Word: syrian
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...peace treaty with Egypt and a wide stretch of desert between them. Before 1967, Israel's population centers were within rifle range of Jordanian troops; today 40 miles of desert and a river separate Jordan from most Israelis. Before 1967, much of northern Israel was vulnerable to Syrian fire from the Golan Heights; today Israel controls, and indeed has formally annexed, that strategic plateau...
Arafat wants to consolidate all Palestinian groups under the P.L.O. umbrella, perhaps to prepare them for possible negotiations with Israel within the framework of an international peace conference. He also wants to prevent his Arab rivals, notably Syrian President Hafez Assad, from continuing to exploit Palestinian feuding. For his part, Abu Nidal might welcome a reconciliation with the P.L.O. because his relations with his Syrian hosts have cooled considerably since 1986, when Assad came under heavy international pressure to distance himself from Abu Nidal-style terrorism...
...would include the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China) as well as Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. After a formal opening, the conference would break up into small, bilateral meetings, with Israeli representatives meeting separately with Syrian, Jordanian and joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegations. The plan would limit the role of the Soviet Union and would probably rule out the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization unless the P.L.O. agreed at long last to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist...
...Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, demonstrated once more that he still has the ability to outlast if not outwit his enemies. Ever since Israel drove the bulk of the P.L.O. from Lebanon in 1982, such radical Palestinian leaders as George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh have sided with Syrian President Hafez Assad in opposing Arafat's leadership. But last week, when the Palestine National Council, the P.L.O.'s so-called parliament in exile, met in Algiers for its first session in 2 1/2 years, friends and rivals alike cheered when Arafat shouted, "This Palestinian land shall remain Arab! Arab...
Little good news comes out of Beirut nowadays, but last week the headlines offered some cheer. Saudi Hostages Bakr Damanhouri and Khalid Deeb were freed, evidently thanks to pressure by Syrian President Hafez Assad. Damanhouri, a cultural officer at the Saudi embassy in Beirut, had been held by an unidentified terrorist faction. Deeb, 23, the son of a security official in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, had been kidnaped in late January, apparently by the partisans of Islamic Jihad. The pair's good fortune raised hopes that the Syrians might secure the release of at least some...