By the late 1960s a large number of Palestinian guerrilla groups had come into being. Libya, Syria, Iraq, the USSR and China sponsored specific groups while some groups, including major ones with several thousand members received simultaneous Libyan, Iraqi, Syrian and other support. There were groups whose members came from Arab countries and fought along side the Palestinians, among these were the Fidai’ Front and the Organization of the Arabs of Sinai and there were also a number of Marxist-Leninist, Maoist and Arab socialist groups. Other groups were extensions of parent organizations, Al Assifa and Force 17, for example, were part of Fatah but had special duties and responsibilities. Some, especially the PFLP and DFLP, established connections with guerrilla organizations throughout the world, including the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, Action Directe of France, the Italian Red Brigades, the Japanese Red Army and the less well known guerrillas of the Turkish Liberation Army and Colombian, Nicaraguan and Armenian groups. Regardless of origin, sponsorship, political direction or connection with international terror groups, all guerrilla groups operated under the umbrella of the PLO. Many of these groups turned to international terrorism.

In November 1968 the PFLP, operating under the direction of George Habbash’s associate Dr Wadi’ Haddad, better known to Palestinians as ‘The Master’, carried out the first of many spectacular plane hijackings: an El Al plane flying from Rome to Tel Aviv was directed to Algeria. A month later the PFLP attacked an Israeli aircraft at Athens airport. The Israelis refused to accede to the demand to release Palestinian fighters in their prisons and retaliated by attacking Beirut airport and destroying thirteen parked aircraft. The Lebanese were being drawn into the conflict without having any say in the matter and within a few years Lebanon become ravaged by war.

In Jordan, the PLO stronghold, many of the Fatah fighters and most of the guerrillas belonging to other groups had moved into the major cities and turned themselves into unruly armed gangs beyond the control of the local authorities. King Hussein had a difficult time controlling his Bedouin army, and many Jordanian politicians called for the reimposition of discipline and the rule of law to keep the frequent clashes between the guerrillas and his soldiers under control. In Lebanon something similar was happening. The clashes between Arafat’s men and the Lebanese security forces caused many deaths, government crises and serious divisions within a country whose political structure, based as it was on delicate sectarian divisions, could not accommodate too much stress.

Between mid 1968 and the end of 1969 there were no fewer than five hundred violent clashes between members of the various Palestinian guerrilla groups and the Jordanian army and security forces. Serious incidents included the kidnapping of Arab diplomats and unfriendly Jordanian journalists, unprovoked attacks on government offices, rape and the humiliation of army and security officers. The Palestinians, who were legally entitled to set up road blocks, molested women, levied illegal taxes and insulted the Jordanian flag in the presence of loyal Jordanians.

On 6 September 1970 the PFLP, again acting on the instructions of the Master, Dr Wadi’ Haddad, carried out one of the most memorable hijackings in history. They began with the simultaneous diversion to Jordan of a Swissair DC-8 and a TWA Boeing 707, which was followed six days later by the hijacking of a BOAC VC-10. The aircraft were forced to land at Dawson Field, 30 miles from Amman, which was quickly renamed Revolutionary Airport. Meanwhile another PFLP hijack team which had failed to board an El Al plane managed to hijack a Pan American Boeing 747 to Cairo and blow it up, while the media recorded the incident for a gasping world audience.

The Jordanians were divided on what to do about the hijackers. Prime Minister Abdel Munim Al Rifai’, a staunch PLO supporter who had repeatedly stood by the Palestinians while trying to get them to behave, remained adamant that a settlement should be negotiated. Other Jordanian politicians, notably former Prime Minister Bahjat Talhouni, former deputy Prime Minister Akef Al Fayez and the popular politician Ibrahim Ezzedine, supported him. On the other side, advocating a crackdown, were Crown Prince Hassan, former Prime Minister Wasfi Tel, the dismissed trio of Sharif Nasser bin Jameel, Sharif Zeid bin Shaker and the former Minister of the interior Mohammed Rasul Al Kilani, politician Zedi Al Rifai (Abdel Munim’s nephew) and most of the senior officers of Hussein’s army. Although Hussein was in touch with the United States and Israel and had prepared for confrontation to the extent of dismissing several army officers with PLO sympathies and organizing a special force to deal with the situation, the outcome of the crisis depended on the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, who seemed unwilling to discipline Palestinians.

The day after the destruction of the hijacked planes King Hussein declared martial law, dismissed Rifai’, recalled Field Marshal Habis Al Majali to active duty and appointed him commander in chief, and entrusted the formation of a military government to the Palestinian born General Mohammed Daoud. Arafat stormed around Amman making statements but there were no last minute moves to salvage the situation, even after the Arab governments showed little inclination to stand in Hussein’s way.

The fighting began the following day, with a Jordanian artillery barrage against the PLO stronghold of Zarqa. Within hours similar attacks were being directed against several areas of Amman, including the strategic Jabal Al Hussein, and on refugee camps such as Al Wahdat which had raised the flag of the Republic of Palestine. Patton tanks from the 60th armored brigade, accompanied by armored vehicles, entered Amman from all sides, and attacked the headquarters of the Palestinian organizations. Battles took place in Zarqa, Sweileh, Salt and Irbid as well. For the first time Arafat used the word ‘genocide’ to describe what was happening to the Palestinians, while urging his fighters to resist. The Palestinians acquitted themselves well, helped by his undoubtedly inspiring personal courage and stead-fastness. But Arafat’s first disappointment came when Iraqi army units which he had counted on refused to come to his aid and were seen retreating to a distant safe area. But Arafat took the Iraqi ‘betrayal’ in his stride.

On 18 September Arafat’s men were still acquitting themselves well and the Jordanian army was failing to make any substantial progress, despite Hussein’s expectations of an easy victory. The Arab countries and the Arab League issued appeals for a cessation of hostilities but did little else. By the end of the day, lack of organization and co-ordination was beginning to show and some Palestinian fighting units were running out of ammunition. On September 18, two days after the attack began, a small Syrian armored force invaded northern Jordan. By early morning on the 19th armoured units of the Palestine Liberation Army and regular units of the Syrian army invaded northern Jordan in a drive towards Amman. Soon they were joined by two Syrian armored brigades, which were reinforced the next day, and swelled to the size of a division. The opening of an additional front against Jordan was the desired scenario for the Palestinians. The Jordanians were afraid that Syria aspired to exploit the war that had broken out in the kingdom in order to occupy it and to realize the dream of "Greater Syria." They confronted the Syrians with the 40th armored brigade but the Jordanians were pushed back. Arafat the propagandist rose to the occasion and declared northern Jordan a liberated area. The Arab League called for an extraordinary meeting of heads of state. Israel urged Hussein to continue and, in line with the secret agreement between them, code named Sandstorm, placed its forces on alert. The United States announced that naval units were converging on the eastern Mediterranean to reinforce the Sixth Fleet as a precautionary measure. As the Syrian advance gained momentum the Israeli airforce buzzed advancing Syrian armoured units in an attempt to slow the advance.

The fighting in the streets of Amman was bloody. Neither side took any prisoners; both sides committed atrocities, many innocents were raped and killed, and most of the city was ablaze. In other parts of the country, besieged refugee camps where PLO fighters had taken refuge were running out of food and water. Wherever possible people lived in shelters, while others abandoned their villages for the safety of empty spaces. No fewer than five thousand soldiers and officers of the Jordanian army defected to the PLO, but most did so individually: the fact that there was no defection by whole units left the army’s organizational structure intact and enabled it to continue fighting, and did little to strengthen the PLO. 

After their initial setback, the Jordanians counter-attacked the invading force from Syria and halted its advance. When King Hussein sent his air force against it, the Syrian air force commander and Minister of Defence, General Hafez Al Assad, refused to use his aircraft and the Syrian ground forces had to withdraw. What lay behind the Syrian move was Assad’s calculating conviction that the use of his air force would bring the United States and Israel into the conflict.

In the midst of the fighting, on 22 September, an Arab League delegation nominated by Nasser in a hurriedly convened meeting in Cairo arrived in Amman. It was headed by the Sudanese President, Ja’afar Numeiri, who was accompanied by the Tunisian Prime Minister, the Kuwaiti Minister of Defence and the Egyptian chief of staff. The following day, with Arafat on the move to avoid capture but remarkably still in total command of the Palestinian forces, the Arab delegates hammered out an agreement with PLO leaders Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf) and Farouk Qaddoumi, who had been taken prisoner by the Jordanians and were released by Hussein to act as negotiators. But no sooner had the Arab delegates returned to Cairo than Arafat rejected the agreement and renewed his calls for the overthrow of the monarchy.

The rejection of the agreement was vintage Arafat. Given that the PLO fighters were losing some ground and running low on ammunition, it was a supreme act of daring which undermined Abu Iyad and Qaddoumi, made him more popular with the anti Hussein Palestinians and forced the Arab delegation to return to Amman to locate him. Because the Jordanian forces kept him in hiding and on the move, the Arab peace-makers resorted to sending messages and signals. Eventually they appealed to King Hussein to restrain his fighters in certain areas and made an open radio appeal to Arafat to contact them. When he did, they told him that Nasser had ordered them not to return to Cairo without him. According to Arafat’s version of events, he left disguised as a Kuwaiti sitting on the plane next to the Kuwaiti member of the delegation, the Defence Minister Sa’ad Al Abdallah. However, many Jordanians continue to claim that no disguise was needed, that King Hussein knew of Arafat’s departure and welcomed it as a way of ending the fighting. In either case the strutting, fuming Arafat who arrived in Cairo was still full of histrionics and initially insisted, against all advice, on keeping his sidearm.

Because his military Prime Minister General Daoud had defected and disappeared rather than speak against the Palestinians or respond to the pleas of Nasser, on 27 September King Hussein arrived in Cairo. He too wore the uniform of an army general and carried a pistol. It took considerable effort to convince the two men to join in the deliberations of the Arab League without their weapons.

As expected, the meeting lacked any form of decorum. Hussein accused Arafat of conspiring to overthrow him and produced tapes of radio broadcasts as proof. Arafat retaliated by pounding the table, gesticulating and screaming: he accused Hussein of being an agent of imperialism and conspiring with the USA and Israel against the Palestinians. When it came to invective, Hussein’s efforts were no match for the talents Arafat had acquired on the streets of Cairo. The Libyan leader General Qaddafi, never one to miss participating in a quarrel or to utter singular stupidities, accused Hussein of being a lunatic like his father (Hussein’s father, King Tallal, had been forced to abdicate because of mental illness). King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, disheartened by the vulgar recriminations and incoherent rantings, declared that all Arab leaders must obviously be mentally unbalanced.

It was left to an ailing, tired Nasser, who had suffered several heart attacks and had been ordered by his doctors to rest and avoid exertion, to hammer out an agreement. At the end, there was a frosty handshake between Arafat and Hussein. Just hours later, after saying goodbye to all the departing Arab leaders, Nasser suffered another heart attack, collapsed and died. The one man with the stature and authority to enforce the agreement was gone. For Hussein this represented an opportunity to finish what he had started.

Hussein had the advantage of a simple plan which called for the ejection of the Palestinians from his country. Soon after returning from Cairo he formed a new government and appointed a hard-liner, Wasfi Tel, to the premiership. Tel, a former British army officer, was a calculating man of method who had the distinction of having drawn up the only militarily sound Arab plan in the 1948 War. Late in 1970 he established contact with the two new Arab leaders at the helm in Syria and Egypt, Hafez Al Assad and Anwar Sadat, and determined that they would do little to help Arafat. Assad had overthrown the government headed by Salab Jedid and was fearful of outside intervention in Jordan, while Sadat, who firmly believed that Arab military victory against Israel was unattainable, had succeeded Nasser. Both represented more moderate approaches and were reluctant to come to the rescue of the Palestinians in the manner of the former regimes in these countries. With his Arab flank thus covered, Tel moved in for the kill.

Arafat had returned to Jordan and set up headquarters in Ajlun in the north. From there he sent Tel and Hussein repeated messages professing moderation and promoting a policy of live and let live. His pleas amounted to too little too late, and Tel refused to consider any of his suggestions. Meanwhile Hussein was expanding his contacts with the Israelis, and by the beginning of November 1970 he had held several meetings with them in London and Tehran. The final Jordanian move to liquidate the Palestinian resistance took place in July 1971.

Having thrown Palestinian fighters out of Amman and the major towns in a series of deliberate dislodgements, the Jordanians eventually forced them into the corner of the country bordering Israel and Syria. In July the Jordanian forces, reorganized and with their spirits uplifted by the prospects of victory, hit the Palestinians with everything they had. Using tanks, aircraft and heavy artillery they pushed Arafat and his fighters into an indefensible triangle. The Palestinians were outmanoeuvred and outgunned, and this time the prospect of outside military assistance did not exist. Arafat’s screams of genocide drew Arab protests and led to the closure of the Iraqi and Syrian borders with Jordan and suspension of aid by Kuwait, but these measures could not alter the desperate plight of the Palestinian fighters. Two weeks of fighting produced another three thousand Palestinian dead. The ferocity of the Jordanian onslaught and the savagery of Hussein’s vengeance seeking Bedouin troops forced some of the Palestinian fighters to flee across the River Jordan and seek asylum in Israel.

Arafat had no way out of his military and political predicament except to leave the country. After several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with Hussein through a trusted friend, former general Radi Abdallah, he sent an urgent appeal to the leading Palestinian member of Tel’s cabinet, Munib Masri, to rescue him. The lat-ter travelled to northern Jordan in the company of the Saudi Ambassador to Jordan, Fahd Al Koheimi, and talked Arafat, who was hiding in a cave, into returning to Amman to meet King Hussein. But Arafat knew he could not face Hussein to negotiate what amounted to terms of surrender. On reaching the town of Jarrash in the company of Masri and Al Koheimi he asked to be driven in the direction of the Syrian border. After crossing into Syria he soon moved to Lebanon with two thousand of his fighters to avoid being under the control of President Assad, a man forever opposed to independent PLO action and determined to place the Palestinian resistance under his country's control. Yasser Arafat may have been defeated but he remained arrogant and unrepentant.

Black September Organization

On 28 November 1971, an organization which was to leave an indelible mark on the history of political terror and the modern Middle East committed its first murder. Four armed Palestinians, operating in broad daylight and without the benefit of masks, shot dead the Jordanian Prime Minister, Wash Tel, as he returned to Cairo’s Sheraton Hotel from an Arab League meeting. The assassination itself was followed by a gruesome ritual as one of the killers knelt down, lapped up and drank some of Tel’s flowing blood and shouted several times that he and his accomplices belonged to Black September. The following month the group tried to assassinate Jordan’s Ambassador to London, Zeid Al Rifai’, a leading politician who had supported King Hussein’s crackdown on the Palestinians. There was no let-up, and in February 1972 members of Black September blew up a West German electrical installation and a Dutch gas plant.

These four acts of terrorism revealed a great deal about the organization behind them. Black September's fearless members were willing to defy major Arab governments, including the very important Egyptian one. The attempt to assassinate Rifai’ in London demonstrated that they had international connections. The attacks against the West German and Dutch installations indicated that the plans of the new terror group went beyond eliminating individuals and included a threat to the economic infrastructure of the West on its home ground.

The reaction to the attacks followed clear-cut lines. Because they acted as a safety valve for Palestinian frustration, the majority of Palestinians applauded them. Most of the Arab states either sanctioned Black September or looked the other way, and this was confirmed in a dramatic way when the the Egyptians released Tel’s assassins on phoney technical grounds. The West took hurried steps to protect its airports and industrial complexes and began to draw up protective measures. And Israel, utterly stunned by the Palestinians’ ability to rise from the ashes, resorted to increased aerial attacks on PLO bases and began developing plans for responding to the new threat on a global basis.

In 1972, what amounted to a full-fledged war of terror between the Palestinians and Israel complemented the escalating situation on the ground. In January, PLO raids from Lebanon against northern Israel prompted an Israeli incursion into that country and aerial attacks against PLO bases there as well as the first attack against Syria since the 1967 War. The Syrian aerial response came close to starting a full-scale war. Later PLO cross border activities resulted in similar land, air and sea clashes and further Israeli incursions which occasionally involved thousands of men. The Palestinian issue was alive, the raids against Israel and Black September terror tactics were successful; the United Nations and the rest of the world were left in no doubt that the defeat in Jordan had not finished off the PLO or Arafat’s leadership.

Countering and containing the acts of terror was what pre-occupied everyone, rather than the message which Black September sent out. In May 1972 there was another hijacking, of a Belgian Sabena plane flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv. Later that month, using their international connections and relying for assistance on members of the Japanese Red Army, the PFLP carried out an attack on Lod airport in Israel which left twenty-four dead. On 9 July, the Israelis hit back by assassinating PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani and his niece in Beirut. Two days later, a bomb at a Tel Aviv bus terminal wounded eleven people. On the 19th, a letter bomb came close to killing Kanafani’s second-in-command, Bassam Abu Sharif. On the 25th, Black September attacked an oil refinery in Trieste in north-eastern Italy. The cycle of violence had to end with war or escalate into some senseless act of outrageous proportions, and it did.

On 5 September 1972, during the Olympic Games, the Munich Massacre entered the vocabulary of the world. This Black September operation, code named Ikrit and Byram after two villages in Galilee razed by the Israelis, generated shock waves which no one could ignore. Two Israeli athletes were killed when hooded Palestinians raided the Olympic grounds and took another eleven as hostages. Later, in a twenty-three-hour drama, a German attempt to lure the kidnappers failed and in the ensuing shoot-out nine more Israeli athletes, five of the eight gunmen and a German policeman perished. The three surviving kidnappers were captured by the Germans but freed later after the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane. The hijacking of this plane from Beirut turned out to be set up by the Germans and the Palestinians so as to give the Germans a reason to release the terrorists as the Germans wanted to wash their hands of the entire affair. Pictures of the hooded gunmen were flashed all over the world; they became the masked face of Palestinian resistance, the face of terror.

These statistics were nothing compared with the world wide impact of Munich. The victims were athletes participating in the most international event of them all, and the media coverage was greater than that for the hijackings. The world could not overlook the challenge of Munich. The world was disgusted by the actions of the Palestinians and there was a public outcry against Palestinian terror.

The Birth of Black September

Immediately after their ejection from northern Jordan and before their move to Lebanon, in August and September 1971, the PLO had met in Damascus to lick its wounds and decide on a course of action. The recollections of a member of the PFLP command who participated in the meetings, and the length of time it took to reach a decision, attest to the lack of agreement on what was needed to keep the flame of resistance alive. Moderate Khalid Al Hassan, who had acted as de facto foreign affairs spokesman for the PLO, was firmly opposed to the use of terror tactics. Arguing against him were Abu Iyad, Abu Jihad, Kamal Adwan, Mi Hassan Salameh (Abu Hassan), George Habbash of the PFLP and the DFLP representatives. Arafat straddled the fence but was dead set against any such acts taking place under the name of the PLO and in fact, Arafat suggested the use of a new name but the final decision to create the Black September Movement it is reported that Arafat did not vote.

Black September thus came into being. It was a conglomeration of the leading Palestinian resistance groups, and the PFLP in particular provided it with all the expertise at its disposal and volunteers.

It was the strength of Palestinian feeling which cornered Arafat into accepting the idea of a terror organization; the master of consensus, whose leadership of the Palestinians during the war in Jordan had diminished him, could not do otherwise and survive. What followed the creation of Black September showed him at his disorganized worst. The killing of Wasfi Tel in Cairo was carried out under the direction of Ali Hassan Salameh, a handsome, ambitious, whisky drinking young skirt chaser who had been trained in guerrilla tactics in Egypt. Despite the protest resignation of Khalid Al Hassan, this event had broad based Palestinian approval.

Black September had no single leader. Salameh was determined to endear himself to Arafat and became something akin to an adopted son, but Abu Iyad and Mohammed Yusuf Al Najjar were also determined to leave their mark. Najjar was not after personal glory, but Salameh and Abu Iyad were, and the latter in particular was determined to erase the stigma attached to him by Arafat for reaching an agreement during the fighting in Jordan which proved unacceptable to the PLO and its leader. This produced rivalry both for the leadership of Black September and for credit for the various operations. For example, insiders confirm that Trieste was definitely Salameh’s work, but, despite accusations against him which ultimately cost him his life, Munich was the responsibility of Abu Iyad, and many of the hijackings which followed were the work of the PFLP assuming the name of Black September.

Even after more than twenty years no evidence has been uncovered to suggest that Arafat was personally involved, or that he approved any one single operation. But he was in a position to stop the operations, at least most of them, and that he did not do. Nor was he averse to seeing the various members of Fatah and the PLO compete with each other as to who conducted the more successful acts of terror: it weakened them and made them more dependent on him. Certainly he knew who the culpable trio were and was content to see them burn themselves and reap the benefits. By being aware and not acting against the attacks committed in the name of Black September across the board, he gave them his approval.

In particular Arafat's close association with Salameh, a seriously flawed show-off who wore unbuttoned silk shirts and tailored suits, surrounded himself with eighteen guards at a time and listened to Elvis Presley’s ‘Love Me Tender’ every day, suggests a wish to control events without direct involvement.

The Death of Black September

On 1 March 1973, an eight man Black September hit squad shot their way into the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum where a farewell party was being held for American chargé d’affaires J. Curtis Moore. They took the guests hostage and made the usual demands for the freeing of prisoners in several countries. It was an affront to Sudan’s President Ja’afar Numeiri, the man who had saved Arafat during the fighting in Amman, an insult to the Saudis, who had continued to fund the PLO, and a direct threat to American diplomats. The negotiations with the semi-literate terrorists got nowhere and the grisly episode ended with the cold-blooded murder in the embassy basement of Moore, the American Ambassador, Cleo Noel, and the Belgian chargé d’affaires, Guy Eid.

The terrorists were in radio contact and receiving instructions from Beirut during the day long siege but the Israeli claim that Arafat personally gave them orders, has never been verified and consequent events suggest it was untrue. The Israelis failed to produce the tapes of Arafat issuing instructions; the American monitoring of the operation produced nothing to incriminate him. Arafat despatched an emissary to the Sudan to mend relations with that country. The brutality of the attack disgusted the world. Public opinion had turned even more against the Palestinians and Arafat was on the defensive.

The Israelis were not going to take Palestinian terrorist attacks lying down and went on the offensive. Following the Munich massacre the Israelis sent out hit squads to take out those involved, the Israelis managed to assassinate two out of the three Palestinians that survived the shoot out at Munich and the Israelis also managed to liquidate at least a dozen others involved in the planning. Israeli actions reached a climax in March 1973 in the form of Operation Spring of Youth, the assassination by an Israeli hit squad in Beirut of PLO terrorist leaders Kamal Adwan, Mohammed Yusuf Al Najjar and Kamal Nassar.

All of this was now too much for Arafat, his top terrorists were dropping like flies and all the attacks had achieved was a popular distaste towards the PLO and the Palestinians. Arafat decided it was time to quietly halt terror attacks against the West and so Black September for the most part vanished quietly into the night but its members continue to be hunted down.

Even though the West was to be spared Palestinian terror the Middle East was not to be so fortunate and Lebanon was to suffer more than any other country at the hands of the Palestinians whose actions and those of their allies resulted in fifteen year war and the destruction of the Lebanese state.