Word: abdel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Minister Yitzhak Shamir have told reporters that a five-man council was making decisions, but hard facts are an elusive commodity in Damascus. Among the men reported to be on the committee are Rifaat Assad, Hafez's younger brother and the tough-hearted head of internal security, Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam and Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas. Even if Assad should die or become seriously incapacitated, sparking a ferocious power struggle, U.S. officials expect little change in Syrian policy once a successor emerges. "Damascus would be no less hostile to Israel and the U.S. and no less militarily dependent...
...with so many countries born in the past 40 years, Syria's modern history has been a saga of coups and countercoups. In 1958 Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser merged his country with Syria to form the United Arab Republic, but the union lasted only 3½ years. In 1963 the Arab Socialist Resurrection (or Baath) Party overthrew President Nazem Koudsi and seized power in Damascus...
...meantime, random firing of rockets and artillery broke out again around Beirut. Shells were falling in the neighborhood of the presidential palace as Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam arrived for a talk with President Gemayel. The immediate problem is Syria's insistence that Lebanon's withdrawal agreement with Israel be abrogated or at least radically modified. Summarizing the impasse, a former Lebanese Cabinet minister declared bitterly: "The Syrian position is clear: simple intransigence. All this shelling is simply a means of keeping up the pressure on Gemayel...
Even the Soviet Union, which has bankrolled Syria's arsenal, expressed alarm over the spreading violence. At a banquet honoring Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam in Moscow late last week, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko said that "we consider as extremely urgent the need to overcome strife and restore unity in the ranks of the Palestinian movement." The message to Assad: ease up on Arafat...
...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...