As described in part 3 PLO carries lots of responsibility for starting Civil War in Lebanon in 1975. Originating from French time Lebanon has a complicated constitution and balance of powers. The functions of President, Prime Minister and the Speaker of the House come from elections but are reserved for representatives of religious minorities. The President is always Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister is always Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of the House is always a Shia Muslim. The sudden arrival of terrorist militants from PLO - almost all Sunni Muslims - and their creation of State within a State brought an end to delicate balance. The first battles between PLO and Christian phalanges started in 1975. Apart from religion the division run along political affiliations as one more hot manifestation of cold war. PLO had backing of the USSR and many of its sub-organizations were distinctly communist which created interesting mix of nationalism, religious fundamentalism and far-left terrorism. Remember that after 6-days war and Yom Kippur War USSR was strongly anti-Israeli, an attitude which persisted until the end of Soviet Union.
Syria intervened in the Lebanese Civil War in 1976 effectively occupying big part of Lebanese territory. In 1978, after Coastal Road Massacre intervened Israel trying to push PLO away from Israeli border to stop terrorist infiltration and cross-border fire. After short time Israeli troops withdrew, however keeping the border strongly fortified against PLO terrorists, surprisingly enough cooperating with Shia Muslim forces and - to some extent - with Christian forces.
After Iranian revolution in 1979 it was Iran's turn to intervene in Lebanon and it wasn't shy about it.
The truly catastrophic year was 1982 when few things happened. On June 4 PLO terrorists sent from Lebanon severely wounded in London Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov. In response on June 6 Israel started operation in Lebanon and during few days began heavy fights near Beirut. The city, where PLO was fortified quickly found itself in very hard situation. International mediation led to removing - under US, French, Italian and British protection - PLO from Lebanon and Arafat went with part of his organization to Tunisia. This constituted victory from the Israeli point of view as attacks by PLO from Lebanon reached around 100 per year. Unfortunately at the same time created by Iran Hezbollah constituted itself in Lebanon. Yet at the time nobody yet suspected such a foe. Also in August 1982 Bashir Gemayel was elected President which could raise hope for peace between Israel and Lebanon. It never happened. On September 4 Israeli forces extracted from Palestinian refugee camps 520 tons of ammunition, rockets, mortars and alike. On September 14 Syrian forces assassinated newly elected president and Israel lost hope for achieving peace with the neighbor. In this moment Christian phalanges massacred Palestinians in refugee camps without any intervention from nearby Israeli forces which later led to trials in Israel (contrary to popular propaganda IDF never took part in this massacre but it has not prevented it either). The following year brought truce between Israel and Lebanon and horrific terrorist attacks by Hezbollah on American forces in which 241 marines were killed (in all 3 attacks close to 500 people were killed, most of them Americans and French). But that was already after Israeli withdrawal and Yasser Arafat's evacuation to Tunisia.
Lebanese Civil War, which Arafat provoked to a great extend, continued until 1990. Meanwhile Arafat spent 6 years in Tunisia and by the end of 80s started series of meetings with Israeli officials which opened the way to his greatest triumph and greatest Palestinian tragedy in my opinion. 90s brought Oslo Accords and for Arafat Palestinian Autonomy, Nobel Peace Prize (really? him?), the Presidential title when he became President of the Palestinian Autonomy and open road to Palestinian statehood. All this was achievable but all it was forfeited by Arafat himself when, time after another, he refused to recognize Israel, refused Palestinian state and focused again on terrorism and destruction.
From the point of view of blog about Israel this is the most important time of Arafat's activities, but to explain it I had not only to show how his hatred and fanaticism in 60s and 70s led to tries to destroy Israel and to create international terrorism, but also how, after setting turmoil in 3 Arab countries and organizing countless terrorists attacks he put his ego above any interest of Palestinians and brought about their calamity.
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