Word: baddawi
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...alive and still fighting, Arafat smiled broadly and spoke as boldly as ever. When reporters asked him about his bandaged hand, he said that he had injured it slightly when he fell down some steps. But despite the brave performance, the P.L.O. chairman's prospects were dour indeed. Baddawi, the last of the Palestinian refugee camps loyal to Arafat, had been overrun by P.L.O. rebels backed by Syrian troops, tanks and artillery; the end of Arafat's long rule as head of a more or less united P.L.O. was at hand...
Throughout Lebanon last week, the search for peace suffered a series of setbacks. A five-day truce between P.L.O. factions ended abruptly on Tuesday when rebel forces attacked and seized the Baddawi camp, causing hundreds of deaths and forcing Arafat and some 4,000 troops still loyal to him to seek refuge in the heart of Tripoli. In Beirut, 45 miles to the south, an eight-week truce was frequently violated as "phantom artillerymen," presumably Druze, shelled predominantly Christian East Beirut and sporadically hit parts of the Muslim western quarters as well. The continuing peace negotiations among Lebanon...
...Soviet Union had already stressed to its Syrian clients the need to "overcome strife and restore unity" within the P.L.O., but the effect on the Syrians had been negligible. By the end of the week, even as Arafat's loyalists made a valiant effort to recapture the Baddawi camp, there were reports that the P.L.O. chairman would be rescued from Tripoli by Italian or French naval vessels...
...Wednesday, Captain Ahmed Jebril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small radical P.L.O. group with close ties to Libya and Syria, held a press conference in Baddawi, soon after the camp's capture by the anti-Arafat forces. Declared Jebril: "We stand today in Arafat's headquarters and command post. We have seen how he ran. Arafat is finished, and he has no alternative but to turn himself in to the revolution inside the P.L.O. so he may receive the punishment he deserves...
...with all his brothers." The P.L.O. leader flatly rejected the appeal amid reports that the rebels had made their final demand: surrender now and leave Lebanon, or face an all-out assault when the truce expires on Sunday. By week's end shells and rockets again pounded into Baddawi and Tripoli, though the attack was considerably less fierce than in previous days...