Word: jumblatt
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...RECENT assassination of Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt in Lebanon, deliberations of the Palestine National Council, and heated reactions on all sides to President Carter's recent pronouncements on a Middle East settlement are the latest reminders of the complexity and frustration of Middle Eastern politics. But despite the fact that the battle lines have always been complex and have become increasingly fragmented and radicalized over time, Americans still tend to regard the ongoing stalemate in the Middle East simplistically as a conflict between "the Jews" and "the Arabs...
...nearby Aley, military headquarters of Leftist Leader Kamal Jumblatt, the Syrian onslaught seemed equally overwhelming. Lebanese rightist troops had attacked the town just ten days ago but the Palestinians had beaten them back. They had also mined the main road and lined it with sandbag barricades. The Syrians opened with barrages of rockets, sent in swarms of low-flying MIG fighters, then followed with tanks. Said one fedayeen who fled from a burning house: "They use their rockets like we use our guns. We fire 30 bullets and they fire 30 rockets." Palestinian radio broadcasts appealed to Arab nations...
With Syrian ground forces in control of Beirut airport and the port of Tripoli, and Syrian missile boats sealing off the ports of Sidon and Tyre against arms and ammunition resupply-for leftist and Palestinian forces, both Arafat and the leader of the Lebanese left, Kamal Jumblatt, were under pressure to come to an accommodation. Beirut remained under Syrian siege, its food and gasoline supplies severely depleted, its hospitals filled with the victims of continuing sporadic fighting between right and left. If the end was not in sight, Assad's pressure gamble appeared to be making slow headway. "Middle...
Predictably, Lebanon's leftists were enraged. Leftist Leader Kamal Jumblatt called a one-day general strike in Beirut that kept people off the streets and closed the few shops that had not already been shuttered by the incessant street fighting. He also requested that other Arab states "interfere" in order to end the Syrian intervention. This was seconded by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which also managed to accuse Washington of being behind Assad's move...
Egypt too denounced Assad, thus further chilling the already frigid relations between Cairo and Damascus. In a letter to the Arab League, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy accused Syria of preparing "bloody butcheries that are in reality a war of genocide." Fahmy, like Jumblatt and the P.L.O., called for joint action by other Arab states to get Syrian troops out of Lebanon. In Cairo, Arab students protesting the intervention occupied the Syrian embassy for three hours; in Moscow, Arabs demonstrated in front of the Syrian mission...