Word: bekaa
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Inside a small farmhouse in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, eight Palestinian fighters warm themselves around an old kerosene heater. They have spent the afternoon training on a Katyusha rocket launcher that lies beneath crude camouflage in a nearby apple orchard. Most of these men are combat veterans who fled to the Bekaa Valley after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the bombing of West Beirut. Yet the war seems strangely irrelevant to their thinking. "First we will drive the enemy from Lebanon," declares a 20-year-old in a calm voice, "and then we will liberate Palestine...
...scattered among nine Arab countries. The P.L.O. spent more than a decade building a military establishment in Lebanon. Now it is gone, and the loss is so profound and irreparable that the very nature of the organization has changed. Except in parts of Lebanon, such as the Bekaa, where they still undertake occasional commando attacks against the Israelis, the P.L.O. fighters have been neutralized, and even in the Bekaa they operate under restrictions imposed by the Syrian army. Though Chairman Yasser Arafat rarely visits it, his only headquarters today is an isolated resort hotel in Borj Cedria, Tunisia, 15 miles...
...Lebanon, Shamir insisted that the 5,000 to 6,000 Palestinian guerrillas still in northern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley should leave before any Israeli withdrawal began. But he did not totally reject the idea that the P.L.O. might depart at the same time as a mutual Syrian-Israeli withdrawal. Among the security arrangements Shamir did insist on was establishment of a 40-km security zone north of the Israeli border as a buffer against future P.L.O. incursions...
...described only as someone in contact with "foreign quarters." There were no such leads, however, in the death last week of PL.O. Chief of Staff Saad Sayel, better known as Abu Walid. He was killed by some 30 gunmen while inspecting guerrilla units in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley...
...from the Syrian capital of Damascus. Jerusalem, for its part, is anxious to avoid the political and economic burdens of a prolonged occupation in Lebanon. The main difficulty is Israel's demand that 5,000 to 6,000 P.L.O. fighters who remain in northern Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley leave at the same time...