Word: syrians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...week's end the Syrian initiative seemed to have brought the conflict to a new stage. As Arab troops from several countries began to arrive in Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) announced that a ceasefire had been arranged in Beirut and that Syria would begin a phased withdrawal of its forces. By week's end, Damascus had not confirmed any agreement to a ceasefire, and no observers in the Middle East thought that the Syrians were about to pull out more than a token number of their forces. Nonetheless, reports from Beirut indicated that the fighting...
Daring Move. The Syrian attacks last week were intended to check the mainly Moslem leftist forces and their radical Palestinian allies, who have been battling Lebanon's mainly Christian rightists. Syrian President Hafez Assad has been seeking a peace that would enable Christian and Moslem Lebanese to continue sharing political power; this would make it unlikely that a radical state would emerge on Syria's western frontier. This led Assad, earlier in the year, to send several thousand Syrian-led Saiqa fedayeen into Lebanon to bolster the Christian minority. Last week's action was a more daring...
...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...
...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...
...current Lebanese crisis, the U.S. is acting as middleman between Syria and Israel, just as it did between Egypt and Israel. While Washington backs Syria's initiative in Lebanon, it has also managed so far to calm Israeli fears regarding the purpose of the Syrian presence there. Although Syrian President Hafez Assad has kept other options open, he has begun to take the first hesitant steps in accepting Sadat's view that only the U.S. can get a settlement for the Arabs...