Word: wazir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...campaign for independence. The intifadeh has changed perceptions, painting the Palestinians as ill-armed victims of Israeli truncheons and gunfire. Israel did its share to bolster sympathy for the P.L.O. by sending to Tunis the hit team that in April assassinated the organization's military commander, Khalil al-Wazir...
Bringing the unique series of shows to fruition was a prodigious task. "Our naivete helped," says Nightline Senior Producer Betsy West. "Old hands might have said, 'Don't even try.' " Plans were begun last fall, but the assassination three weeks ago of P.L.O. Leader Khalil al-Wazir increased tensions and made it more difficult to line up guests. Among those who refused to appear: P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat and Jordan's King Hussein...
...sense, Khalil al-Wazir died for a biblical injunction: an eye for an eye. When an Israeli hit team assassinated the Palestine Liberation Organization's operations chief three weeks ago, the act was in retaliation for his role in masterminding a large number of P.L.O. terror attacks over the years. Yet al- Wazir's death was also intended to decapitate the intifadeh, the five- month- old uprising that has rocked the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. As head of the P.L.O.'s "western-sector command," he was in charge of the organization's support...
With his prestige damaged by the murder of al-Wazir, Arafat evidently thought that making peace with Syria -- a leading exponent of the rejectionist, smash-Israel position -- would help him reaffirm his authority over the P.L.O. Assad, for his part, spotted an opportunity to assert his own championship of the intifadeh by embracing his old enemy. Yet as the pair were declaring their commitment to the rebellion, its true leadership remained where it has been all along: in the hands of the disaffected youths, middle- class shopkeepers, villagers and refugees in the occupied territories...
...intifadeh has given birth to a diffuse and decentralized underground of local popular committees and anonymous coordinators that has survived both the murder of al-Wazir and the arrest of nearly 5,000 Palestinians since December. Many of the local leaders are adherents of one P.L.O. faction or another, but they evidently do not take orders from anyone outside the occupied territories. Rather, decisions made within the occupied territories appear to be approved and ratified by the Palestinian leadership in exile...