Word: bekaa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...midsummer, Arafat loyalists had been pushed out of the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon and into the Tripoli area, where Arafat joined them in September. Now, assuming he can manage an escape from Tripoli, he might try to resume the negotiations with King Hussein. But whether Hussein or anyone else would still be interested in talking to a P.L.O. leader who has lost his army is uncertain...
While the struggle within the P.L.O. was being played out in Tripoli, a long-awaited act of revenge was taking place in the Bekaa Valley. On Wednesday, the Israelis staged a reprisal raid against the pro-Iranian Shi'ite Muslim splinter group, known as Islamic Amal, which is believed responsible for the suicide attacks that killed 28 Israeli soldiers on Nov. 4, as well as 239 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers on Oct. 23. Four Israeli warplanes, ejecting thermal balloons in their wake in order to confound heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, attacked a training camp...
...that still accounts for about 80% of the P.L.O.'s strength. Fanned by Syria, the rebellion in Arafat's ranks spread during the summer. In June, the Syrian President expelled Arafat from Damascus; gradually, troops loyal to the P.L.O. chief were pushed out of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and into Tripoli. In September, Arafat slipped into the city to prepare for a rumored Syrian offensive...
...actions in Lebanon whether or not it knew of any specific terrorist plans." His tough talk may have been laying the groundwork for a retaliatory assault. This could come through an attack on the Syrian artillery positions far up in the mountains, or on their weapons dumps in the Bekaa Valley, or on the camps of the pro-Khomeini factions near the town of Baalbek. The U.S. is also considering a move to coordinate diplomatic and economic pressure on Syria. An even stronger approach, hinted at by Kissinger, would be to form an offensive alliance with the Israelis to take...
...Hizbolla, which means Party of God, is a rival to the Amal faction, the largest Shi'ite group in Lebanon. It receives guns, ammunition and money from the Iranian revolutionary guards operating in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley and from the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which sees it as a vehicle for extending Khomeini's influence in Lebanon. The Hizbolla is widely assumed to have been behind the U.S. embassy bombing, but neither Lebanese nor U.S. authorities have been able to pin this down. A measure of the difficulty of identifying terrorists in Lebanon is that although two or three...