Word: habib
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ceasefire, some 10,000 Lebanese streamed out of the target area, wending their way through streets filled with debris and smoldering ruins, and found refuge in East Beirut or outside the city. The Israeli attacks, which aroused wide opposition around the world, came just as U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib reportedly was on the verge of working out an agreement for the Palestine Liberation Organization to evacuate Lebanon. The assaults also angered Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and thus jeopardized any resumption of the Camp David talks with Israel in search of a long-term settlement of the Palestinian...
...fighting jeopardized anew the negotiations led by U.S. Special Envoy Habib to get the P.L.O. peacefully out of the country. Clouding the diplomatic proceedings from the beginning has been the basic mistrust between the Israeli and the P.L.O. leaders, a wariness that has made the talks difficult and sporadic fighting all but a certainty. P.L.O. fears have been reinforced by the fact that there have been at least four attempts on Arafat's life within the past six weeks. Two operations centers were bombed shortly after Arafat visited them. Last Friday an Israeli jet attacked an eight-story apartment...
...this atmosphere of mutual suspicion, Israeli policy about Lebanon was two-pronged. First, Jerusalem would cooperate, to a degree, with the Habib negotiations, especially since the Reagan Administration was so committed to the talks. Second, Prime Minister Begin's government would periodically apply heavy military pressure on P.L.O. positions in West Beirut in order to remind the Palestinian leaders that their only choice was to leave Lebanon. Israeli officials declared that these "salami-style" maneuvers of slicing away at the Palestinian redoubt in West Beirut would be conducted only in response to P.L.O. ceasefire violations. But there were bound...
Joining the effort to down-play the assault on West Beirut, Defense Minisrter Ariel Sharon, architect of the Lebanese invasion, complained to the U.S. Government about Habib's reports to Washington that Israel was firing 1,000 shells into West Beirut for every shell fired by the Palestinians. Sharon denounced such accounts as "mendacious" and said that they were based on observations from afar...
Ironically, the attacks on West Beirut came just as Habib thought that his peacemaking mission was on the brink of success. Early last week a Habib aide placed what State Department officials termed a "euphoric" call to Washington. Habib, who had been repeatedly in touch with the P.L.O. through his Lebanese intermediaries, sent home a cable that was a bit more cautious, indicating considerable optimism but noting that there were still t's to be crossed and i's to be dotted." Even so, declared one top State Department official, "we had 95% and only needed a couple...