Word: bekaa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...latest developments really originated in the occupation by Assad's forces of the center of Lebanon's strategic Bekaa Valley earlier this month (TIME, June 14). That move, at first conducted with limited forces, firmly convinced the Lebanese left that Syria's sympathies lay with Lebanon's hard-pressed Christian rightists. For the bulk of Yasser Arafat's P.L.O., it seemed incontrovertible proof that Damascus was intent on emasculating the fedayeen in their last haven in the Arab world, as part of a more subtle movement toward an eventual wider settlement with Israel...
...self-styled Lebanese Arab Army, composed primarily of Moslem deserters and led by Lieutenant Ahmad Khatib, 33, who had served in the regular army for eleven years before deserting in January. Originally, his army numbered about 70 men and was confined to a lone command post in the Bekaa Valley, but it has grown nearly fourteenfold in the past two months and controls about a dozen camps...
...northern Lebanon, the leftists overran isolated Christian villages, seizing town halls and looting police stations of arms and ammunition. East of the capital, an estimated 2,000 soldiers of the P.L.A. crossed from Syria into Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Helping the local militia and other Palestinian units already in the country, they captured Chtaura, a strategic town of 5,000 Christians on the Beirut-Damascus highway, and tightened the seige around Zahle, the major city in the Bekaa...