Word: shied
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...minute conversation, he passed along the message that had been worked out at the NSC meeting. Washington would not join in arrangements to free Israel's 776 Lebanese prisoners while Americans were being held, McFarlane told Berri. "The thrust was to get across to Berri that the Shi'ite prisoners were going to get released and that as a practical matter, he was delaying their release," said a State Department official...
While the hostage crisis ostensibly revolved around a dispute between Lebanese , Shi'ites and the Israeli government, it was played out against the larger and ever tortured context of Middle East politics. The American diplomacy used in bringing the Beirut drama to a conclusion, moreover, produced some new twists and turns in the labyrinth of Washington's policy in the Middle East, an area of vital but sometimes conflicting U.S. concerns. For the Reagan Administration, the episode revealed some casting changes among principal characters, created some fresh strains between the U.S. and countries in the region, and may have even...
...clearly enhanced diplomatic position, if only because of such previously abysmal relations with the Reagan Administration, belonged to Syria and its President for the past 14 years, Hafez Assad. In putting his prestige on the line by guaranteeing the safe delivery of the 39 U.S. hostages from their various Shi'ite captors, including the fanatics of Hizballah (Party of God), Assad convincingly demonstrated that he controls many of the levers of power in seemingly chaotic Lebanon. Ronald Reagan acknowledged Syria's "central responsibility" in the successful efforts to free the hostages, and the President also telephoned his thanks to Assad...
...they could have been a group of tourists happily returning from a slightly wearying holiday. But the 30 men descending the red-carpeted steps of the TWA jet at Andrews Air Force Base last Tuesday were among the 39 hostages whose personal ordeal at the hands of radical Lebanese Shi'ites had been an agonizing 17-day national nightmare. Now they were home. As they walked into the bright sunlight, they seemed to give fresh affirmation to the familiar Fourth of July lyrics about the land of the free and the home of the brave...
...them. Once freed, however, many of them began to vent their anger and bitterness, as well as resentment that their captors had been depicted as anything other than brutish fanatics. Some of the hostages distinguished between the original gunmen who hijacked the plane, thought to be from the fanatic Shi'ite Hizballah (Party of God), and the Amal militiamen who took control after the first two days. "Once the Amal came aboard, things seemed to settle down some," said Testrake. Yet others were hostile toward both groups. "The Amal portrayed themselves as our protectors and our saviors," said Hill...