Word: amal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...freedom of the hostages taken off the hijacked TWA Flight 847. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin asserted once again last week that the hijacking had actually delayed release of the Atlit prisoners. Nonetheless, the freeing of the 300 validated assurances relayed to Nabih Berri, leader of the Shi'ite Amal militia holding the hostages, that releases from Atlit would begin as soon as he let the captive Americans...
...minute session. The President asked for a full range of options. "From the beginning," says a senior adviser, "he approved of the concept of using everything on the menu." McFarlane briefed the group on the goals of various Lebanese Shi'ite factions, focusing his attention on the Amal's Nabih Berri as the U.S.'s best...
Reagan approved this approach and told McFarlane, who knew Berri from his % days as a special Middle East envoy in 1983, to use this relationship to put pressure on the Amal leader. In the middle of the night, from his suburban Maryland home, McFarlane spoke with Berri. During the 30-minute conversation, he passed along the message that had been worked out at the NSC meeting. Washington would not join in arrangements to free Israel's 776 Lebanese prisoners while Americans were being held, McFarlane told Berri. "The thrust was to get across to Berri that the Shi'ite prisoners...
...captivity, the hostages had been restrained in their comments to the ubiquitous TV cameras about their feelings toward the Amal militiamen holding them. Once freed, however, many of them began to vent their anger and bitterness, as well as resentment that their captors had been depicted as anything other than brutish fanatics. Some of the hostages distinguished between the original gunmen who hijacked the plane, thought to be from the fanatic Shi'ite Hizballah (Party of God), and the Amal militiamen who took control after the first two days. "Once the Amal came aboard, things seemed to settle down some...
...pragmatism that pursues whatever is in Syria's, and by extension Assad's, best interests. In the Beirut crisis, as it happens, Syria's interests coincided with America's. Both countries were anxious to end the hostage stalemate under terms that bolstered the position of Nabih Berri, the Amal militia leader who in effect hijacked the Americans from their original hijackers. For Assad, Berri and his Amal movement play a vital role in Assad's long campaign to become power broker and peacemaker among Lebanon's warring factions. While Amal currently commands the allegiance of most of Lebanon's estimated...