Word: damascus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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After months of fruitless effort to bring peace to strife-ridden Lebanon, Syria last week upped the ante with a massive military intervention in an all-out attempt to enforce a long-elusive Pax Syriana. Instead of calming the situation, the move at first brought Damascus into bloody conflict with its erstwhile ally, the Palestinian guerrilla movement, and forced it into an unwanted, possibly only temporary, compromise in which other Arab states are sending token forces into Lebanon...
...have brought the conflict to a new stage. As Arab troops from several countries began to arrive in Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) announced that a ceasefire had been arranged in Beirut and that Syria would begin a phased withdrawal of its forces. By week's end, Damascus had not confirmed any agreement to a ceasefire, and no observers in the Middle East thought that the Syrians were about to pull out more than a token number of their forces. Nonetheless, reports from Beirut indicated that the fighting was diminishing as the Pan-Arab contingents began separating Syrian...
...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. As the Palestinians saw it, a "final confrontation" was brewing, the equivalent of King Hussein's bloody Black September suppression...
...upholding the ceasefire, the Syrians would reduce the chances of a confrontation with both the Palestinians and such radical Arab states as its hostile neighbor Iraq, where suspicious movement of troops last week caused Syria to shift some of its own troops to its eastern border. But Damascus will assuredly not give up its goal of preventing the Arab radicals and the P.L.O. from gaining a free hand in Lebanon and provoking a confrontation with Israel. If there seems any strong danger of that, the Syrians could renew their military effort of last week. That, if successful, might finally succeed...
...from Beirut in the cool Lebanon mountains, has long been a favorite summer resort, both for wealthy Lebanese and Arabs from neighboring lands. It was there last week that the advancing Syrians met their first real resistance. On Tuesday, reports Wynn, the town was battle-scarred. Along the Beirut-Damascus highway, corrugated shutters of shop after shop were curled up from the shelling. Many of the cypress trees that once sheltered vacationing strollers had been smashed to splinters. Testimony to the Palestinian resistance was provided by three burned-out tanks that lay beside the road...