Word: syrians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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SOUTHERN LEBANON was known as "Fatahland" not so long ago, but villages which once teemed with Palestinian fedayeen now welcome the Syrian occupation which has at least momentarily crippled the Palestinian guerrilla movement. As Syrian President Hafez Assad dictates terms to Fatah leader Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian military and political assertiveness of April 1975, which touched off civil war in Lebanon, seems far away. Arafat's enforced meekness is even further removed from 1974, when he stood before the United Nations General Assembly, riding the crest of Third World acclaim and proclaiming the ascendancy of the Palestinian liberation movement...
...Thus, Fatah's rise to prominence appears to have been more the result of the ideological and tactical guidance of those close to Arafat than of "Abu Ammar" (Arafat's code name) himself. And the group's earliest strikes against Israel were due to the planning and materiel of Syrian officials. As Arafat appears increasingly hamstrung in 1976, the intriguing question arises: how much is his powerlessness a reflection of "the way it's always been...
WELCOME TO THE BIG BOSS, read a new sign in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley along the Beirut-Damascus highway. In case any traveler did not recognize the big boss, the sign was surrounded by photographs of Syrian President Hafez Assad. Last week the highway was completely open for the first time in nine months-and free of marauding gangs that robbed and killed travelers-as Assad's troops moved into Beirut to unite and pacify the Lebanese capital...
Traveling in three columns, Syrian tanks moved down to the city's battered port and financial district, bulldozing roadblocks as they rolled. The Syrian troops-the bulwark of what will eventually become a 30,000-man multinational peace-keeping force-also moved swiftly to restore civic order. Two attempted kidnapings were broken up and ten looters stealing the last furnishings from the once luxurious Phoenicia Inter-Continental Hotel were arrested...
Most Beirutis welcomed the Syrians joyfully, particularly because the arrival of the army marked an end to the nighttime shellings that have made the city an afterdark hell. Young boys happily clambered aboard the Syrian tanks. Women pelted them with rice and rose petals, Lebanon's traditional welcoming symbols. Behind the tanks, in another sign of trust that the 19-month civil war was over, came a civilian convoy-cars laden with mattresses, bedding and furniture-of Lebanese who had fled the capital when the fighting began...