have had sufficient maturity to foil all the plots of the imperialists and their agents.... Our Arab nation's struggle did not and could not proceed separately from the rest of the world. We have friends abroad, and so does our enemy. If we recall the course of events since 1967 it is easy to pick out those who have been our friends and those who have been Israel's.
When we remember the friends who stood by us in the dark days of 1967, the first, the foremost, the one to who we owe the deepest gratitude is undoubtedly the Soviet Union, whose leaders, Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny sent me a message telling me not to despair, that the USSR would help us in every way and would supply us with arms to replace those lost in the battles in the Sinai. That was the cornerstone of the reconstruction of our armed forces. The arms from the USSR arrived immediately.
Everybody in the West, in the United States and in Israel insisted that we were finished and that nothing could be expected of our armed forces following the June defeat. Some Israeli leaders declared at the time that they were awaiting phone calls from Cairo or Damascus suing for surrender and asking for the terms of capitulation.
The Egyptian people, all the peoples of the Arab nation, decided not to accept defeat. But we needed arms for our forces. So when we say we are deeply grateful to the USSR, it is because we remember that in spite of our enemies' hopes and declarations, the Soviet Union delivered planes, tanks, cannons and arms to us within days of the defeat. In return, we offered the hope that we would resist and, with God's help, triumph..., that we would build first a defensive army, then an offensive army which would enable us to liberate the territories usurped from us.
The Soviet Union has also given us political support, both in the United Nations and in the international domain, whereas the United States has helped Israel to remain in the occupied territories....
We must ask ourselves 'What does our enemy want?' It is clear from the Israeli leaders' declarations since 1967 that to this day our enemy still seeks to expand, and thus has no intention of abiding by the Security Council's resolution....
Some Israeli leaders have announced that Israel's frontiers are the Nile and the Euphrates and that the true map of Israel is the one drawn up over 70 years ago by Herzl. That map begins at the Damietta fork and stretches into Iraq, encompasses large areas of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. That is what our enemy wants.
From 1967 till today, the word withdrawal has not crossed our enemy's lips. When the Israeli leaders answer questions in vague terms rather than speak of withdrawal, they mention the redeployment of Israeli forces.... All this shows that Israel seeks to expand at the expense of the Palestinian people and of the Arab peoples as a whole. That is its nature and we must not lose sight of it in this phase of our struggle marked by open battle over the Suez canal front.
Our enemy brings down upon us the hostility of the United States; the American leaders are on Israel's side and supply it with everything it asks for in the way of electronic equipment and military material, so as to prevent us from defending our territory and our children against Israeli raids. Our enemy co-operates with the United States and the United States co-operates totally with Israel....
In fact, a new kind of warfare is being waged for the first time in history: electronic warfare. People say that Israel enjoys technological superiority and that is why it won in 1967. But that is just a way of camouflaging the extent of American collusion at the time. Up until 1967, Israel had obtained from the United States all the electronic warfare equipment needed to paralyse and locate our radar installations and rocket bases, to jam our telecommunications, etc. At the time the newspapers claimed that all this was due to Israeli skill and technology, but it later emerged that all the equipment had been sipped to Israel from the United States.
War today is bitter and complicated, but our armed forces have managed to cope with electronic warfare and resist, despite all the United States' assistance [to our enemy]. We too need the kind of advanced electronic warfare materials that Israel receives, yet we cannot manufacture it ourselves. It is because of such electronic equipment, delivered secretly to Israel by the United States, that our enemy was able to achieve a rapid victory during the Six Day war....
But despite all this assistance, despite Israel's announcements that it would do everything in its power to break any concentration of Egyptian soldiers and to prevent them from preparing for the crossing of the Suez canal, the training of our troops continues. Egyptian troop concentrations remain in place and the morale of our troops at the front is very high. During my last visit to the front, I spoke to soldiers standing beside the trenches while the enemy was bombarding our positions. The officers asked me 'When will we cross into the territory occupied by Israel?'
We have managed to resist and to reconstitute our armed forces. We have mobilised all of our potential for the battle, for our great hope of defeating an enemy who understands only the language of force....
Our territories are occupied. Our country is exposed to air raids. We must obtain everything that can help us defend our rights. We are standing up to the Israeli occupation and we know that our fate will be played out on the battlefield. The American press affirms daily that Egypt is preparing to invade Israel by crossing the Suez canal. Our enemies use the term 'invasion' to mislead their own people, who are unaware that Sinai is part of Egypt; they claim that they give Israel arms because it is threatened with invasion. But we are not an aggressive force, we are an energy of liberation, the liberation of our own land. Everybody should understand that: all the parties (to this conflict) and every nation. We simply proclaim and affirm this nation's determination not to cede its territory. No one has the right to force us to do so.
We are working toward the liberation of the occupied territories and we are not prepared to relinquish an inch of them. We proclaim high and loud that this nation will defend its legitimate rights to the very end. Everybody should understand what we mean....
This nation, as I have said, will not give up one inch of its territory; it will not give up its rights, however many weapons and electronics America pours into our enemy's arsenal. Our nation is not embarking upon either aggression or invasion; we are simply demanding the return of our occupied territories and the restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people - the rights that Israel has usurped. This should be clear to everybody; the consequences are serious.
"I have realised from the very beginning that our success had to depend on our complete understanding of the nature of our national history in which we had lived."
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What was the 1969 Cairo Agreement
between Lebanon and the PLO?
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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Donald Neff
Donald Neff is the author
of several books on US-Middle East relations,
including the 1995 study, Fallen Pillars: U.S. Polecy Toward Palestine
and Israel Since 1945, and his 1988 Warriors trilogy. This article is
reprinted from the July 1996 issue of The Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs (P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009).
On July 23, 1952, the corrupt King Farouk of V Egypt, an Albanian on his paternal side, was overthrown by a group of young military men calling themselves the Free Officers. The next day, one of the officers, Anwar Sadat, informed the nation by radio that for the first time in two thousand years Egypt was under the rule of Egyptians. Sadat spoke in the name of General Mohammed Neguib, the revolution's titular head. In fact, the real leader was Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was 34 at the time and would rule Egypt for the next 18 turbulent years. Because of his youth, Nasser hid his power behind the older Neguib for the first two years of the new regime. It was not until 1954 that he officially became prime minister, and not until June 23, 1956, that he assumed the presidency. Note1
The coming to power in Egypt of the energetic young warrior sent shockwaves through Britain, France and Israel. Leaders in all three countries feared him as a galvanizing ruler who had the potential to unify the shattered Arab world at the expense of the West and Israel. As Israel's David Ben-Gurion put it: "I always feared that a personality might rise such as arose among the Arab rulers in the seventh century or like [Kemal Ataturk] who rose in Turkey after its defeat in the First World War. He raised their spirits, changed their character, and turned them into a fighting nation. There was and still is a danger that Nasser is this man." Note 2
Britain and France held similar concerns. The rise of a strong Arab leader could not have come at a worse time for both nations. Drained by World War II, they were both in the process of losing their vast colonial empires. Both countries had already lost their mandates in the Middle East and both were desperately trying to maintain their influence in North Africa.
Nasser, above all else, wanted Egypt rid of British troops stationed along the Suez Canal, London's passage to India. In 1954, Britain finally gave in to Nasser's demand and agreed to withdraw its 80,000 British troops since, indeed, there no longer existed any reason for their presence. India was now independent and the canal had loot its strategic importance to Britain. Note 3 The troops had been there since 1882, and their departure, the last foreign troops on Egyptian soil, was an enormous boost to Nasser's prestige. The historic agreement meant, in British diplomat Anthony Nutting's words: "For the first time in two and a half thousand years the Egyptian people would know what it was to be independent, and not to be ruled or occupied or told what to do by some foreign power." Note 4
Israel, however, was greatly distressed by the agreement. The presence of British troops along the canal acted as a buffer against any rash action by Egypt, Israel's strongest Arab neighbor. Israel was so disturbed by the withdrawal that it had acted directly to ruin the talks by sending a sabotage team to Egypt to attack British and US facilities. However, the covert effort backfired when Egyptian counterintelligence agents captured the spy ring, and the embarrassing mission known as the Lavon Affair became public. Note 5
The Anglo-Egyptian Suez agreement, signed in Cairo on October 19, 1954, was widely regarded as a strategic defeat for Britain. Two weeks later, on November 1, Algerian Arabs, their morale boosted by Nasser's success, began their revolt against French colonial rule, which dated back to 1830. One of the many results of the insurrection was to convince France and Britain that Egypt, and specifically Nasser, was aiding the Algerians, and therefore was a dangerous common enemy of the West. Note 6 France had long seen Israel as a natural ally against the Arabs, and indeed was Israel's major friend at the time. The close friendship included France secretly sending weapons to the Jewish state in violation of the arms embargo agreed to by Western nations, including the United States. Note 7
Thus was born the fiasco that has ignominiously gone down in history as the Suez Crisis of 1956. Little remembered in the United States, it was a watershed event in the Middle East. It involved one of the most cynical schemes ever hatched by Britain, France and Israel - and one of the highest points of American diplomacy. It also made Nasser the moat idolized Arab leader of his time.
The crisis began when the leaders of Britain, France and Israel decided to collude secretly to get rid of Nasser. Just how to do that was never really clear. But, somehow, they wistfully hoped that by sending vast navies and armies against Egypt they would cause Nasser to be overthrown or to resign in humiliation. The plan was to pretend Israel had been hit by an Egyptian raid, and in retaliation its army would race across the Sinai Peninsula and occupy the east bank of the Suez Canal. In response, Britain and France would pretend to intervene to stop a new Egyptian-Israeli war. All the while, of course, their warships and troops would actually be attacking Egypt. It was a preposterously transparent and shameless ploy but the three nations acted an it nonetheless.
In its broader context, the Suez Crisis was a concerted attack by Europe and Israel against Islam. A massive armada of French and British war-ships gathered off Egypt in late summer 1956 as the colluders went ahead amid growing international concern. No one was more concerned than President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The colluders had failed to take him into their scheme, presumably in the mistaken belief that since they were all US friends, the United States would not oppose their ill-conceived machinations.
In this they were fatally mistaken. Although facing presidential elections in November, Eisenhower publicly and privately opposed the three countries. Using every power short of military force at his command, Eisenhower compelled them to stop their naval bombardment and invasion of Egypt, and to withdraw without gaining any profit from their misadventure. Not only did Nasser not fall, but his prestige soared in the Arab world as the leader who had faced down the West and Israel.
Failure of the Suez plot had disastrous consequences for the colluders. The attack by Britain and France on Egypt drained moral authority from those two countries and spelled the end of their empires. Iraq, Britain's last major ally in the region, fell to Arab nationalists in 1958. And France finally lost Algeria in 1962. After Suez, the United States became the major Western power in the Middle East - not a position President Eisenhower had sought. As he noted in his memoirs, before the Suez war ... We felt that the British should continue to carry a major responsibility for its [Middle East] stability and security The British were intimately familiar with the history, traditions and peoples of the Middle East; we, on the other hand, were heavily involved in Korea, Formosa, Vietnam, Iran, and in this hemisphere." Note 8
Not only did Britain and France lose their position in the region, but their rash actions helped the Soviet Union cement its presence in such countries as Egypt, Iraq and Syria. Moscow was able to strut as the defender of the Arabs against the perfidious West, earning Russia considerable popular support in the Arab world.
Israel's leaders pronounced themselves satisfied with the gains achieved. It had secured US support for free maritime passage through the Strait of Tiran, connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aqaba and the Israeli port of Eilat, and the stationing of [United Nations] UNEF troops at Gaza, where they prevented fedayeen [guerilla] raids into Israel. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion thought he had profited by humiliating Nasser and by raising domestic morale and intensifying a sense of national identity among Israel's diverse Jewish population. However, on closer examination Israel had sowed the whirlwind with its aggressive actions. The government of Gamal Abdel Nasser had initially shown little interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its main interests were narrowly focused on its own demanding domestic problems. But after Israel's aggressive actions, which started well before the Suez outrage, Egypt diverted its resources to a major buildup of its armed farces.
The war also released aggressive forces within Israel that fed on dreams of conquest and expansion. These dreams would be realized eleven years later when Israel launched another surprise attack against both Egypt and Syria, drawing in Jordan, which was bound to both Arab countries by military treaty. That aggression, in turn, made Israel a pariah state in the world community because of its continued occupation of Arab land, and made inevitable the 1973 war, which cost Israel unrelieved suffering and shook the country's self confidence to the core. By then Nasser was gone. He had died of a heart attack on September 28, 1970, at the age of 52.
Although widely reviled by Israel and its supporters, Nasser, the son of a postal clerk, had been a great Arab leader. While he was a compulsive conspirator, suspicious of others and thin-skinned to criticism, he was also charismatic, a natural leader and eventually the most beloved and admired Arab of his time. Nasser was described by his friend and chronicler, Mohamed Heikal, as "always a rebel [who] remained a conservative in his personal life ... He was never interested in women or money or elaborate food. After he came to power the cynical old politicians tried to corrupt him but they failed miserably. His family life was impeccable ... The world itself had found in him one of its most controversial statesmen and the Arabs had chosen him as the symbol of their lost dignity and their unfulfilled hopes." Note 12
In the judgment of diplomat Anthony Nutting, who knew Nasser and wrote a biography of him: `For all his faults, Nasser helped to give Egypt and the Arabs that sense of dignity which for him was the hallmark of independent nationhood ... Egypt and the whole Arab world would have been the poorer, in spirit as well as material progress, without the dynamic inspiration of his leadership." Note 13
Notes
1. Anthony Nutting, Nasser (London: Constable, 1972), p. 37; Richard F. Nyrop, et al., eds., Area Handbook for Egypt (Washington, DC: US Govt. Printing Office, 3rd ed., 1976), p. 36.
The best biographies of Nasser remain those of Nutting and Stephens: Anthony Nutting, Nasser (London: Constable, 1972), and, Robert Stephens, Nasser A Political Biography (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 1971).
2. Kennett Lave, Suez: The Twice-Fought War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 676.
3. Anthony Nutting, Nasser (London: Constable, 1972), pp. 69-72; Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower takes America into the Middle East (New York: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1981), pp. 17-18, 59.
4. A. Nutting, Nasser (London: 1972), p. 71.
5. D. Neff; Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower takes America into the Middle East (New York: 1981), pp. 56-58.
6. D. Neff; Warriors at Suez (New York: 1981), p. 161. The bitter war lasted until July 1, 1962, when Algerians voted to establish an independent Arab nation. The fighting took the lives of 17,456 French, and upward of a million Arabs. See: Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: Viking, 1977), p. 538.
7. D. Neff; Warriors at Suez (1981), pp. 235, 238.
8. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace: 1956-61 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1965), pp. 22-23.
9. Cheryl A. Rubenberg, Israel and the American National Interest: A Critical Examination (Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 84.
10. D. Neff, Warriors at Suez (1981), p. 439.
11. K. Love, Suez: The Twice-Fought War (New York: 1969), pp. 13-14.
12. Mohamed Heikal, The Cairo Documents (New York: Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 1, 20.
13. A. Nutting, Nasser (1972), p. 481.
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By David Halevy;Marguerite
Johnson;William Stewart Monday, Nov. 21, 1983
The Palestine Liberation Organization has always been an anomaly, deriving its strength from a position of inherent weakness. From 1976 to 1982 it was the single strongest influence on the Arab world, a threat not only to Israel, its declared enemy, but to every Arab government that did not offer it support. Not since Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser has a Middle Eastern leader embodied Arab nationalist aspirations as did P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat. He had no country of his own to run, but in the eyes of many Palestinians he enjoyed greater legitimacy than most of the Arab world's leaders.
Although Arafat was battling the most serious crisis of his tumultuous life last week, few experts were prepared to write his political obituary. The chairman had emerged from the ashes of too many other debacles, including the 1970 expulsion of his commandos from Jordan and the evacuation of 6,000 to 8,000 P.L.O. fighters from Beirut last year. "He has been down before," said Amnon Cohen of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. "Until I see a photo that he's dead, I won't be absolutely sure that he's finished." Still, with or without Arafat at its helm, the P.L.O. will be a very different organization after the bloodletting around Tripoli.
The most immediate change is that much of what is left of the P.L.O.'s military forces in Syria and Lebanon, including the Palestine Liberation Army, will come even more under the control of Syria. Three of the eight separate organizations that form the commando groups of the P.L.O., including Saiqa and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, are already loyal to Syria. If Rebel Leader Abu Mousa is able to defeat Arafat with Syrian backing, he will make a bid for control of Al Fatah, the Arafat-founded group that accounts for some 80% of the P.L.O.'s strength.
Yet much of Arafat's power was not military but political. As the premier spokesman on the highly charged issue of Palestine, Arafat had threatened, cajoled and argued his way into every council in the Arab world, most of the chancelleries of Western Europe, the United Nations and even the Vatican. While his troops fought a losing battle in Tripoli, Arafat still commanded the loyalty of some 110 P.L.O. representatives around the world,The organization's political wing, most experts agreed, will not go along with the moves of Syrian President Hafez Assad. That, paradoxically, could push moderates in the P.L.O., including many residents of the West Bank and perhaps Arafat, to seek closer ties with Jordan's King Hussein.
There is also, however, the chance that without Arafat's personal unifying leadership the P.L.O. will shatter into many parts, some of which may, for want of any alternative, resort to terrorism. "That would be worse for us all," noted a State Department official.
Even in the best of times, P.L.O. unity was something of a mirage. Arafat's achievement was to weld disparate and frequently feuding factions running the gamut from right to left, Islamic to Marxist, into a cohesive force. But a showdown became inevitable after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon last year.
Arafat's biggest mistake was to vacillate at a time when he was in a position to make a courageous decision that could have borne fruit for the 1.2 million Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied territories. He seemed to perceive the opportunity when, at an Arab summit in Fez last year, he came as close as he ever had to endorsing Israel's right to exist. In April he entered into negotiations with King Hussein on President Reagan's plan to link the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan. Although Israel had rejected the plan outright, there was just a possibility that if Hussein and Arafat could reach agreement, the U.S. would be able to press Israel to begin talks with Hussein.
Arafat all but agreed to give Hussein the go-ahead to negotiate on behalf of the West Bank's Palestinians, but at the last minute failed to obtain the backing of his own organization and pulled out. In retrospect, some analysts believe that Arafat would have been no worse off had he given Hussein the mandate, even if it might have split his movement. Says former Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, who has long maintained close ties to Arafat: "Because he was so intent on maintaining the unity of the P.L.O., he never stated clearly enough what his real aims were. For every politician there comes a time when he must decide whether to sacrifice a political concept to unity or risk a split." Arafat elected what seemed to be the safer course, but for Assad it was already too late. The Syrian President read the Arafat-Hussein maneuverings, even though they came to naught, as an attempt to usurp a right he has always claimed for himself, namely to be the Palestinians' strongest supporter.
Assad had ruthlessly undercut Arafat twice before. In 1970, when Assad was Defense Minister, he prevented the Syrian air force from coming to the aid of Arafat's commandos in Jordan. During the 1975-76 civil war in Lebanon, Assad ordered his army to help Christian militiamen obliterate the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel Zaatar in Beirut, killing 3,000 Palestinians. When Assad failed to have Arafat deposed at a P.L.O. central committee meeting in August (Arafat actually received a nearly unanimous vote of confidence), Assad decided to resort to force.
The Syrian President may have dealt a mortal blow to Arafat's leadership, but his brutal Realpolitik was not supported by any Arab government except Libya's. From Jordan and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, Arab governments were still voicing support for Arafat.
As a result, few people were rushing to write Arafat off. Said a Western analyst in Beirut: "Assad has the guns, but Arafat has the hearts and minds of the Palestinians." That is his weapon, and it may yet, in some unforeseen way, rescue him once again.
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Timeline: Major events preceding the war and
related to it
June 18, 1953 Revolution in Egypt. Young officers including Gemal Abdel Nasser overthrow monarchy and proclaim goal of modernization and undoing the shame of 1948.
Oct. 29, 1956 Suez Campaign. After Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal ,
Israel , France and Britain join forces to attack Egypt. Egypt is
militarily defeated by the Security Council forces Israel , Britain and
France to withdraw from their captured positions . Nasser in return
agrees to the positioning of UN Peace keeping forces on Egyptian soil
on its border with Israel, and to guarantees right of passage for
Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran.
Nov 18, 1959 Israel abandons earlier Jordan river diversion scheme,
begins work on the National Water Carrier Project, to divert the waters
of the River Jordan from the Sea of Galilee to the Negev, taking its
share of Jordan water in accordance with Johnston plan.
Jan 13-17 1964 First Arab summit at Cairo , prompted by Israel’s
national water carrier project and Palestinian agitation against it.
Arabs declare their intentions of stopping the Israeli diversion
scheme,, and decided on establishment of the PLO. A Unified Arab
Command under Egyptian supervision was created.
May, 1964 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) founded with the aim
of liberating “occupied Palestine “ and destroying Israel. The
organization was under Egyptian control.June 5, 1964 Israel begins
pumping water from the Sea of Galilee for the Israel National Water
Carrier. Israel agreed to take only its share of water allotted under
the Johnston plan, with the tacit agreement of Jordan.
Sept 13, 1964 Second Arab Summit at Alexandria decides on diversion of
the headwaters of the Jordan.
Jan. 2, 1965 Al Fatah a newly created Palestinian guerilla organization
, independent of the Egyptian controlled PLO, carries out first
sabotage in Israel, against the Israel National Water Carrier. Fatah
carried out about 122 raids between Jan 1965 and June 1967. Most of
these raids were abortive.
1965 Syrian water diversion project begins. Syrians fire on Israeli
demilitarized zones, often in response to Israeli provocations. This
gives Israel the excuse to bombard earth moving equipment of the
diversion project.
Feb. 23, 1966 A coup in Syria brings to power the Baath (renassance )
nationalist party which supports and encourages “popular war” for the
liberation of Palestine.
“The liberation battle can only be waged by progressive Arab forces through a popular war of liberation, which history has proved is the only course for victory against all aggressive forces.... it will remain the final way for the liberation of the entire Arab homeland “
Nov 9, 1966 Egypt and Syria sign defense treaty.
Nov 10, 1966 Three Israeli soldiers are killed by a land mine on an
Israeli patrol road near the the border, south of Hebron. King Hussein
sends an apology via US ambassador Walworth Barbour, but Barbour fails
to deliver the apology.
Nov 13, 1966 Samu' raid: Israeli troops retaliate for the November 10
killing of 3 Israeli soldiers by a mine planted on a patrol road. The
attack unexpectedly runs into a column of Jordan Legion soldiers, kills
15 Jordanian soldiers and 3 civilians, & dynamite 125 houses in as
Samu according to UN or about 40 according to Israelis.near Hebron. The
attack shakes the Palestinian population in Jordan which demonstrates
against the Hashemite kingdom . The PLO gains support and Jordan has
been dragged into the growing Syrian -Israeli conflict.
April 7, 1967 As part of the developing armed conflict in the Northern
border between Israel and Syria, an air battle involving about 130
aircraft developed. Israelis downs 6 MiG 21 fighters, 2 over the Golan
and 4 over Damascus.
May 11, 1967 Israeli PM Eshkol states, "In view of the 14 incidents in
the past month alone it is possible that we will have to adopt measures
no less drastic than those of April 7." UPI circulated a rumor (May 12)
that Israel was trying to topple the Syrian regime.
May 12, 1967 In an interview to the press on the eve of Israel's
Indeendence Day , chief of Staff Rabin claims:
“Our reactions against Lebanon and Jordan were against States that are not encouraging acts of terror and sabotage. In Syria we will have to act differently, because there the regime is the one that encourage and direct Terror. Rabin's words are widely interpreted as an Israeli threat to overthrown the Egyptian regime.
May 13, 1967 Soviets inform Anwar Sadat in Moscow that Israel is
massing 10-12 brigades in preparation for an attack on Syria,
supposedly to take place May 17. The information is false, as were
several similar previous Soviet warnings.
May 14, 1967 First reports of Egyptian troop movements into Sinai.
Three Egyptian divisions cross into the Sinai in the first 48 hours.
Each one comprised of 15,000 men and close to 100 state of the art
tanks. 150 armored personnel carriers and masses of Soviet artillery.
May 16, 1967 Special envoy of the Egytian chief of Staff delivers a
letter to General Indar Jit Rikhye, head of UNEF (UN Eemergency Force)
in which he is asked to withdraw from the 41 observation posts that his
soldiers man on the Israeli /Egyptian border.
May 18, 1967 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser orders the United
Nations Emergency Force to leave Sinai.
“ The government of the United Arab Republic has the honour to inform your excellency that it has decided to termiante the presence of the United Nations Emergency Forces from the territory of the United Arab Republic”
A day later the UNEF begins its evacuation of the border area and from Sharm Al sheik overlooking the Straits of Tiran.
May 21, 1967 Ben-Gurion summons Israeli Chief of Staff Rabin and
accuses him of precipitating the crisis and dragging Israel into a
dangerous war. On the following day, Rabin, under tremendous pressure,
is incapacitated temporarily by nicotine poisoning, massive fatigue or
a nervous breakdown.
May 22 1967 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser closes the straits of
Tiran to Israeli shipping. Egypt continues to increase its forces in
the Sinai.
May 23, 1967 United Nations General secretary U Thant arrives in Cairo
in a final attempt to persusade Nasser to allow the UN to stay in
Egypt. He fails and in a private dinner Nasser reveals to him that he
is under pressure from the Military headed by Fiedlmarshall Amer who
want to go to war. According to General Rikhye who was present in the
dinner as well Nasser indicated that he was war afraid of “a
coup...assasiantion... it was on his mind”
May 26, 1967 Speech by Gamal Nasser to Arab Trade Unionists - - Nasser
claimed that Egypt was only looking for the right movement and the
proper excuse to fight for the Palestinian cause.
May 26, 1967 Egypt Defence Minister in a meeting in the Kremlin is
being told by Soviet Premiere Alexi Kossigyn that the Soviet Union will
no authorize an Egyptian first strike.
President Johnson reluctantly agrees to see Abba Eban. Tells him he is powerless to act to open straits of Tiran and requires more time (about two weeks) to assemble UN support for a regatta to open the straits. President Johnson warns Israel against unilateral action.
May 27, 1967 Nasser cancels a planned Egyptian attack on Israel
(Operation fajr - Dawn), planned for following day, after it became
obvious that the Israelis knew about the plan.
May 28, 1967 Israeli Levi Eshkol broadcasts a hesitant, stammering
speech, further exacerbating pressure on him to make way for other
leaders. Later it is claimed that the stammering was due to problems in
reading the manuscript.
In a night meeting with the Israeli general staff he is being attacked by the assembled generals for his hestiancy and the government’s inability to decide to go to war to remove the Egyptian threat. Eshkol political advisor at the time called it the “quiet putch of the General Staff”.
May 30, 1967 Jordan signs a defense pact with Egypt, allows Egyptian
command of Jordan Legion.
May 31, 1967 President Abdur Rahman Aref of Iraq stated "The existence
of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity
to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is
clear - to wipe Israel off the map.
Jun 2, 1967 After weeks of growing pressure Prime Minister Levi Eshkol
agrees to give up the Defence Ministry portfolio and Moshe Dayan,
Israel former chief of Staff is sworn in as the new Defence Minister of
a national unity government which includes leaders of the opposition.
Aftermath of the Six Day War
In six Days of War 18,000 Arab soldiers were killed and 776 Israeli soldiers.
Over 100,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from the West Bank
On June 28 Israel enacts a series of laws that unifies
Jerusalem under
Israeli control.
August /September 1967 An Arab league resolution
concludes , there will
be no peace with Israel, no recognition and no negotiations.
September 1967 The first Israeli settlement is established
in the
occupied territories
Nov 22, 1967 UN Security Council resolution 242 (November
1967) called
for Israeli withdrawal, establishment of peace
November 1967 Fatma Barnaui a young Palestinian woman from
the old city
of Jerusalem attempts to blow up a bomb in a Jerusalem 's cinema
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The nature of the Arab purpose in Palestine was illumined, was indeed dramatised, by the clash between the terrorist organisations and the Jordanian government that began September 1970. Not an ideological confrontation nor the result of a difference of opinion on the proper fate of Israel, the clash between them was over power and authority. What the Fatah demanded was, in fact, a sharing of power and authority in Jordan. The smaller, so-called left-wing organisations led by George Habash and Naif Huwatma called for a complete change of regime -- that is, for Palestinian control in Jordan. In those parts of Jordan which adjoined the border with Israel, they demanded complete autonomy; throughout the rest of the country, they demanded a measure of exemption from the laws of the land for the members of their organisations. Hussein and his ministers were prepared to go-indeed, they did go-a long way to meet these demands. The conflict came over the extent of agreement. In the heat of the battle, the Palestinians involuntarily abandoned the posture to which their propaganda had for years accustomed the world. Exposed suddenly was the cynical imposture of the plea of homelessness by which hearts in so many countries had been touched.
Are authority, power, autonomy-demanded as a right and, to a degree, even granted-the lineaments of "homeless people" struggling for a homeland? Do they reflect the status of a liberation movement merely enjoying the hospitality of a foreign state? The truth is -- and every Arab knows it -- that the Fatah does not look on Jordan as a foreign state at all, but as its home, and its members feel completely at home in it. They behave as though they owned the place -- because they feel that they do, in fact, own it.
Transjordan, the territory of the present Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is historically and geographically a part of Palestine. It was the nearly empty three-quarters of the territory originally entrusted to Britain expressly for the Jewish restoration; the territory had, moreover, been liberated from the Turks with the help of Jewish forces. This widely forgotten fact and the existence instead of the Arab state of Jordan underlines the myth of the Palestine Arabs as a "deprived people!' driven out of their homeland. Whatever the Palestine Arabs may lack, it is not a homeland; whoever has been deprived, it is not the Arabs.
The encounter in Jordan uncovered only a small part of the not at all secret fact of the Arabs' territorial affinities. It was even more rudely exposed in the confrontation in the Lebanese republic. Though- the Arabs do not claim Lebanon as a part of Palestine, in Lebanon the Fatah troops behaved exactly as they had behaved in Jordan. Throughout the country, dotted with their information and recruiting offices, they assumed the right of exemption from the ordinary civic regulations and restraints of the constituted Lebanese authority. They took over refugee camps, turned them into bases, and set up checkposts on the highways. In the southern zone, bordering on Israel, they demanded and seized autonomous control. Their rule was so comprehensive that some newspaper correspondents promptly labelled the area Fatahland. It was from here that they fired their mortars across the border into Israel’s northernmost villages.
For many months Lebanon, divided into two camps, was in a state of perpetual crisis that almost completely paralysed its government. The Lebanese (even the lukewarm Christians) were prepared to, and did, go far to meet the Fatah demands. But even the fervent Moslem supporters of the Fatah declined to overstep the limits beyond which lay anarchy. In the end, an uneasy compromise was worked out. In the south it was, indeed, enforced willy-nilly by the regular daily appearance of Israeli Army patrols, whom the terrorists on the whole left severely alone. Under this protection, the Arab villagers who had earlier fled now came back and resumed their ordered life.
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By Uriya Shavit
The Israeli public remembers the events of Black September as the
operation in which the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan decisively
eliminated a Palestinian uprising in the course of one month. The
actions taken by King Hussein 32 years ago to expel Yasser Arafat and
the senior Palestinian leadership from his country are used as a
preferred example by those who claim that in the Middle East, the name
of the game is cruelty and mercilessness. The Israeli invasion of the
Palestinian cities two weeks ago sharpened the analogy between
the conditions that the king faced and the method of operation he
chose, and the conditions facing Israel and the method of operation it
has chosen. But the seemingly well-known events of Black September did not last for only one month. The military struggle between Jordan and the Palestinians lasted for a year and a half. The climax came in September 1970, but the battle was won only after 10 bloody months, during which the Palestinians surprised the Jordanians with their tenacity.
A good starting point for understanding the processes that led up to the confrontation can be found in March 1968, when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered the Jordanian village of Karameh, about seven kilometers east of the Jordan River, where the young and then unknown leader of Fatah, Yasser Arafat, had his headquarters. The move came in response to a series of attacks carried out by Palestinian organizations against Israel, from Jordanian territory. Prime minister Levi Eshkol declared that the goal of the operation was to prevent "a new wave of terror" against Israel. The UN Security Council condemned the action.
Between 128 and 170 Palestinians were killed during that operation, depending which version one accepts. But, unexpectedly, even the IDF, still basking in the glory of the Six-Day War, suffered heavy casualties: 28 soldiers were killed, 80 were wounded, four tanks remained in Palestinian hands. And Yasser Arafat managed to escape. A state within a state
The limited achievement on the battlefield captured the imagination of the Palestinians in Jordan and of the entire Arab world. Arafat was glorified as the person who had managed, to some extent, to restore downtrodden Arab dignity. Thousands of young Palestinians wanted to enlist in his organization. Fatah became the most important organization within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In the wake of the battle of Karameh, Arafat's men became more daring. In the refugee camps and in several Jordanian cities, they behaved as though they owned the place: They walked around armed and in uniform, set up checkpoints, collected taxes, and refused to travel with Jordanian license plates on their cars.
The strengthening of the Palestinian organizations posed a dilemma for King Hussein. On the one hand, about two-thirds of his subjects were Palestinians, who supported the guerrilla warfare against Israel. Hussein could thus not oppose them without antagonizing most Jordanians - and without risking a confrontation with Nasser's Egypt, which supported the Palestinians. On the other hand, the increasing power of the Palestinians undermined his sovereignty. The Jordanian police and army were no longer the source of authority in the Jordanian refugee camps, and they gradually lost authority in the north of the kingdom as well.
King Hussein's first attempt to reestablish his authority was made in November 1968. He reached a seven-point agreement with the Palestinian organizations: Members of these organizations were forbidden to walk around the cities armed and in uniform; they were forbidden to stop civilian vehicles in order to conduct searches; they were forbidden to recruit young men who were fit to serve in the Jordanian army; they were required to carry Jordanian identity papers; their vehicles were required to bear Jordanian license plates; crimes committed by members of the Palestinian organizations would be investigated by the Jordanian authorities; and disputes between the Palestinian organizations and the government would be settled by a joint council of representatives of the king and of the PLO.
The agreement reached between the sides did not withstand the test of reality. The Palestinian organizations continued to accumulate power in Jordan, and to do as they pleased in the refugee camps. They even intensified the fighting against Israel. During 1969, they conducted 3,170 operations against Israel from Jordanian territory, without bothering to coordinate them in advance with the Jordanian army. The counterattacks carried out by Israel damaged the Jordanian economy, and forced about 70,000 Jordanian subjects to flee from their homes in the Jordan Valley.
In the spring of 1969, the United States began its efforts to promote a political agreement between Israel and the Arab states. King Hussein hoped that president Richard Nixon's Republican administration would be less friendly toward Israel, and would force it to withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967. He went to Washington to make it clear that Jordan was willing to become more flexible, in order to ensure the success of the American initiative.
The Palestinian organizations anxiously observed his moves. They were afraid of a separate Jordanian-Israeli agreement, which would destroy the dream of a Palestinian state stretching to the Mediterranean Sea.
In order to undermine the political contacts and to bring about a military conflagration between Jordan and Israel, Arafat and his partners stepped up the armed conflict against Israel. Hussein reached the conclusion that he had to act - but his hands were tied. He couldn't do more than Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser allowed him to do. At the beginning of February 1970, Hussein went to Cairo, and received Nasser's secret acquiescence to take more decisive action against the Palestinian organizations.
When the king returned to Jordan on February 10, he published a 10-point edict. Among its provisions were a ban on interference by members of the Palestinian organizations with the activity of the Jordanian security forces, a ban on organization of meetings or assemblies without the permission of the Interior Ministry, and a ban on Palestinian political activity.
The Palestinian organizations were not impressed. On February 11, they established a united military headquarters in order to prepare for a possible Jordanian attack. That same night, 300 people were killed in confrontations that broke out between the two sides in the streets of the capital, Amman. King Hussein was afraid of losing control. Nasser allowed him to impose limitations on the Palestinians, but warned him not to accept an all-out Jordanian war against the Palestinians. Hussein ordered the Jordanian army to refrain from additional activities, and declared: "We are all fedayeen" [Palestinian commando groups]. Afterward, he fired his interior minister, who was the greatest enemy of the Palestinian organizations in his government. The first round of battle between the sides ended with a clear victory for Yasser Arafat.
Who gave them rifles?
At the end of July 1970, Egypt decided to accept the plan proposed by U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers, which called for an immediate cease-fire in the war of attrition between Egypt and Israel, and for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242. After Egypt, Jordan also announced that it accepted the plan.
The dramatic decision brought about an intensification of the Palestinian battle against Jordan. The radical left organizations in the PLO, George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Naif Hawatmeh's Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front- General Command, decided to undermine Hussein's regime in order to ensure the failure of "the Rogers Plan," and perhaps the deposition of the king. In their opinion, the Hashemite regime had to be eliminated in any case, since it was conservative and pro-Western.
Yasser Arafat, head of Fatah, feared that the move to depose Hussein was premature. The Jordanian army numbered 55,000 well-trained soldiers, as well as an armored corps and an air force, whereas the Palestinian organization numbered at most about 15,000 fighters, armed mainly with light weapons. Arafat chose to play both sides against the middle and to maneuver in the ensuing chaos: On the one hand, he didn't stop the radical organizations; on the other, he didn't come out openly against Hussein.
At the beginning of September 1970, the activities of the leftist Palestinian organizations in Jordan turned into open defiance of King Hussein himself. On September 1, a failed attempt on Hussein's life was made while he was on his way to the Amman airport. On September 6, members of the Popular Front hijacked three planes: A Swissair plane and a TWA plane were hijacked to the airport in Zarqa, and an additional plane, belonging to Pan American, was hijacked to the Cairo airport. Three days later, a British plane was hijacked, and
brought down near Amman. The passengers were held hostage. The hijackers demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in various countries. A spokesman for the Popular Front said in Beirut that the hijackings were carried out in order "to teach the Americans a lesson, because of their long-standing support of Israel."
Yasser Arafat did not condemn the hijackings, which aroused an international protest against the Palestinians. Hussein knew that the international community would now be more sympathetic toward a decisive battle against the Palestinian organizations, and that Nasser - who wanted to promote the Rogers Plan - would be less supportive. The Jordanian king quickly lost control of his kingdom.
At the height of the drama of the hijacked planes, the Palestinians declared the area of Irbid in the north of the country a "liberated region," and announced that they were preparing for "the showdown."
Hussein's inner circle, citizens of Transjordan who feared a Palestinian revolt, explained to the king that the time had come to defeat the Palestinians. "On September 15, at the palace in Sweileh, north of Amman, the associates and advisers of the king gathered,"wrote Prof. Asher Susser of Tel Aviv University in "Between Jordan and Palestine," his 1983 Hebrew biography of Wafsi al-Tal, Hussein's prime minister.
"These people, who had long supported strong action against the fedayeen, convinced Hussein that the time had come to act. They estimated that the army could expel the fedayeen from the large cities within two to three days. Hussein's hesitations disappeared. That same day, he made the decision to strike at the fedayeen. The uncertainty and frustrations of the past weeks disappeared. The atmosphere in the palace on the night of September 16 was like that in military headquarters on the eve of battle. Operational plans were made and organized quickly. The assumption was that there were only a few hours left before the all-out and unavoidable confrontation."
Syrian advances
On the morning of September 16, Hussein declared martial law. On September 17, the military attack began. Patton tanks from the 60th armored brigade, accompanied by armored vehicles, entered Amman from all sides, and attacked the headquarters of the Palestinian organizations. Battles took place in Zarqa, Sweileh, Salt and Irbid as well. The opinion of the king's advisers, that the Palestinians could be defeated within days, proved incorrect. The Palestinians surprised the army with their stubborn resistance. There was house-to-house fighting. Hussein knew that the longer the fighting continued, the greater the risk that Arab and international pressure would force them to stop the attack and to reach a compromise with the Palestinians.
On September 18, two days after the attack began, a small Syrian armored force invaded northern Jordan. Two days later, it was joined by two Syrian armored brigades, which were reinforced the next day, and swelled to the size of a division. The opening of an additional front against Jordan was the desired scenario for the Palestinians. The Jordanians were afraid that Syria aspired to exploit the civil war that had broken out in the kingdom in order to occupy it and to realize the dream of "Greater Syria." They confronted the Syrians with the 40th armored brigade, and managed to halt their advance.
The U.S. and Israel shared Jordan's fear. Reconnaissance flights by the Israel Air Force above the Syrian force aroused fears in Damascus that Syria would be defeated in another war if it did not withdraw its forces from Jordan. Syria was thus forced to take its troops out of northern Jordan. Its involvement at the time remained a subject for historical debate. Hafez al-Assad, who was the Syrian defense minister in September 1970, told his biographer, Patrick Seale, that Syria's intention in invading northern Jordan was only to protect the
Palestinians from a massacre.
Whatever the case, the swift Syrian withdrawal was a severe blow to Palestinian hopes. Jordanian armored forces steadily pounded their headquarters in Amman, and threatened to break them in other regions of the kingdom as well. The Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire. Hussein and Arafat attended the meeting of leaders of Arab countries in Cairo, where Arafat won a diplomatic victory. On September 27, Hussein was forced to sign an agreement which preserved the right of the Palestinian organizations to operate in Jordan. For Jordan, it was humiliating that the agreement treated both sides to the conflict as equals.
The agreement declared that Jordan "would support the Palestinian liberation movement"; that "both sides would withdraw from the cities," and "that all the prisoners would be released." The only clause that served the Jordanians was the one that stated that the Jordanian police would be the only body authorized to impose law and order. But Hussein had no reason to assume that the Palestinians would observe this clause any more than they had before, after signing similar agreements.
According to conservative, minimum estimates, several hundred Palestinians died in the battles of September 1970; according to the maximum estimate, there were several thousand casualties. Their independent military might suffered a major blow. Those were the circumstances which gave the name "Black September" to the events of the bloody month. But politically, Arafat and the Palestinian organizations were not dealt a decisive blow. Even after bringing the main force of his army to bear against them, Hussein did not succeed in expelling them from the country, and they were able to prepare for the next stage of the campaign.
But two developments outside Jordan determined the fate of the Palestinian organizations in Jordan. On September 28, Nasser died of a sudden heart attack. He was only 52 years old, and it was said that the tremendous pressure that he had been under because of the events of Black September had brought about his demise. With Nasser's death, the most important protective umbrella of the Palestinians in Jordan disappeared, and Egyptian involvement in the Jordanian-Palestinian conflict waned for the time being. Two months later, the Syrian defense minister, Hafez al-Assad, the leader of the pragmatic branch of the Ba'ath party, seized control in Damascus. So Syria was also not free for the time being to be involved in Palestinian affairs.
The time was ripe for the third and last stage of the continuing war between King Hussein and Yasser Arafat.
Hussein's last battle
After Nasser's death, Arafat understood correctly that his position had been weakened. On October 31, 1970, he signed a five-point agreement, which was similar to that signed in November 1968, and was designed to return control of the country exclusively to King Hussein. The agreement stated that members of the Palestinian organizations were expected to honor Jordanian laws, instructed them to dismantle their bases, and forbade them to walk around armed and in uniform in the cities and villages.
Had the Palestinians honored that agreement, Hussein would have had difficulties in continuing to act against them. But the PFLP and the DFLP - the two organizations to the left of Arafat - refused to accept its conditions. They called on their members to ignore the Jordanian government, and at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council, they were responsible for prompting the acceptance of the proposal that Transjordan would be part of the Palestinian state to be established in the future.
The open defiance caused renewed conflict between the Palestinians and the Jordanian army, whose commanders were in any case eager to finish the work they had begun in September. At the beginning of November 1970, incidences of fighting erupted between members of the PFLP and DFLP and the Jordanian security forces. On November 9, Jordanian prime minister Wasfi al-Tal, the sworn enemy of the Palestinians, announced that in accordance with the agreement signed a month earlier, the authorities would no longer allow the Palestinians to walk around with weapons or to store explosives. The announcement was not honored, and the security forces received instructions to confiscate the Palestinians' weapons.
Until January 1971, the Jordanian army heightened its control in all the central cities. At the beginning of that month, the Jordanian army began an attack against the Palestinian bases along the highway between Amman and Jerash, in order to cut them off from the other cities and to take over the roads linking their strongholds. In response to the operation, the Palestinians agreed to hand over their weapons to the Jordanians. This agreement was not honored either.
Toward the end of March, after a Palestinian arms warehouse was discovered in Irbid, the Jordanian army placed a curfew on the city, arrested some of the Palestinian activists, and expelled others. The takeover of Irbid was completed at the beginning of April. Afterward, many senior members of the Palestinian organizations, who were aware of their weakness, began to withdraw from Amman as well.
Yet, despite the series of defeats, the Palestinian organizations did not give in. On June 5, the senior Palestinian organizations, including Yasser Arafat's Fatah, came out with a declaration on Radio Baghdad in which they called for the deposition of King Hussein. The reason they gave for this was that deposing him was the only way to prevent the signing of "a peace agreement between Israel and Jordan."
In mid-June 1971, after three tense months during which the sides made efforts to fortify their positions by political means, Jordan embarked on the final campaign against the Palestinians. The Jordanian army, which for almost 10 months had been pushing the Palestinian organizations out of the major cities, used large forces to expel them from the mountainous regions of the cities of Jerash and Ajloun, in the north of the kingdom, where about 3,000 armed Palestinians were located.
The members of Fatah declared that they preferred to die in battle rather than surrender to the Jordanian dictates. After four days of battle, the Jordanian army overcame the last pockets of resistance.
King Hussein held a press conference and declared that there was now "absolute quiet" in the kingdom. Seventy-two Palestinians who were afraid of the Jordanian soldiers chose to undertake the most humiliating action possible for them: They fled to the West Bank and surrendered to IDF soldiers.
The Palestinian rout was complete. King Hussein had removed the grave threat to his throne, and had strengthened his control over the kingdom. Fatah, beaten and humiliated, established an avenging arm - called "Black September." The first operation by this group took place on November 28, 1971. Four of its members assassinated Wasfi al-Tal, Jordan's prime minister and the enemy of the Palestinians, on the steps of the Sheraton Hotel in Cairo. Tal's last words were: "They've killed me. Murderers, they believe only in fire and destruction."
After Black September
The saying that history repeats itself, once as tragedy and once as farce, has not proved itself in the Middle East. Here the tragedies tend to repeat themselves again and again. For Jordanian identity, September 1970 was a turning point. The continuing effort made by King Hussein to blur the differences between the identity of Transjordanians and that of Palestinians was replaced by the "Jordanization" of the administration and the army in the kingdom, and paved the way for Hussein to gradually relinquish his desire to reestablish his total sovereignty over the West Bank. The American and Israeli support of Jordan in the face of the Syrian invasion of the north of the kingdom strengthened Jordanian recognition of the fact that the stability of the kingdom depended on the support of the West.
For the Palestinian leadership, Black September was the month in which it proved that the military might of its members should not be underestimated, and that it had the ability to formulate the agenda of the Arab states and of Israel. At the same time, the Palestinian leadership also proved that it wasn't aware of the limitations of its power, and had wrongly estimated the willingness and the capability of Arab countries to fight for its people. Since then, the Palestinian leadership has returned to the achievements - and the mistakes - of Black September, at every critical junction at which it has found itself.
For Yasser Arafat, Black September was a test. He was asked to honor agreements, and repeatedly violated them; he was asked to rout out the extremists in his camp, and he didn't rout them out; he was asked to opt for realistic strategic goals, and he didn't opt for them.
From Jordan he continued to Lebanon, from Lebanon he was expelled to Tunis, from Tunis again to Gaza and to Ramallah, where he found himself, 32 years after Black September, once again causing chaos, and once again besieged by armored forces which he will not be able to subdue.
The lessons learned from the events of Black September have not been quickly forgotten. After the recent invasion of the IDF into the Palestinian cities, the Hashemite Kingdom sent several serious warnings to Israel. They included a warning about the tragic consequences of deporting Yasser Arafat back to Jordan.
Source: Uriya Shavit, Haaretz Newspaper, May 28, 2002
This page was produced by Joseph E. Katz Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst, Brooklyn, New York
Source: "Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine" by Samuel Katz,
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List of
Chronological Events in the Middle East and North Africa
Since the End of the Second World War
encyclopedia.jrank.org
Since the End of the Second World War
encyclopedia.jrank.org
1945
Formation of the League of Arab States (Arab League)
1946
Jordan becomes independent from Britain; rise and fall of Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in Iran
1947
United States issues “Truman Doctrine”; Britain announces intention to abandon the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and turn over future of the country to the United Nations (UN); U.N. General Assembly adopts Resolution 181 (II) to partition Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone; first Arab-Israeli war breaks out as a result
1948
Israel declares its independence; Arab-Israeli war escalates as troops from six Arab states enter the fighting; 750,000 Palestinian refugees flee or are expelled by Israeli forces; thousands of Jews emigrate from several Arab countries; Imam Yahya assassinated in Yemen
1949
First Arab-Israeli war ends when Israel signs armistice agreements with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan; Jordan annexes West Bank; three military coups d’état take place in Syria; U.N. General Assembly passes resolution calling for independence of Libya
1950
Turkish government sends troops as part of UN military coalition in Korean war; Turkey holds first multi-party elections since becoming a republic; thou sands of Iraqi Jews begin immigrating to Israel
1951
Libya achieves independence under UN supervision; Oman obtains independence from Britain; Jordan’s King Abdullah I assassinated; Iran nationalizes Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
1952
Turkey joins North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); military coup d’état overthrows Egyptian monarchy, Jamal Abd al-Nasir (Gamal Abdel Nasser) emerges as strongman
1953
Military coup d’état in Iran overthrows Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh; King Hussein bin Talal assumes the throne in Jordan; King Abd al-Aziz Al Sa’ud of Saudi Arabia dies
1954
Algerian war of independence against France begins; Britain signs treaty with Egypt to withdraw its troops from the zone around the Suez Canal
1955
Iraq, Turkey, and Iran join British-led Baghdad Pact; Egypt signs major arms deal with Soviet Union; Israel signs arms deal with France; civil war breaks out in Sudan
1956
Morocco and Tunisia become independent from France; Sudan becomes independent from Britain and Egypt; Egypt nationalizes Suez Canal Company; Suez War begins with Britain, France, and Israel at war with Egypt; Suez Canal blocked because of the Suez War, disrupting global shipping; Egypt begins expelling thousands of Jews as a result of the Suez War
1957
United States issues “Eisenhower Doctrine”; Israel withdraws from occupied Sinai, Gaza Strip; Suez Canal reopens
1958
Egypt and Syria are united as the United Arab Republic (UAR); civil war breaks out in Lebanon, the United States lends Marines to bolster Lebanese government; military coup d’état overthrows Iraqi monarchy, General Abd al-Karim Qasim becomes Iraqi prime minister
1959
Oil discovered in Libya
1960
Turkish military stages coup d’état against the civilian government; Cyprus obtains independence from Britain; Mauritania obtains independence from France; creation of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
1961
Syria secedes from UAR; Kurdish insurgency against Iraqi government occurs; King Mohammed V of Morocco dies, is succeeded by King Hassan II; Kuwait obtains independence from Britain
1962
Algeria obtains independence from France, more than 100,000 French citizens flee for France; Egyptian actor Omar Sharif stars in Lawrence of Arabia ; military coup d’état against King Muhammad al-Badr leads to civil war in Yemen, with Egyptian troops eventually supporting republican side
1963
Ba’th Party comes to power in Syria via coup d’état; Ba’th Party briefly comes to power in Iraq via coup d’état; Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi declares start of “White Revolution” in Iran
1964
Formation of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); King Sa’ud of Saudi Arabia deposed, replaced by King Faysal; Turkey becomes an associate member of the European Economic Community
1965
Houari Boumédienne overthrows government of Ahmed Ben Bella in Algeria
1967
Arab-Israeli war breaks out; Israel defeats armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and occupies the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights; hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians are displaced as a result of Arab-Israeli fighting, thousands of Jews emigrate from several Arab countries as well; Israel annexes East Jerusalem; Suez Canal closed because of Arab-Israeli fighting, forcing ships bound from Asia to Europe to travel around the Horn of Africa; shipping companies begin building supertankers as a result (to be able to carry more cargo, especially oil, on each journey); U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 242 regarding Arab-Israeli peace; Egyptian troops leave Yemen; South Yemen becomes independent from Britain
1968
Coup d’état returns Ba’th Party to power in Iraq
1969
Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition begins; military coup d’état overthrows Libyan monarchy, Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi becomes new strongman; Ja’far Numayri becomes president of Sudan after military coup d’état; Yasir Arafat becomes chair of PLO
1970
U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers announces “Rogers Plan” for Arab-Israeli peace; Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition ends; fighting breaks out in Jordan between PLO and Jordanian army; Egypt’s Jamal Abd al-Nasir (Gamal Abdel Nasser) dies; Hafiz al-Asad takes power in Syria via a coup d’état; Qaboos Al Bu Sa’id deposes his father, becomes sultan of Oman; High Dam in Aswan, Egypt completed; Yemeni civil war ends
1971
Devaluation of U.S. dollar leads to decrease in revenue of oil-producing states; Bahrain and Qatar obtain independence from Britain; creation of the United Arab Emirates leads to evacuation of last British military forces in Arabian/Persian Gulf; Turkish military forces the resignation of Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel
1972
Civil war ends in Sudan; Palestinians kill eleven Israeli athletes at Olympic Summer Games in Munich
1973
Frente Popular de Liberación de Sagía el Hamra y Río de Oro (POLISARIO) established; Arab-Israeli war breaks out; U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 338 regarding Arab-Israeli peace; Arab oil-producing states reduce exports of oil in response to Western support of Israel, global oil prices increase 380 percent; Arab-Israeli peace conference in Geneva; coup d’état overthrows government of Zahir Shah in Afghanistan
1974
Israel signs armistice agreements with Egypt and Syria thanks to mediation efforts of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; Cypriot military coup d’état in favor of union with Greece prompts military invasion by Turkish forces; Arab League recognizes PLO as “sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”; PLO Chair Yasir Arafat addresses UN General Assembly; Kurdish insurgency breaks out in Iraq
1975
Civil war breaks out in Lebanon; United Arab Emirates become independent from Britain; Algiers Agreement between Iran and Iraq leads to end of Kurdish insurgency in Iraq; Spain relinquishes control of Western Sahara, Morocco and Mauritania lay claim to the area; Saudi King Faysal assassinated; Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum dies; Egypt and Israel sign Sinai Interim Agreement; U.N. General Assembly passes Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism
1976
Syrian forces invade Lebanon to end civil war; POLISARIO declares independence of Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
1977
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat flies to Israel, addresses the Knesset
1978
Iranian revolution begins; Israeli forces invade southern Lebanon following Palestinian terrorist raid on Israel; Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign Camp David Accord in Maryland thanks to mediation efforts of U.S. President Jimmy Carter; Begin and Sadat awarded Nobel Peace Prize; communist coup d’état overthrows government of Afghanistan
1979
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi flees Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns from exile, Islamic Republic of Iran declared; Egypt and Israel sign peace treaty in Washington; Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq; U.S. hostages taken in Iran; Islamic militants take over Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia; coup d’état in Afghanistan leads to invasion by Soviet forces; United States announces “Carter Doctrine”; Mauritania gives up claims to Western Sahara
1980
Military coup d’état overthrows civilian government in Turkey; Iran-Iraq War begins
1981
American hostages released from Iran; Egyptian President Anwar Sadat assassinated; Israeli air force planes destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor; creation of the Gulf Cooperation Council; Israel annexes Golan Heights
1982
Israel withdraws from last of occupied Sinai Peninsula; Israel invades Lebanon, besieges Beirut, and forces PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and his fighters to leave Beirut; American, French, and Italian troops enter Beirut to supervise PLO withdrawal; Lebanese President elect Bashir Gemayel assassinated, Christian forces kill hundreds of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut
1983
Islamic militants blow up American embassy, Marine barracks, and barracks of French forces in Beirut; civil war breaks out in Sudan, Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) formed; Turkish Cypriots declare independence of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
1984
United States and other Western forces withdraw from Lebanon; Kurdish insurgency begins in Turkey
1985
Sultan bin Salman Al Sa’ud becomes first Middle Easterner in space; major decline in global oil prices; Hizbullah movement emerges publicly in Lebanon
1986
U.S. planes bomb Tripoli, Libya, in response to terrorist attack against American military personnel in Germany; secret U.S.-Iranian arms deal exposed, leading to “Iran-Contra” scandal in United States
1987
Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba deposed, replaced by Zein al-Abidin Ben Ali; United States agrees to protect Kuwaiti ships in Arabian/Persian Gulf; first Palestinian Intifada breaks out
1988
Iran-Iraq War ends; Naguib Mahfouz receives Nobel Prize for literature; Anfal campaign against Kurds in Iraq; Lebanon ruled by two rival governments; Jordan renounces claim to West Bank; PLO’s Palestine National Council declares independence of Palestine; PLO Chair Yasir Arafat renounces terrorism, U.S.-PLO dialogue ensues; formation of Hamas movement in West Bank and Gaza Strip
1989
Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dies; Ta’if Accord signed by Lebanese politicians; Soviet forces with draw from Afghanistan; military coup d’état led by General Umar Hasan al-Bashir overthrows Sudanese government
1990
Major earthquake in Iran; Iraq invades Kuwait, U.N. Security Council imposes sanctions on Iraq; Yemen and South Yemen unite; Lebanese politician General Michel Aoun forced into exile by Syrian troops, ending Lebanese civil war
1991
U.S.-led military coalition attacks Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Iraq; Iraq signs armistice agreement; Iraqi forces crush anti-regime Shi’ite and Kurdish uprisings; establishment of Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq; UN creates United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; Arab-Israeli peace conference held in Madrid; UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86 revokes 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism; Algerian runner Hassiba Boulmerka becomes first African woman ever to win a world title when she wins the 1,500-meter dash at the World Championship games in Tokyo
1992
Algerian military cancels parliamentary elections and deposes President Chadli Bendjedid, prompting start of civil war between government and Islamic militants; communist government of Najibullah collapses in Afghanistan; UN Security Council imposes sanctions on Libya; Boutros Boutros-Ghali elected UN Secretary-General; Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington
1993
Israel and the PLO agree to recognize one another, sign the Declaration of Principles (also known as the Oslo Accord) in Washington
1994
Palestinian Authority (PA) established in part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip following signing of PLO-Israeli Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area (also known as the Cairo Accords); Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Chair Yasir Arafat share Nobel Peace Prize; Israel and Jordan sign peace treaty; civil war in Yemen
1995
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin assassinated; Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (also known as Oslo II) signed; Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani seizes power in Qatar, deposing his father
1996
PLO Chair Yasir Arafat elected president of the PA; Syrian Ghada Shouaa wins heptathlon at Olympic summer games in Atlanta, earning the title “world’s greatest female athlete”; Taliban takes power in most of Afghanistan; establishment of Al Jazeera television network in Qatar; International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles names Turkish wrestler Hamza Yerlikaya “Wrestler of the Century”
1997
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami wins Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival; Turkish military forces the resignation of Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan; Mohammad Khatami elected president of Iran
1998
Iraq expels UNSCOM inspectors, major U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq ensues
1999
Major earthquake in Turkey; King Hussein of Jordan dies, replaced by King Abdullah II bin Hussein; King Hassan II of Morocco dies, replaced by King Muhammad VI; Turkey recognized as a candidate for membership in the European Union; UN replaces UNSCOM with United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC); Turkish special forces capture Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan in Kenya
2000
U.S. President Bill Clinton hosts Israeli-Syrian peace talks at Shepherdstown, West Virginia; Israeli forces withdraw from southern Lebanon; Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad dies; President Clinton brings together Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chair Yasir Arafat at Camp David II summit in Maryland; Second Palestinian Intifada breaks out; Kurdish insurgency in Turkey ends
2001
Israeli-PLO peace talks in Taba, Egypt; 9/11 attacks in United States carried out by Islamic militants associated with al-Qa’ida; United States invades Afghanistan, overthrows Taliban government
2002
Hamid Karzai elected president of Afghanistan; Israeli forces reoccupy West Bank cities under PA control; Israel begins construction of security barrier/separation wall; “Road Map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace announced; UNMOVIC begins arms inspections in Iraq; Turkish runner Süreyya Ayhan named 2002 European Female Athlete of the Year
2003
UNMOVIC withdraws from Iraq; United States and Britain invade Iraq and overthrow government of President Saddam Hussein; Iranian Shirin Ebadi awarded Nobel Peace Prize; Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon dies when his spacecraft disintegrates upon reentry into earth’s atmosphere; UN Security Council lifts sanctions on Libya and Iraq
2004
United States returns sovereignty to provisional Iraqi government; trial of Saddam Hussein begins in Iraq; Israelis Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover awarded Nobel Prizes for chemistry; Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid awarded Pritzker Prize in architecture; Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat dies; referendum in Cyprus fails to approve the “Annan Plan” for resolving the Cyprus problem
2005
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri assassinated; Syria bows to international pressure, withdraws its forces from Lebanon; Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei awarded Nobel Peace Prize; Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani elected president of Iraq; Mas’ud Barzani elected president of Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq; Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd dies, replaced by King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Sa’ud; Israel evacuates Jewish settlements in Gaza and a portion of the West Bank; Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by Sudan and SPLA/M ends Sudanese civil war; SPLA/M leader John Garang killed in plane crash; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elected president of Iran
2006
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffers a massive stroke, is replaced by Ehud Olmert; Israel-Hizbullah war occurs in Lebanon and northern Israel; Orhan Pamuk receives Nobel Prize for literature; Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq
2007
U.N. dissolves UNMOVIC; first fully democratic elections in Mauritania occur; Hamas movement seizes power in Gaza Strip, PA President Mahmud Abbas dissolves government and appoints a new prime minister
[top]
by Francisco Gil-White. Historical and
Investigative Research - 22 July
2007
The US government has been pushing very hard to give Mahmoud Abbas’s Al Fatah its own state, carved out of the Jewish state. Al Fatah (also known as 'the PLO') was trained in the 1950s by CIA-sponsored German Nazis. These facts are not widely known or understood.
Did the US government support the creation of Israel?
Many believe that the State of Israel was created thanks to the support of the United States. But the following facts put the lie to that notion.
It is true that in 1947 the US government voted at the UN in favor of partitioning what had been British Mandate Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. However, the entire State Department was opposed to the creation of a Jewish State. Why then did Truman order his UN ambassador to vote in favor of partition? The precipitating event seems to have been a passionate speech by the Soviet Union's Andrei Gromyko at the UN General Assembly in favor of a Jewish State. Such a speech reduced the US government's political options, for it did not wish to appear in public as less antinazi than the Soviets [see 1947-48 section].
The Israeli War of Independence (also known as the 1948 War) exploded the year after that because a large coalition of Arab armies launched a genocidal attack against the Jews of what had been British Mandate Palestine. Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League (a British creation), announced that this would be “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”[1]
The US and British governments both assisted the Arab attack. The United States slapped an arms embargo on the Israeli Jews. The British government used the troops it still had not evacuated from the Middle East to help the Arabs. It also sent the Arab armies captured Nazi officers to lead the attempted genocide [see 1947-48 section].[1a] In spite of all this, the combined Arab armies suffered a bewildering, humiliating defeat in the War of 1948, and perhaps especially so the Egyptian army.
Did the US government accept the new Jewish State?
Historian Christopher Simpson has documented, with material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that immediately after 1945 the US government had begun secretly recruiting a great multitude of Nazis, including many notorious war criminals, in order to construct the US intelligence services [see 1945 section]. As the Washington Post wrote in its review of Simpson's book, “It is no longer necessary -- or possible -- to deny the fact: the U.S. government systematically and deliberately recruited active Nazis by the thousands.”[1b] The Washington Post should have written that it was tens of thousands, however.
Frank Wisner was one of the main architects of the absorption of Nazis to create the CIA.[2] Following Egypt’s defeat in the 1948 war, Simpson explains, “Frank Wisner had dispatched his top troubleshooter to the Mideast, Kermit (‘Kim’) Roosevelt, to Cairo as early as 1951 to open secret negotiations with Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser and his insurgent Society of Free Officers,” who were getting ready to launch a coup d’état in that country.[3]
Notice: after Egypt loses its genocidal war against Israel, the CIA sends its “top troubleshooter.” A failed genocidal war against Israel is something to fix.
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Kermit Roosevelt reported to his superiors that there was, in his words, “a large area of agreement” with Nasser. “Nasser asked Roosevelt for aid in building up Egypt’s military intelligence and internal security squads,” the inferiority of which had been demonstrated by their defeat against the Israeli Jews. “So CIA director Allen Dulles turned to [Reinhard] Gehlen in 1953 for help in the Egyptian situation.”[3]
Reinhard Gehlen had spearheaded the recruitment of the Nazi infrastructure for the CIA, something he was eminently qualified to do because Gehlen had been “Hitler’s most senior military intelligence officer on the eastern front.”[4] In fact, Gehlen was a monster. Simpson explains that
“Gehlen derived much of his information from his role in one of the most terrible atrocities of the war: the torture, interrogation, and murder by starvation of some 4 million Soviet prisoners of war. …Prisoners who refused to cooperate were often tortured and summarily shot. Many were executed even after they had given information, while others were simply left to starve to death.”[5]
When the US government recruited Gehlen after the war, they asked him to recreate the Nazi intelligence infrastructure, and this became known as the ‘Gehlen Org,’ with its headquarters in Pullach, West Germany, which country had become a satellite of the US. A great many of the nazis that the US recruited were not part of the ‘Gehlen Org,’ because some were brought into the US as immigrants and even turned into US soldiers, while others were used as direct CIA assets in different parts of the world. But certainly the ‘Gehlen Org’ had within it a sizeable chunk, and many of the important leaders.
Christopher Simpson writes that “at least a half dozen -- and probably more -- of his first staff of fifty officers were former SS or SD men, including SS Obersturmführer Hans Sommer (who had set seven Paris synagogues to the torch in October 1941)…”[6] In the year 2005, historian Timothy Naftali explains that “newly released information from the CIA and the Army,” as a consequence of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act,
“make it possible to assess the extent of Gehlen’s recruitment of former officers of the SD [the intelligence service of the SS] and Gestapo. It turns out that it was widespread. At least one hundred of Gehlen’s officers and agents had served with the SD or the Gestapo, and the number may in fact be significantly higher. …some of those hired had participated in the worst atrocities committed by the Nazi regime.”[7]
When, following the defeat of the Egyptians in the War of 1948, the US turned to Gehlen for help in improving Egypt’s intelligence and military capability, Gehlen turned to Otto Skorzeny.
Skorzeny had been an enormous and tremendous Nazi -- the stereotype of the tall, golden-haired ‘Aryan’ that the führer, himself a short brunette, was always so excited about. Skorzeny was celebrated in the Nazi press as “Hitler’s favorite commando.” He was an expert in sabotage, assassination, and difficult missions behind enemy lines. In 1948 he had mysteriously escaped while awaiting trial -- or perhaps not so mysteriously, given that his father-in-law Hjalmar Schacht (Hitler's Finance Minister) had his own sentence abolished by John McCloy, the US High Commissioner in Germany. Skorzeny played an important postwar role in the ratline operations Odessa and Die Spinne that spirited a great multitude of Nazis to safety.
What Gehlen wanted was for Otto Skorzeny to train the Egyptians. Skorzeny, however, was reticent, so the US government begged, promising him that his Egyptian salary would be supplemented by a generous CIA subsidy, and that the US would cover all his operational costs. They also sent a US general to beg in person. But Skorzeny kept playing the prima donna, so Gehlen pressured father-in-law Hjalmar Schacht to convince him, finally with success.[8]
Historian Timothy Naftali claims the US had nothing to do with this
I must make here a brief parenthesis. Much of Christopher Simpson’s information on all this comes from Reinhard Gehlen’s own memoirs, written in the 1970s, and from what Miles Copeland, who worked as a CIA agent in that region, asserted in one of his books. According to Timothy Naftali, writing in 2005, the documents that were more recently released with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act make it doubtful that the CIA really led the effort to give Nazi training to the Egyptian forces. But careful: Naftali is not saying that the new documentation has refuted the idea that Skorzeny’s Nazis trained the Egyptians; on the contrary, he asserts that “Skorzeny…[and] dozens of aging Nazis…did indeed trek to Cairo in the first years of Nasser’s regime to prepare the Arabs for battle with the new Jewish state.” According to Naftali, however, the CIA had nothing to do with Skorzeny.[9]
Naftali is obviously defending the US government from the implicit accusation that it was preparing a genocidal attack against Israel, but his defense, in light of the facts, is a bit strident, and I shall now list the reasons why.
First, when I consult the historian’s footnote at the end I find that the recently released documents in fact show the CIA trying to bring Skorzeny to the United States, and that requests for other CIA documents on the agency’s relationship with Skorzeny have been denied. Second, according to the same Naftali, a year before the Egyptian operation was to begin, CIA director Allen Dulles had -- amazingly -- flown all the way to Germany to confer with Reinhard Gehlen in order to suggest to him that they should work together not only in the Soviet sphere but in other parts of the world; Naftali concedes that in historical context Dulles was probably referring to the Syrian and Egyptian invitations to have the former Nazis come train their intelligence and military services. Third, according to Naftali there is evidence that the Nazis in Egypt were being sponsored in part by the embryonic Defense Ministry of Konrad Adenauer.[9] This matters because Christopher Simpson documented that the US had installed Konrad Adenauer as West German prime minister when Gustav Hilger, one of the top Nazis recruited by the US government, had vouched for Adenauer as someone who would support US policies.[10] And what was the US policy for West Germany? Naftali himself explains that it was to turn Reinhard Gehlen into “the first chief of centralized intelligence of Western Germany” -- in other words, to put the Nazis back in power (this was done in 1956).[11] Finally, there is this: in a different article Naftali documents that the Nazi Leopold von Mildenstein, who participated with Skorzeny in the operation to train the Egyptians, secured immunity for himself -- when arrested by the West German police -- by explaining that he was a US agent.[12]
Naftali’s confidence that the CIA had nothing to do with the Egyptian operation appears adventurous, to say the least, especially given that Gehlen boasted in his memoirs that he had set that operation in motion with “the full approval” of the United States, as Naftali himself concedes.[13]
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The CIA's Nazis trained Al Fatah in Egypt
Coming back to Simpson’s summary of what happened in Egypt, this is
what he writes:“Over the next 18 months Skorzeny used CIA money to recruit for the Egyptian security services about 100 German advisers, many of whom he reached through neo-Nazi organizations and SS escape networks. Among his wards were Hermann Lauterbacher, an SS man and former deputy leader of the Hitler Youth, and Franz Buensch, a Goebbels propagandist best known for his pornographic work The Sexual Habits of Jews. Buensch, Gehlen’s resident chief in Cairo, was a veteran of Eichmann’s SS ‘Jewish Affairs’ office. This talented group was later joined by Alois Brunner.”[14]
SS Sturmbannführer Alois Brunner was a man “considered by many to be the most depraved Nazi killer still at large.” He had been Adolf Eichmann’s most important deportations expert, for he had a “keen sense of the exact types of terror and psychological manipulation necessary to disarm his victims,” which he employed to get them into the ghettoes, and then on the trains and to the death camps. In his role as master exterminator, he “rushed from Berlin to Gestapo offices throughout occupied Europe to train local Nazi satraps in how to carry out the destruction of Jews quickly and thoroughly.” Thoroughly means precisely that: “He did not neglect the murder of children because (as he told Berlin lawyer Kurt Schendel, who was pleading on behalf of a group of French orphans) they were ‘future terrorists.’” According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Brunner personally took charge of murdering 128,500 people, and was condemned to death in absentia by the French government -- but the CIA protected this man whom Adolf Eichmann characterized as “one of my best men.”[15]
Now, according to the postwar testimony of Adolf Eichmann’s top lieutenant Dieter Wisliceny, Hajj Amin al Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, was even more important than Eichmann as an architect of the German Nazi Final Solution. This means Alois Brunner was also one of Husseini’s “best men.”[16] And Husseini was already there in Egypt when Brunner arrived, because Husseini had taken refuge there after the war. No doubt they were delighted to see each other.
Adolf Eichmann could not be with Husseini and Brunner, but they must have celebrated the fact that he was safe: the year before, the 430th Detachment had informed the US High Command in Austria that,
“At this time, 1952, the apprehension of war criminals is no longer considered a mission of CIC [Army Counter-Intelligence Corps]. …Therefore, it appears the Salzburg police authorities should be advised that the arrest of [Adolf Eichmann] and [his] transfer to CIC is no longer desired.”[17]
(The CIA, in fact, always knew where Eichmann was hiding, and protected him.[18])
No doubt Brunner and Husseini lamented not having Eichmann there with them, but at least Leopold von Mildenstein was there. Mildenstein was one of Goebbels’ great propaganda experts, and an expert also in Zionism and the Middle East. Earlier, he had in fact mentored Adolf Eichmann himself.
Timothy Naftali explains:
“Mildenstein…turned up in Egypt working for the government of Gamal Abdul Nasser. In December 1956, the Turkish press reported that he had been hired by Egypt’s powerful ‘Voice of Arabs’ radio station along with other former associates from Goebbel’s organization. Mildenstein’s experience in inciting the Arabs against Jews in the Second World War was highly prized in Egypt. This was confirmed by a CIA report from Cairo, which listed him among a group of influential former Nazis who were shaping the actions of the Nasser government.”[19]
The training of the Egyptian intelligence and military services were not the only contributions of the Nazis to the effort to destroy the Jews from Egypt. In 1958, the terrorist Al Fatah (Arab Liberation Movement) was created in Cairo. Who created it? It was “organized…by veterans of the Mufti’s [Hajj Amin al Husseini’s] former Arab Higher Committee,” explains historian Howard Sachar. “From the outset,” he says, “the Fatah’s reputation depended largely upon the success of its Moslem traditionalist approach of jihad against Israel, and upon conventional infiltration methods.”[20]
The leader of Al Fatah would be the famous Yasser Arafat. In a declaration that Arafat made to the Arab press in August of 2002 he made it clear that he was quite proud of his origins, for he referred to the former Mufti as “our hero, Hajj Amin al Husseini,” and boasted that he had been Husseini’s soldier in the genocidal War of 1948 against the Israeli Jews.[21]
In a rare mention of Al Fatah’s origins in the press, David N. Bossie wrote as follows in August 2002, in the Washington Times:
“The mufti [Hajj Amin] barely escaped trial for [war crimes] by fleeing to Egypt in 1946. There he made young Yasser Arafat, then living in Cairo, his protégé. The mufti secretly imported a former Nazi commando officer into Egypt to teach Mr. Arafat and other teenage recruits the fine points of guerrilla warfare. Mr. Arafat learned his lessons well; the mufti was so proud of him he even pretended the two of them were blood relations.”[22]
I make two corrections to what Bossie writes. The first is that Husseini didn't "barely escape." He escaped easily. After the British government declared in public that it did not consider Husseini a war criminal (over the protests of British members of parliament in the House of Commons), the French government, which had Husseini in custody, placed him on house arrest. He was thus at liberty to make visits to Paris from the luxurious suburban villa where they 'held' him, and escaped.[22a]
The second correction is that it wasn't Husseini who imported the “former Nazi commando officer.” For this was Otto Skorzeny, whose specialty was precisely the “conventional infiltration methods” for which Al Fatah would become famous. He had been sent to Egypt by the CIA.
The Nazi training of Al Fatah was CIA-sponsored.
The current leader of Al Fatah and president of the so-called ‘Palestinian Authority,’ Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen), naturally received this Nazi training as well, because “Abu Mazen is...one of the founders of Fatah, one of the original Arafat band of brothers.”[23]
The US government is consistent. After assisting the birth pangs of Al Fatah with CIA-sponsored Nazi training, and then mobilizing an entire diplomatic process known as the Oslo process to get Al Fatah inside the Jewish state [see 1991 section], in recent times it brazenly took upon itself to give Al Fatah direct CIA training [see 1994 section], and now it is pushing with all its superpower might for the final stage of the Oslo process to be concluded: a fully fledged Fatah terrorist state on Israel’s flank, carved out of the Jewish state.
Footnotes and Further Reading
[1] Sachar, H. 1982. A history of Israel: From the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Knopf. (p.333)
[1a] Never mind that it was barely three years since the Jews had finished suffering the Nazi Final Solution; the British aid to the Arabs included sending captured German Nazi officers to lead the Arab armies that had openly pledged themselves to wipe out the Israeli Jews. This was demonstrated in a detailed article, which quoted official British documents at length, and which appeared in The Nation in 1948:
In 1948, the Left-wing Nation magazine exposed British support/instigation of Arab violence aimed at crushing Israel in cradle
The British Record on Partition
Reprinted from The Nation, May 8, 1948
Comments by Jared Israel
For the pdf to the entire Nation piece, go here:
http://www.tenc.net/history/nbr.pdf
To read the same document in text format, go here:
http://emperors-clothes.com/history/br.htm
To place the above British policy in the context of the history of British policy toward the Jewish people, read:
How did the 'Palestinian movement' emerge? The British sponsored it; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
[1b] Uncle Sam's Nazi's, The Washington Post, April 24, 1988, Sunday, Final Edition, BOOK WORLD; PAGE X11, 905 words, Peter Grose, REVIEW
[2] “Policy concerning clandestine use of former Nazi collaborators during the early cold war years was shaped by a series of National Security Council directives and intelligence projects sponsored by the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, then under the leadership of George F. Kennan, according to records discovered recently in the US State Department archives. Kennan was at the time assigned the task of internal policy oversight of all US clandestine operations abroad. His initiatives -- along with those of Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, and a number of other latter-day CIA executives -- helped convince Truman’s NSC to approve a comprehensive program of covert operations that were explicitly modeled on the Vlasov Army, an anti-Communist émigré campaign created by the SS and the Nazi Foreign Office during World War II. Scholars and propagandists who had once collaborated in formulating the Nazis’ political warfare program were brought into the United States to provide the brains for the new operation.
Wisner, the dynamic director of the CIA’s clandestine operations directorate, gradually gathered many of the threads of earlier Nazi utilization efforts into agency hands. Wisner believed in the tremendous espionage potential of the Eastern European émigré [i.e. Nazi collaborationist] organizations, their value as propagandists and agents of influence, and the unique advantages of using soldiers who had no provable ties to the US government for certain particularly sensitive missions, including assassinations…
Wisner’s clandestine campaigns were originally aimed at the USSR and its satellites. Before the decade was out, however, the American people also became an important target for CIA propaganda programs. …over the winter of 1951-52…, according to National Security Council records, Wisner began large-scale programs designed to bring thousands of anti-Communist [read: pro-Nazi] exiles to the United States as a means of rewarding them for secret operations overseas and to train others in guerrilla warfare against East Bloc countries. The CIA secretly subsidized the work of right-wing refugee relief organizations aiding such immigrants, including some groups with clear ties to extreme nationalist and Fascist organizations in Europe. The agency simultaneously funded millions of dollars into advertising and staged media events inside the United States during the same period, with support for these overseas ‘refugee liberation’ projects as a primary theme.
Tens of thousands of Eastern European refugees emigrated to the United States throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. …just as any large group of humans contains some criminals, so, too, did this emigration. The difference this time was that of the criminals who did come, many were experienced right-wing political activists who were highly organized and blessed with the patronage of the CIA.”
SOURCE: Simpson, C. 1988. Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis and its effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. (pp.8-9).
[3] Blowback (p.249)
[4] Blowback (p.40)
[5] Blowback (p.44)
[6] Blowback (p.45)
[7] Naftali, T. 2005. "Reinhard Gehlen and the United States," in US Intelligence and the Nazis. Edited by R. Breitman, N. J. W. Goda, T. Naftali, and R. Wolfe, pp. 375-418. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (p.377)
[8] Blowback (pp.249-51)
[9] Naftali, "Reinhard Gehlen and the United States," (pp.404-05)
[10] Blowback (pp.115-16)
[11] Naftali, "Reinhard Gehlen and the United States," (p.375)
According to the released US government documents, “Working immediately after the war with Army Intelligence, the Gehlen Organization became the responsibility of the CIA, which continued the relationship until 1956.”(a) What happened in 1956? “Gehlen’s organization became the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), West Germany’s foreign intelligence agency,” when the CIA handed over the Gehlen Organization to the West Germans.(b)
SOURCES:
(a) “CIA Intends to Release Records on Cold War Spymaster”; Interagency Working Group (IWG); The National Archives; October 5, 2000
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/about/press-releases/cold-war-spymaster-records.html
(b) “April, 2001 Historical Analysis of 20 Name Files from CIA Records”; Interagency Working Group (IWG); The National Archives ;By Dr. Richard Breitman, Professor of History, American University, IWG Director of Historical Research.
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-
records/rg-263-cia-records/rg-263-report.html
[12] Naftali, T. 2005. "The CIA and Eichmann's Associates," in US Intelligence and the Nazis. Edited by R. Breitman, N. J. W. Goda, T. Naftali, and R. Wolfe, pp. 337-374. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (p.342)
[13] Naftali, "Reinhard Gehlen and the United States," (p.404)
[14] Blowback (p.251)
[15] Blowback (pp.248-49)
[16] “How did the ‘Palestinian movement’ emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT; An HIR Series, in four parts; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm#final_solution
[17] Naftali, "The CIA and Eichmann's Associates," (p.338)
[18] “THE CIA PROTECTED ADOLF EICHMANN, ARCHITECT OF THE HOLOCAUST: Has the US ruling elite been pushing a pro-Nazi policy?; Historical and Investigative Research; 8 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/eichmann.htm
[19] Naftali, "The CIA and Eichmann's Associates," (p.342)
[20] Sachar, H. 1982. A history of Israel: From the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Knopf. (pp.619, 698)
[21] Al-Quds (Palestinian daily newspaper) Aug, 2, 2002; Translation: Palestinian Media Watch:
http://www.pmw.org.il/bulletins-050802.html
[22] Washington Times; August 9, 2002; "Yasser Arafat: Nazi trained", by David N. Bossie.
[22a] For the manner in which the British government, over the objections of the House of Commons, protected Hajj Amin al Husseini from prosecution by declaring him not a war criminal, see:
Pearlman, M. 1947. Mufti of Jerusalem: The story of Haj Amin el Husseini. London: V Gollancz. (78-82)
For the manner in which the French allowed Husseini to escape, read on:
“On 8th June, 1946, Mr. Duff Cooper held a Victory Day Garden Party at the British Embassy in Paris. M. Bidault, French Foreign Minister at the time, was one of the guests. He arrived late, bringing with him the interesting news that Hajj Amin al Husseini, former Mufti of Jerusalem, had fled from his villa in the fashionable Paris subub of Rambouillet, where he had been under surveillance since the end of the war.
...He had been in France since May, 1945, having been captured by French forces near the Swiss border after his unsuccessful attempt to find refuge in Switzerland with Germany's collapse. He had been brought to Rambouillet and kept under surveillance.
M. Bidault revealed that, some months before his flight, the French Government had received the Mufti's assurance that he would not seek to escape. Since November, 1945, surveillance had been relaxed, and Hajj Amin had been permitted to visit Paris. He had taken the opportunity of visiting the Legations of the Arab States at will, and had secured a passport from one of these Legations.
Now he had fled.”
SOURCE: Pearlman, M. 1947. Mufti of Jerusalem: The story of Haj Amin el Husseini. London: V Gollancz. (p.7)
[23] SOURCE: THUS FAR AND NO FATAH FOR MR PALESTINE; Resistance is growing within the PLO over Yasser Arafat and the Israeli peace process, The Guardian (London), November 12, 1993, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 24, 1204 words, DAVID HIRST
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1948 On May 14, 1948, Israel proclaimed itself a sovereign state. The First Arab-Israeli War began one day later. Egyptian troops (including a young army officer named Gamal Abd al-Nasser) were sent to fight in Palestine with faulty ammunition, a factor in the revolution of 1952 that toppled King Farouk.
In Syria there were three coups in 1948. On September 17, 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte, U.N. mediator in Palestine, was assassinated by Jewish commandos under the leadership of future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
1949 The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwaan al-Muslimoon ) by 1949 had grown to an estimated 2,000 branches with almost half a million members. On February 12, the movement's founder, Hasan al-Banna, was gunned down in the streets of Cairo. The assailants, some alleged, were security agents of King Farouk's government which had become worried about the growing strength of the Brotherhood. The king's government had outlawed the Brotherhood in December, 1948, and the Brotherhood had responded by assassinating Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi the following month (January, 1949).
1950 In April, 1950, Jordan formally annexed the West Bank making it clear that there was little or no Arab support for a separate Palestinian state. (See Kirsten Schulze, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Longman, 1999), 21).
On August 17, Israel expelled the inhabitants of Majdal. Also this year, in an operation dubbed "Flying Carpet," Israel airlifted 50,000 Yemeni Jews into the country.
1951 Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In nationalizing the petroleum resources of his country and in being one of the first Middle Eastern leaders along with Saudi Arabia's Ibn Saud to recognize and exploit the power of radio to shape public opinion, Mossadegh established practices that leaders of other Third World countries (notably Egypt's Nasser) would put to use with equal success. The British responded to the nationalization of the AIOC by boycotting Iranian oil (they had considered invading Iran, but backed off when Truman said he wouldn't support the plan). Iran plunged into an economic crisis, and this set the stage for the CIA backed coup that restored the Shah to power in 1953.
On July 20, 1951, Abdullah, King of Jordan, was assassinated by a Palestinian in the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. He was succeeded by his mentally unstable son Talal whom the Jordanian Parliament deposed one year later. Talal's seventeen year old son Hussein succeeded him on August 11, 1952 and ruled until his death in 1999.
In 1951, Egypt renounced its 1936 treaty with Great Britain.
1952 Libya gained its independence on January 1. Idris al-Sanusi became king. .
Revolution in Egypt (1952): A rebellious group of army officers in Egypt, motivated by hatred of British meddling and by King Farouk's corruption and incompetence (see) seized power on July 23. King Farouk abdicated on July 26 and went into exile. On September 9, Egypt's ruling "Free Officers" instituted the first of a series of land reforms aimed at redressing what was seen as an imbalance in land ownership (70% of the arable land had been in the hands of 1% of the population). (By 1970, land ownership had increased to 10% of the population.) (more on the revolution)
In Morocco, Sultan Sidi Muhammad Ben Youssef (Muhammad V) joined forces with the Istiqlal ("Independence") Party. That same year riots in Casablanca over the death of labor leader Ferhat Hached. left 38 dead.
1953 In the summer of 1953, Israel began moving government offices from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The U.S. protested that the move violated the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan declaring Jerusalem to be an internationalized zone.
In August, 1953, Israeli army "Unit 101" under the command of Ariel Sharon attacked the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Bureig in the Gaza Strip killing twenty residents, mostly women and children. The Israeli raids were in retaliation for Arab paramilitary fedayeen ("commando") raids against Israel. Later in the year, on October 14, Sharon and Unit 101 struck again, this time at the Jordanian village of Qibya, killing 70 residents inside their homes during a night of shooting. The residents had allegedly launched an attack against an Israeli village in which a woman and two children had been murdered. Ben Gurion initially denied IDF involvement in the raid, then later admitted it.
Throughout the early 1950s, there was an exodus of Jews from Iraq, the result of panic induced by Zionist agents who bombed synagogues and the U.S. Information Service library. (Sheldon Richman, The Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, January, 1991, 29)
Also in 1953, Ben Gurion was replaced as Prime Minister by the more moderate Moshe Sharret who attempted to advance the cause of making peace with the Arabs. His tenure was short lived: Ben Gurion was returned to power in 1955.
On August 16, 1953, the Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlevi fled into exile for five days after an American CIA planned coup to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a coup which the Shah was a party to, hit some snags. The coup was engineered by Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's grandson. (Kermit also played a role in funding support of anti-Communist interests in Egypt following the 1952 revolution there). Five days later on August 21st and after the coup had been successfully executed, the Shah was flown back to Tehran aboard a CIA airplane. (see Steven Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2003)
A New York Times special report on the Iran coup was published on April 4, 2000. The report summarizes a history of the affair written by the CIA itself, and, claims that:
1. The idea for the coup was hatched by the British who, angered by Mossadegh's nationalization of British oil interests in Iran in 1951, pressed the United States to join them in an operation to remove Mossadegh.
2. The U.S. CIA and the British Intelligence Service handpicked General Fazollah Zahedi to take over as Prime Minister, funneling $5 million to Zahedi's regime two days after the coup.
3. Iranian CIA operatives posing as Communists harassed Iranian religious leaders and staged a bombing of a cleric's house in a campaign to turn Iran's Muslims against the Mossadegh government.
4. The Shah was not a courageous man. His overly cautious and timid nature nearly ruined the CIA operation. He hesitated to sign CIA-written "royal" firmans ("decrees") authorizing Mossadegh's removal. Kermit Roosevelt sent the Shah's twin sister Princess Ashraf Pahlevi along with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, father of the 1991 Desert Storm commander, to try to embolden him. But, as a result of the confusion and a series of mishaps surrounding the operation, the Shah ending up fleeing.
In 1953 in Morocco, Sultan Sidi Muhammad was exiled.
Also in 1953, in Jordan and Saudi Arabia a new revivalist movement appeared: Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami ("The Islamic Liberation Party"). The party's founders were refugee Palestinians led by Sheikh Taqiuddin an-Nabhani Filastini.
Also in 1953, Saudi Arabia's King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud died. The king's eldest son, Prince Saud, became king.
1954 A foreign consortium was set up to manage Iran's oil.
In Egypt on April 17, 1954, a republic was proclaimed with Gamal Abd al-Nasser as prime minister. General Neguib retained the office of President but without power. In November he was deposed altogether and placed under arrest.
In June, 1954, elections were held in Iraq during which opposition parties gained seats in the parliament. (Baltimore Sun, Jan. 30, 2005)
In July, 1954, Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon instigated commando operations in Egypt in an attempt to depose Nasser. Some of these attacks were directed against U.S. interests in an effort to drive a wedge between Egypt and America. Israeli frogmen were captured as they came ashore in Alexandria. This incident became known as the "Lavon Affair." (see The Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, October, 1991)
On October 19, an Anglo-Egyptian Agreement was concluded: British troops were to withdraw from the canal zone within 20 months. The last British troops departed June 13, 1955.
On October 26, 1954, an assassination attempt against Nasser failed. In December six members of the Muslim Brotherhood were hanged for their alleged roles in the plot. The Brothers fell under an official ban. Many were arrested, including radical polemicist Sayyid Qutb.
On October 31, 1954, the Algerian war of independence against French colonial rule broke out. It lasted until 1962 and claimed over one million Algerian lives. One of the bloodiest episodes was the six month long "battle of Algiers" in 1957. Nasser's support of the Algerians angered the French and contributed to their decision to participate in the war against Nasser in 1956.
Also in 1954, the Soviet Union, which had supported the creation of the state of Israel and supplied arms to it, switched sides and began supporting Arab interests. As Michael Oren put it, "The Cold War had come to the Middle East..." ( Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), 8.)
1955 On 24 February, 1955, the Baghdad Pact was signed: Iraq joined an anti-Soviet, pro-Western defense pact with Turkey, the United States, Great Britain, Pakistan and Iran. Nasser refused to join the pact. Later in the year when he signed an arms pact with Czechoslovakia, Western hopes for being able to deal with Nasser took a turn for the worse.
On 28 February, 1955, Israel raided Gaza and killed 38 Egyptian soldiers. The raid was authorized by Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon (of "Lavon Affair" fame) in retaliation for a raid by Egyptian intelligence agents from Gaza who killed an Israeli cyclist near Rehovot (see Kirsten E. Schulze, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (Essex, U.K.: Addison-Wesley-Longman, Ltd., 1999), 26). The raid was a turning point for Nasser. He came away convinced that he had to secure an arms deal in order to defend Arab interests against Israel.
In April, 1955, a conference of twenty-nine Asian and African countries gathered in Bandung, Indonesia. Indonesia's President Sukarno opened the conference on 18 April. He struck an anti-imperialist tone, speaking out against the "moral violence" of the big powers and noting that the delegates could draw strength and inspiration from the fact that they represented more than half the human race at that time (1.4 billion people). Egypt's President Nasser attended. The conference marked Nasser's debut as a world leader. His developing sense of mission on an international scale surfaced for the first time at Bandung. He succeeded in bringing the cause of the Palestinian people more centrally to world attention. Palestine, he argued, was the cause of all Arab people. Encouraged and supported by China's Chou en-Lai, who was endeavoring to curry favor among the Arabs, Nasser introduced the Palestine issue by embedding it in the context of ongoing colonialism in North Africa and racial discrimination in South Africa. Together Nasser and Chou lobbied for a resolution supporting the rights of Arab Palestinians and calling for the implementation of United Nations resolutions on Palestine and a peaceful settlement there.
In 1955, former Israeli P.M. Ben Gurion was returned to power. Sharret became Foreign Minister, serving in this post until mid 1956 when he was succeeded by Golda Meir.
On August 26, 1955, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles delivered a speech in which he called for a resolution of the issue of Palestinian war refugees by means of the "...the resettling and, to such an extent as may be feasible, repatriation" of refugees. While acknowledging that, "some of the refugees could be settled in the area presently controlled by Israel, most could more readily be integrated into the lives of the neighboring Arab countries." (see Fred J. Khouri, The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, Third edition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 143, 299)
In September, 1955, Egypt's Nasser purchased $200 million worth of Soviet made arms from Czechoslovakia after being turned down by the West (which feared the weapons would be used against Israel).
In December, 1955, the United States, Great Britain, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development reached an agreement with Egypt that included loans to build the Aswan Dam. (see also)
Also in 1955, civil war broke out in the Sudan between the mostly Muslim north and the mostly Christian and animist south. The first stage was fought between 1955 and 1972 and a second stage from 1983 until 2003. Sudan gained its independence from Great Britain the in 1956.
1956 - 1970 Presidency of Gamal Abd al-Nasser in Egypt.
1956 On March 2, 1956, Morocco gained its independence from France. Sultan Muhammad ben Youssef, known as "The Liberator," a national hero and leader of the resistance movement against French control, established a constitutional monarchy with himself ruling as King Muhammad the Fifth.
On March 20, France granted independence to Tunisia.
In July, 1956, U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, angry because Nasser had purchased arms from Czechoslovakia, suddenly withdrew the Aswan Dam loan offer in an attempt to punish him.
Nasser responded by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company on July 26, 1956, hoping to use its profits to pay for the dam. He delivered his nationalization speech before a huge crowd in Alexandria on the evening of July 26,1956 (the fourth anniversary of King Farouk's abdication). Speaking from the balcony of the Bourse, Nasser first reviewed the history of the Suez Canal evoking the memory of the French diplomat-promoter who developed the project, Ferdinand de Lesseps. "De Lesseps" was the prearranged code word, the signal army Colonel Mahmoud Yunis, the officer in charge of seizing the canal, was waiting to hear on his radio in Port Said. It came two hours into the speech at 10 p.m. To make sure the signal got through, Nasser repeated the code word fourteen times during the next ten minutes of his speech after which he made the official announcement that the Suez Canal Company was being nationalized as he spoke. The crowd went wild. Nasser continued to work the crowd up into a frenzy using a blend of classical and colloquial Arabic. Then came the climax, the moment Nasser stuck it to the United States for pulling out of the Aswan Dam finance deal. He cried out, "Whenever I hear any talk coming out of Washington, I will say to them, 'Drop dead of your fury (mautu bi-ghaizikum! )!'" (Amin Said, al-Thawra min 23 Yulio 1952 illi 29 October 1956 [The Revolution From July 23, 1952 Until October 29, 1956) (Cairo: Isa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1959), 370; see also Kennett Love, Suez: The Twice-Fought War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969, 345)
But, it was probably the British and the French, not the Americans, who were dropping dead from their fury: they were the biggest users of the canal. After this, Nasser saw no alternative but to ask the Soviets to finance the Aswan Dam project. The "Suez Crisis" was the catalyst for the Second Arab-Israeli War.
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On October 29, 1956, the second Arab-Israeli War (also referred to as "The Suez War") broke out with Israel, Great Britain, and France arrayed against Egypt and aiming to depose Nasser.
Israel was motivated by three chief factors. First, it considered the Egyptian-Czech arms deal Nasser had negotiated the year before as a dangerous shift in the balance of power in the region. Second, Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal Company after the U.S. in July reversed itself and withdrew its offer of a loan to build the Aswan Dam. Third, Nasser had blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba between the Tiran Straits and the Red Sea. Great Britain, whose influence in the region had been on the wane since the end of World War II, saw the conflict as a way to regain lost ground. The French were angry with Nasser for his support of the insurrection in Algeria, France's colony. Britain's Prime Minister Eden and French Premier Mollet regarded Nasser as a dangerous demagogue. France, Britain, and Israel hit upon a plan (The Sèvres Protocol, Oct. 24, 1956) whereby Israel would seize the canal. Britain and France would then demand that both Israel and Egypt withdraw from the canal zone. When Egypt refused, as expected, Britain and France would intervene and force the Egyptians out.
Israel initiated hostilities on October 29 by invading Gaza and the Sinai and then moved into the Suez Canal zone on October 30. The United States, furious with Israel, Britain, and France and motivated even more by fears that the Soviet Union would be drawn into the fray, sponsored a U.N. resolution condemning the attack, which was passed on November 2. Meanwhile, British and French troops, the ultimatum to Israel and Egypt having been ignored as expected, were busy trying to take control of the canal zone. Hostilities ended on November 6 after a ceasefire took effect. In December, a U.N. emergency force was dispatched to the area. The Suez was returned to Egypt. (See Kirsten Schulze, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Longman, 1999), 22ff.).
While Nasser was the loser militarily, he was the big winner politically. His stature in the Arab world rose sharply, quickly dwarfing other leaders like Jordan's King Hussein and Iraq's Nuri al-Said who were perceived to be too beholden to Western interests. Finally, the 1956 Arab-Israeli War marked the end of the British and French colonial period in the region and the end of the British Empire worldwide. (See BBC 50th anniversary coverage of the Suez crisis and the war that followed.)
Also in 1956, the Sudan gained its independence from Great Britain which had ruled the country since 1898.
Also in 1956, Libya awarded American oil companies a concession to explore for oil.
1957 On January 28, the six month "battle of Algiers" broke out, provoked by an eight-day national strike called by Algerian rebels who had been fighting for independence from France since 1954.
Also in January 1957, the United States announced the "Eisenhower Doctrine": a policy whereby the U.S. would dispense economic and military aid to Arab countries willing to take a stand against Communism. Most Arab countries, except Lebanon and Iraq, did not welcome the initiative. The Suez War, in their view, demonstrated they had more to fear from Zionism and Western imperialism than from Communism. Saudi Arabia extended the lease of the Dharan air base to the U.S. for five more years in exchange for American military aid.
In March, Israel pulled back its troops from the Sinai and a special UN force was stationed in Gaza to act as a buffer between Israel and Egypt.
On July 25, 1957, the Bey of Tunis was deposed bringing monarchy to an end in Tunisia. Habib Bourguiba, a pro-Western secularist and modernist second only to Turkey's Ataturk, came to power. Bourguiba made French, not Arabic, the official language of government, education, and culture. Islamic Sharia courts were abolished, and wearing the veil (hijab, or headscarf) by women was banned. Bourguiba campaigned against the observance of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, offending many observant Muslims by deliberately drinking orange juice on national television during the fast. Bourguiba's anti-Islamic tendencies gave rise in the 1960's to such Islamist revival figures as Rachid Ghannoushi.
Also in 1957, Yasser Arafat, a civil engineer living in Kuwait, together with Khalil Wazir and Salah Khalaf, formed the Palestinian movement al-Fatah ("conquest" in Arabic; also, in reverse, an acronym for Harakat at-Tahrir al-Filistini, "Movement for the Liberation of Palestine"). Arafat's Fatah would join the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, and, in 1969 Arafat would be appointed "Chairman" of this umbrella organization.
1958 On February 1, 1958, Nasser's pan-Arabic nationalist dream resulted in the union of Egypt and Syria. Arab unity was the rallying call of both Nasser and Syria's Ba'ath ("Renaissance") Party. The new entity called itself "The United Arab Republic" (UAR). It lasted until 1961 when Syria broke it off. Jordan and Iraq, feeling threatened by the new UAR, agreed to a union as well on May 12, 1958 calling themselves the "Arab Union," but the coup of July 14 in Iraq brought it to a swift end. Nevertheless, Iraq and Jordan remained closely linked through strong cultural and economic ties. Jordan's population strongly supported Saddam Hussein's side in the 1990-1991 Gulf War putting King Hussein in the embarrassing and dangerous position of formally sitting on the fence during the conflict.
On July 14, 1958, a military coup led by Gen. Abd al-Kareem Qasim overthrew the monarchy in Iraq. King Faisal II, who had reigned from 1953 until 1958, the crown prince, and Nuri al-Said were all executed. Qasim's government had close ties to the Communist Party in Iraq (see also) (see also). As this was going on, an Egyptian plot to overthrow King Hussein in July was uncovered and broken up. The king imposed martial law and appealed to the British and the United States for help.
Also in mid July, 1958, the first Lebanese civil war erupted between Muslim and Christian groups (a second and far more serious civil war erupted in 1975). Muslim rebels, cheered by the display of Arab unity that had led to the unification of Syria and Egypt, rose up to demand that Lebanon become an Arab entity in its own right free from Christian domination. Commander of the army Fouad Shihab (Chehab) refused to confront the rebels fearing the army would split up. So, Christian president Shamun (Chamoun), for his part fearful that what had just happened in Iraq (see above) might happen in Lebanon, too, called on the United States to intervene on the basis of the Eisenhower Doctrine. The U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of Beirut on July 15, greeted by bikini-clad bathers and vendors selling ice cream, but also by General Shihab's troops who challenged them. What could have been a dangerous confrontation was dissolved through quick diplomacy after it was arranged that Shihab would succeed Shamun in September. The Marines went home in October. -- Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Fourth Edition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001), 263ff.
In 1958, there was a military coup in the Sudan.
1959 On October 7, a Ba'athist assassination team, including Saddam Hussein, wounded but failed to kill Qasim (Qasim would not be so lucky the next in 1963). Saddam was exiled to Egypt until 1963.
1960 The Organization of Petroleum Exporting States (OPEC) was formed in Baghdad to halt falling oil prices. Founding partners were Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
On May 27, 1960 in Turkey, the military staged a coup to restore political stability. Dissatisfaction had been rising over a government crackdown on the press, the sour economy, and government closure of universities. The military restored civilian rule the following November. (Other army interventions in the civilian political life of the country occurred in 1971, 1980, and 1997).
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria gained its independence from Great Britain (colonial rule had begun March 15, 1903).
1961 In September, a coup by right wing military officers reestablished Syrian independence from Egypt (Syria had resented being treated like a subordinate by Nasser rather than a full partner since unification in 1958). Kuwait gained its independence from Great Britain. Iraq refused to recognize Kuwait and massed troops on the border. Britain sent troops to defend Kuwait, and Iraq backed down.
Also in 1961, Morocco's King Muhammad the Fifth died and was succeeded by his eldest son, Hasan, who ruled as Hasan II.
In Egypt in 1961, Nasser nationalized al-Azhar. The Muslim world's oldest center of learning became an arm of the Egyptian government under the leadership of its pro-government rector, Mahmud Shaltut.
1962 In July, Algeria gained its independence from France after an eight year struggle. Algeria's leader, Ahmed Ben Bella and his National Liberation Front (FLN), aligned himself with Nasser. The FLN dominated Algerian politics through the end of the century.
In September, 1962, a Yemeni army coup deposed the imam (N. Yemen). Civil war broke out. Nasser sent in Egyptian troops to support the rebel military officers in San'a who proclaimed a republic. Saudi Arabia supported the monarchists, which led to Egyptian bombardments of royalist bases inside Saudi Arabia and included the use of poison gas, the first time in the history of Arab warfare (Oren, 15). Egypt remained bogged down in Yemen for five years. When Nasser pulled out, the republican regime he had backed fell from power.
Also in 1962, the Muslim World League was founded in Saudi Arabia to fill the leadership void in the Muslim world left by Nasser's nationalization of al-Azhar the year before and for the purpose of exporting Wahhabi teachings throughout the world. By the mid sixties, Wahhabi influence in the organization was supplemented by members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had fled Egypt in the wake of Nasser's persecution of them. They included Muhammad Qutb, the brother of Sayyid Qutb whom Nasser hanged in 1966. Muhammad Qutb arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1972 after his release from prison in Egypt. Other Muslim Brothers who found their way to the Saudi kingdom during this period included the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, who became Osama bin Laden's teacher. Some of these thinkers influenced the sahwa ("awakening") movement that gained prominence in the 1980s with its blend of radical Wahhabi ideas and the thought of Sayyid Qutb.
In 1962, Egyptian agents failed in a bid to assassinate Jordan's King Hussein (they had tried and failed in 1960, too).
In 1962, slavery was officially outlawed in Saudi Arabia.
1963 In March, Ba'ath Party members in the Syrian army, including Hafez al-Asad, seized power. In Iraq on February 8-9, 1963, Ba'athists overthrew General Abd al-Karim Qasim and executed him. There was a Ba'athist reign of terror against the Kurds. The Ba'athist regime embarked on a campaign of ethnic cleansing ("Arabization") of Kurdish areas: for forty years (up until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003), tens of thousands of Kurds were deported from Kirkuk and surrounding areas, their property seized and handed over to Arabs brought in from the south to settle there (see George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), chp. 10). A major benchmark in the Ba'athist "Arabization" of Kurdish areas was the "Anfal Campaign" (Feb.-Sept., 1988) in which tens of thousands of Kurds died. Saddam Hussein would be tried for genocide in 2006 in connection with this ethnic cleansing campaign (see also Halabja, March, 1988) (see also)
A brief attempt at unification of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt (a major plank in the Ba'ath Party platform) ended in failure after Ba'athists in both Syria and Iraq carried out purges of Nasserist sympathizers. The Ba'athists' inexperience forced them the following November to yield power to a new pro-Nasserist regime led by Abd al-Salam Arif. Arif was killed in a helicopter crash in 1966 and was succeeded by his brother who ruled until the Ba'athists staged their comeback in 1968.
Also in 1963, the "White Revolution," proclaimed by the Shah's government in Iran, called for land reform, nationalization of the forests, the sale of state-owned enterprises to private interests, electoral changes to enfranchise women, profit sharing in industry, and an anti-illiteracy campaign in the nation's schools. All of these initiatives were regarded as dangerous, Westernizing trends by traditionalists, especially the powerful and privileged Shiite ulema ("religious scholars") who felt keenly threatened. The ulema instigated anti-government riots throughout the country. The government used the secret police organization, SAVAK, to put the riots down, often with great brutality. One member of the ulema, a teacher of philosophy in the holy city of Qom, the Ayatollah ("sign of God") Ruhollah Khomeni was exiled to Iraq. These events, and the Shah's gargantuan coronation festival in 1971, sowed the seeds of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
In 1963, Ben Gurion was replaced as Prime Minister of Israel by Levi Eshkol.
From August 20-25, 1963, Israeli and Syrian forces battled in the demilitarized zone north of the Sea of Galilee. A UN ceasefire brought hostilities to a halt.
Also in 1963, religious intellectuals in Algeria founded al-Qiyam al-Islamiyya ("Islamic Values") as a means of combating Westernization and promoting the idea of an Islamic state in Algeria. They had been influenced by the ideas of Egypt's radical Islamist Sayyid Qutb.
1964 The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in Cairo. Ahmad Shuqairi was named Chairman. Regard for the organization was mixed, even among Palestinians, some of whom saw it as an "establishment institution," or, as a "Ministry of Foreign Affairs without any state" (see Polk, 237). The PLO was seen by many as in large part the creation of Gamal Abd al-Nasser who had sought a way to corral Palestinian militants and keep them under his thumb (Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1988),121). One of the militant groups included in this umbrella organization called the PLO was Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. (see also ascendancy of Yasser Arafat in 1969.)
In 1964, the reign of King Faisal began in Saudi Arabia and ended in 1975 when he was assassinated by a deranged nephew. Faisal replaced his half brother King Saud, who was pressured into abdicating. Saud had brought the kingdom into severe economic distress through poor leadership and neglect.
Also in November, 1964, Israel and Syria fought a mini-war over water and cultivation rights along their common borders. The same month, rioters in Cairo attacked the U.S. embassy and Egyptian forces accidentally shot down a plane owned by American businessman John Mecom. When the American ambassador, John Battle, suggested to Nasser that he improve his behavior in order to maintain the flow of American wheat shipments, Nasser replied, "'The American ambassador says that our behavior is not acceptable. Well, let us tell them that those who do not accept our behavior can go and drink from the sea...We will cut the tongues of anybody who talks badly about us...We are not going to accept gangsterism by cowboys.'" (in Michael B. Oren, 21) Nasser had been ridiculed by other Arab leaders for his dependence on American largesse. It was time for him to start looking tough and reclaiming lost prestige.
1965 Israel's warnings to Jordan to stop Palestinian terrorism having failed (six Israelis had been killed in an attack in May), Israel launched reprisal raids against the West Bank towns of Qalqiya, Shuna, and Jenin. Calls went up throughout the Arab world for war against Israel, confirming, it seemed, the strategy of al-Fatah, which was to use attacks on Israelis to provoke Israeli reprisals against Palestinians, which in turn would, it was hoped, start a new war of Palestinian liberation.
On June 19, 1965, Algeria's leader, Ahmed Ben Bella was forced out in a coup by Hawari Boumedienne backed up by the army.
In 1965, India attacked Pakistan in their ongoing dispute over Kashmir. Hostilities ended after 23 days.
The Nasser regime in Egypt, claiming that a new conspiracy against the President led by the Muslim Brotherhood (see 1954) had been uncovered, on August 30, 1965 arrested Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb, author of Milestones (Ma'alim fi-l Tariq ) which called for an end to secular government and the establishment of an Islamic state. Qutb was hanged the following year.
Civil strife broke out in 1965 in Indonesia (Java). A purge of Communists occurred. President Sukarno was edged out by General T. N. J. Suharto. Suharto, echoing policies of both the Dutch and Sukarno, kept a wary eye on Muslim political activity believing it to be a divisive force.
1966 On February 23, Syria's ruling Ba'ath Party staged an internal purge led by Hafez al-Asad who became the new minister of defense. Those ousted included the party's cofounders Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar.
On April 30, Israel dedicated its new, $7,000,000 Knesset building in Jerusalem. Arabs protested the event (Khouri, 111).
On November 13, 1966, two Israeli armored columns attacked three Jordanian controlled towns west of the Dead Sea in retaliation for thirteen attacks alleged to have been launched against Israel from the area. Relations between Israel and Syria had been even more tense, but Syrian territory was more rugged than Jordan's. Ironically, because of Jordan's relatively more moderate approach toward Israel, which made it less likely it would strike back, and Israel's wish to wreak revenge on some Arab entity, Israel decided to target Jordan.
Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb was hanged by the Nasser regime on August 29, 1966.
1967 The Third Arab-Israeli War broke out on June 5. It lasted only six days, and came, therefore, to be known familiarly as the "Six Day War." At the end, Israel had begun its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, areas claimed by Palestinians but which had been controlled since the end of the 1948 war by Jordan and Egypt respectively. The hardest pill for Muslims to swallow, though, was Israeli control over all of Jerusalem including the third holiest site of pilgrimage in the Muslim world: the Mosque of al-Aqsa and the adjacent Dome of the Rock.
Elsewhere in 1967, Egypt's Nasser withdrew from (North) Yemen (where Egypt had become embroiled in a futile effort to prop up a revolutionary regime since 1962). British troops left Aden (in South Yemen) and South Arabia. The British had long tried to combine Aden colony and the southern Arabian peninsula (which had been known as the "Aden protectorate"). When they at last gave up and pulled British troops out of the area, fighting broke out between two rival nationalist groups. The victorious faction proclaimed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen).
1968 On March 21, a battle took place between Israeli forces and the Palestinian Fatah militia backed up by Jordanian troops, at the refugee camp of Karameh, northeast of Jericho, east of the Jordan River, and thus inside Jordanian territory. Arafat and his Fatah commandos suffered heavy losses, but managed to force the Israelis to withdraw. Palestinians considered Karameh a great victory, particularly from the standpoint of morale. It paved the way for Yasser Arafat's election as PLO Chairman in 1969.
On July 23, 1968, the PLO hijacked an El AL flight from Rome to Lod. Thirty two persons were held hostage for five weeks. The commandos were eventually given free passage to Algeria.
Israel's first significant incursion into Lebanon came in 1968 when Israeli commandos blew up thirteen airplanes at the Beirut airport. Israel claimed the operation was in reprisal for an attack in Athens by PLO guerillas.
In 1968, Marxists took control in South Yemen. In 1968, there were two bloodless military coups in Iraq. Saddam Hussein emerged as strong man at the head of Ba'ath ("renaissance") Party.
Arab nationalist Sati al-Husri died in 1968 (born in 1880).
1969 In February, al-Fatah, one of the armed guerilla wings of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) made its play to assume leadership of the PLO, which had been founded in 1964. Fatah had been established in Kuwait in 1957 by a civil engineer named Yasser Arafat. Arafat was born in 1929 either in Gaza or Cairo (he claimed both at one time or another) and was educated in Cairo. He emerged from the fifth PLO Congress in Cairo with leadership of the overall organization firmly in tow, and more: Fatah had authority amounting to a government in exile. Arafat was named "Chairman" and the PLO's eleven member executive committee fell under the control of Fatah members or sympathizers. Arafat died in 2004.
Also in February, 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died and was succeeded by Golda Meir. On June 15, 1969, Golda Meir was quoted in the Sunday Times of London as saying, "It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist..." (quoted in Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, First Edition (Boston: South End Press, 1983), 51)
In March, 1969, Nasser started a "War of Attrition" with Israel, which would last until the summer of 1970. The two countries exchanged fire and engaged in commando raids across the canal zone. Nasser had actually begun the hostilities in September, 1968, but announced the formal policy as a means of drawing in the super powers who, so he hoped, would work to resolve the conflict. (This plan would indeed work, but not as soon as Nasser had hoped. It would be left to Egypt's Sadat and Syria's Asad to carry the plan through. It was they who launched the 1973 war.)
On May 25, 1969, Col. Jaafar al-Nimeiri seized power in the Sudan.
On August 21, 1969, an Australian Christian set fire to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Arabs viewed this sacrilege against a place holy to Islam as further evidence that Israel was a profane and ungodly nation that must be fought until God's victory was assured. Nasser, in a message to his armed forces, said "...the next battle is not a battle of liberation only, it has become necessary for it to become one of purification." An Islamic summit was held in Rabat in September to address the problem from a more Muslim perspective (many Muslims had been suspicious or disapproving of Nasser's nationalism). The Organization of the Islamic Conference was created with main offices in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Its avowed mission was to protect Muslim holy places, promote the struggle of Palestinians "'to recover their rights and liberate their land,'" and to safeguard the independence, dignity, and rights of Muslims everywhere. (see Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002), 74 ) The OIC represented the beginning of Saudi (Wahhabi) religious preeminence in the Muslim world.
The PLO and Lebanon forged a pact in November, 1969 ("The Cairo Agreement). Lebanon pledged to give the PLO a free hand to conduct raids across the border of southern Lebanon into Israel in exchange for which the PLO promised to keep out of Lebanese affairs. An estimated 560 raids into Israel from the Lebanese side of the border took place from 1969 to 1970 meaning that Lebanon (and Jordan) increasingly became targets for Israeli retaliatory attacks. (Schulze, 44) The PLO was seen more and more as a destabilizing force in the region. (see "Black September" - 1970 - below)
Also in 1969, Col. Muamar Qaddafi led a successful coup against the monarchy of Libya.
1970 On August 7, the Rogers Plan (named after the American Secretary of State, William Rogers and dated June 19 -- Text at UNISPAL) calling for a temporary ceasefire in the War of Attrition was accepted by Egypt, Israel, and Jordan.
The spring and summer of 1970 was a period of critical instability in Jordan. In the late spring, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas were suspected to have been behind a June 9 attempt to assassinate Jordan's King Hussein. Palestinians constituted more than half the population of Jordan, and the PLO had become something of a shadow government posing a clear challenge to the monarchy. The PLO was especially angered by Jordan's signing of the Rogers Plan. The assassination attempt was seen as the first of a series of ploys to take over the country that came to a head in September, 1970, a month henceforth remembered as "Black September." The royal palace and the radio station came under rocket attacks fired by the guerillas. The radical PLO faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), led by Dr. George Habash, occupied two hotels in Amman and held 60 hostages. The PLO demanded that the Jordanian commander of the armed forces, an uncle of the king, be dismissed, among other senior royalist officials. To everyone's surprise, King Hussein complied with the demand to dismiss his uncle and some of the other officials, but warned that this concession would be his last. The PLO aim of creating a pliant Jordanian government, had become transparently clear to all. The New York Times reported on June 12, "The pact King Hussein has signed with guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat comes close to granting the Palestinian militants full partnership in Jordanian affairs (Polk, p. 244)." The spring and summer of 1970 marked the high water mark of PLO military strength.
Then, between September 7 and 9, four commercial airliners (one Swiss, two American, and one British) were hijacked by Palestinian PFLP guerrillas under Habash's command in Jordan, and the passengers and crews held hostage. Embarrassed and humiliated, King Hussein finally cracked down. On September 15, the Jordanian army attacked Palestinian positions and expelled PLO officials and commandos from Jordan. The shelling of Palestinian neighborhoods and refugee camps resulted in approximately 20,000 casualties. The PLO moved its base of operations to Beirut, Lebanon. Thousands more Palestinians fled to Lebanon as well upsetting the delicate balance of power in that country and paving the way for the civil war that erupted in 1975 there. (See Seale, Asad, pp. 159-161.)
What finally pushed King Hussein to take action against the Palestinians was Syria's decision to send troops into Jordan in support of the PLO. Hussein, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, then did the unthinkable for an Arab or a Muslim leader: he called upon both Washington and Israel to come to his rescue. Israel took full advantage of the propaganda mileage and made highly publicized preparations to strike by air. This prompted Asad to withdraw Syrian troops on September 22. From this moment on, the U.S. began to regard Israel as the key to stability in the region, and began to commit vast sums of foreign aid to keep its ally well supplied.
On September 28, 1970, Nasser was stricken with a heart attack on returning from the airport where he had just seen off a party of visiting Kuwaitis. He died that evening. Anwar Sadat succeeded him. Four million people marched in Nasser’s funeral procession making it one of the largest funerals in history.
There was a massive Soviet arms buildup in Egypt in 1970.
The Americans and the British vacated their bases in Libya in 1970.
1971 In February, 1971, U.N. Ambassador Gunnar Jarring tried unsuccessfully to broker a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel on the basis of U.N. 242. Egypt quickly accepted the terms (Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 war borders including return of the Sinai to Egypt, Israeli rights of navigation in the Suez Canal, Egyptian recognition of Israel's independence and right to exist within secure borders, cessation of Egyptian belligerency against Israel). Israel rejected the offer. (see Charles D. Smith, 225f.) The two countries tried again in 1978 and that time they succeeded.
On March 12, 1971, the Turkish army deposed Prime Minister Demirel claiming his government was unable to maintain law and order. Martial law was imposed and civil liberties were curtailed. Full civilian control was restored in 1973. (other coups: 1960, 1980, and 1997 )
On March 14, 1971, Col. Hafez al-Asad, from the minority Alawite branch of the Ba'ath ("Renaissance") Party, was sworn in as president of Syria. He ruled until his death in 2000. The Alawites were a minority in Sunni Syria, a sub-sect of the Shiites often criticized as lacking in piety (for example, drinking of wine was permitted on festive occasions).
In Libya in 1971, Col. Qaddafi nationalized British Petroleum operations. Bahrain and Qatar became independent. British forces left the Persian Gulf region.
One day before independence of the United Arab Emirates was granted by Great Britain in 1971, Iran occupied strategic islands in the Persian Gulf.
Also in 1971, Iran's Mohammed Reza Shah and his queen staged a gargantuan celebration to mark Iran's 2,500th anniversary. The celebration consisted of a ceremony of self-coronation catered by Maxim's of Paris at a cost of $100 million and included 25,000 bottles of wine. The Shah sculpted the event to call to mind the glories of Iran's Persian past, which deeply offended Iran's Shia clergy and devout lay people. At one point in the ceremony, the Shah stood before the tomb of Cyrus the Great and intoned, "'Sleep well, Cyrus, for we are awake.'" (Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet (New York, Pantheon Books, 1985), 327). Together with such policies of the Shah as his "White Revolution" (1963) this event sparked the Shia into action. Dissident groups devoted to the overthrow of the monarchy began to spring up, and momentum began to build toward the revolution of 1979.
The Congress of Morocco, ruling on the subject of Islam and family planning, determined in 1971 that birth control was permissible under Islam.
In 1971, civil war broke out between East and West Pakistan.
1972 Palestinian commandos assassinated members of the Israeli Olympic team at Munich. Eleven Israelis and five Palestinians died. Israel avenged this attack the following year.
On June 1, 1972, Iraqi President Bakr announced the nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company.
In Egypt, Sadat expelled 17,000 Soviet military advisors. The civil war in the southern Sudan entered a lull.
Civil war in Pakistan having ended in December, 1971, the independent nation of Bangla Desh was proclaimed in what had formerly been East Pakistan.
1973 In April, Israeli commandos, including Ehud Barak who would serve as Foreign Minister in Shimon Peres' government in 1996 and become Prime Minister himself in 1999, entered Beirut and, with Barak disguised as a woman, assassinated three PLO officials whom Israel claimed had been involved in the attack on Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972.
On July 17, 1973 in Afghanistan, former Prime Minister Sardar Mohammed Daud deposed his cousin and brother-in-law King Zahir Shah (1914-2007) who had ruled since 1933. Zahir went into exile in Rome and the Durrani Dynasty, which had ruled Afghanistan since 1761, came to an end. Daud declared Afghanistan a republic. The new republic lasted only one year (see). (see also Communist takeover in 1978)
On September 1, 1973, Libya seized control of all foreign oil companies in the country and completely nationalized three American oil companies.
October 6 - 24, 1973: The Fourth Arab-Israeli War.
Elsewhere during the year, an Arab summit in Algiers declared the PLO the only representative of the Palestinian people.
An Arab oil boycott, in tandem with price hikes and production cutbacks, put pressure on Israel and its supporters. An astronomical rise in oil and gas prices in the U.S. (which was dependent on the Arab region for 6% of its oil needs) was accompanied by shortages and long lines at fuel pumps. In 1973, the US was dependent on the Arabs for 6% of its oil needs. (In the Fall of 1989, by comparison, the US was dependent on the Arabs for 30% of its oil.)
In Israel, the right-of-center Likud Party was formed in 1973 through a union of the Laam, Gahal, and Free Center movements largely through the leadership of General Ariel Sharon (born 1928), who became embittered after he was passed over for a command assignment (Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Third Edition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 232). Likud became heir to the revisionist ideas of Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky and the underground Irgun organization. In the December 1973 elections Likud made a good showing even though it lost to Labor. Likud's first electoral victory came in 1977. Both Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu became prominent Likud politicians at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries.
See also
The Makings of History / A peculiar document, revealed
The tall story we Europeans now tell ourselves about Israel
Lavon Affair: Operation Susanna
Israel's end game
Young Jihadi returnees are more radical than those of al-Qaida
The root causes of terrroism
The Mossad Role in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy
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