Word: bekaa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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WELCOME TO THE BIG BOSS, read a new sign in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley along the Beirut-Damascus highway. In case any traveler did not recognize the big boss, the sign was surrounded by photographs of Syrian President Hafez Assad. Last week the highway was completely open for the first time in nine months-and free of marauding gangs that robbed and killed travelers-as Assad's troops moved into Beirut to unite and pacify the Lebanese capital...
...President last week-spoke of their presence as "temporary." It will take at least two years, by some estimates, merely to rebuild Lebanon's fragmented army and internal security forces. In parts of Lebanon, the Syrians seem to have settled in for a long stay. In the fertile Bekaa Valley, Syrian currency circulates as easily as the Lebanese pound, and shopkeepers routinely do business in either. Arriving there from Damascus, TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn stopped at a Lebanese checkpoint manned by a Syrian soldier. "Welcome to our country," he said...
...intransigent Maronite President Suleiman Franjieh. Yet Sarkis' inauguration took place under the aegis of the Syrian army which is now trying to make peace in Lebanon, by battle if need be. The Syrian army in Lebanon, which now numbers 21,000 men with 90 tanks, holds the lush Bekaa Valley-Lebanon's breadbasket-across the mountains east of Beirut. Christian Lebanese meanwhile hold the Mediterranean coastal area north of the capital. Between those allies, until last week, was a Palestinian mountain salient centered on the crossroads town of Ain Toura. Assad and Sarkis demanded that the Palestinians evacuate...
...Syrians responded with a fierce artillery and rocket barrage from their positions in the Bekaa. As town after town was hit, Palestinian defenders took advantage of the mist and smoke from exploding rounds to slip out of their positions. Arafat himself had nearly been hit earlier when Syrian gunners rained shells and rockets into Aley, a resort town on the Beirut-Damascus highway where the P.L.O. leader was conferring with his military commanders in a luxury villa...
...before either side lost. But the Syrian troops trying to contain the Christian-Moslem fighting were provoked into combat by Palestinians fighting alongside the Lebanese Moslems. Damascus' answer has been to increase its commitment in Lebanon still more, to 15,000 men who control most of the rich Bekaa Valley. The Syrians have also cut their opponents' sources of supply by sea and air, and destroyed their fuel supplies to the point that Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat last week appealed to Moscow to pressure Damascus...