Word: tripoli
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...escape from Beirut with more than 6,000 of his commandos after the Israelis had captured a third of Lebanon and surrounded all of his positions. This year Arafat and his loyalists had held on for three weeks in the vicinity of the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli as a vastly larger force of P.L.O. rebels, strongly backed by Syria, tried to drive the Arafat faction into the sea. The chairman's cause seemed hopeless, as his followers lost control of one refugee camp, then another, and were cornered within a small section in the heart of Tripoli...
Arafat's strategy was based on stubbornness. He held on in Tripoli as long as he could, convinced that one or another group of foreign governments would eventually come to his aid. Sure enough, at week's end the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Syria announced, after several days of intense bargaining in the Syrian capital of Damascus, that they had devised an agreement acceptable to both Arafat and his enemies...
...Palestinians' favor, the Shamir government seemed to be serving notice that it was trying to get rid of some of the unfinished business of the war in Lebanon. It was also worried about the safety of the six Israeli soldiers, knowing that they were being held in the Tripoli area as it came under bombardment and that one of them had reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown. Finally, after weeks of secret negotiations, Israel took the first step: it freed 1,100 Palestinians, most of whom had been held at the Ansar prison camp in southern Lebanon, and flew them...
...same time, Arafat's forces in Tripoli were putting the six Israelis aboard a fishing boat, which took them to a French vessel offshore. They were then transferred to an Israeli naval vessel, which sailed south to the Israeli port of Haifa. From there they were flown to Sde Dov airport, near Tel Aviv, where they received a tumultuous reception from relatives and well-wishers. Once the Israeli prisoners were known to be safe, the Israeli government ordered the release in Lebanon of the remaining 3,500 Arab prisoners. Israel also returned the P.L.O.'s archives, which...
While the struggle within the P.L.O. was being played out in Tripoli, a long-awaited act of revenge was taking place in the Bekaa Valley. On Wednesday, the Israelis staged a reprisal raid against the pro-Iranian Shi'ite Muslim splinter group, known as Islamic Amal, which is believed responsible for the suicide attacks that killed 28 Israeli soldiers on Nov. 4, as well as 239 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers on Oct. 23. Four Israeli warplanes, ejecting thermal balloons in their wake in order to confound heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, attacked a training camp...