Black September: Palestine’s Wailing Wall

A more insensitive and ill-informed date and week than the 15th of September could not have been chosen by Washington and its Arab satraps in Abu Dhabi and Manama to sign the declaration that would agree to recognize Israel. For this week not only marked the 38th anniversary of the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Beirut, which initiated the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; but also the 50th anniversary of the Black September massacre in Amman, which began on the 17th of September last month, paving the way for the exodus of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to Beirut and the gradual attrition of the Palestinian resistance.

However to begin to look at how the Palestinian liberation movement organically evolved from peasants to revolutionaries, and from resistance in the last century to collaboration and compromise in our own time, one needs to look at the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. This war, orchestrated by the United States and delivered by Israel, broke the back of secular Arab nationalism exemplified by the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, and led to two radicalizations within the Arab world: the radicalization of the Arab left exemplified by the emergence of a distinct Palestinian movement and the declaration of the first – and only – socialist republic in south Yemen in 1967 after the withdrawal of the British; and the rise of right-wing Saudi expansionism fed by Saudi petrodollars.



The Palestinian movement came onto its own after 1967 because it reached the conclusion that various Arab regimes had been using it for their own ends prior to that period, and it could fare much better on its own supported by friendly anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist Arab regimes. So Yasser Arafat rose in prestige after the Palestinian irregulars under his command inflicted stupendous casualties against their mightier Israeli aggressors in March 1968 at the Battle of Karameh, following which Arafat was elected as the chairman of the PLO in 1969. This was also the time when the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) came into being and would later on achieve a cult status within the Third World and a terrorist one without for their spectacular plane hijackings across the world. This was also the period when Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had infamously quipped that, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” So for the Palestinians the challenge was dual: to prove their identity as well as their independence.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had infamously quipped that, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” So for the Palestinians the challenge was dual: to prove their identity as well as their independence

Israel’s capture of the West Bank in the 1967 war meant that Palestinians swelled into tiny Jordan, altering the demographic balance; which in turn meant that the only way King Hussein could remain the head of an artificially-carved country was to rely on Western imperial interests and Israeli colonialism (this hitherto has been the fate of the two other artificially created Arab states in the region, Kuwait and to a greater extent, Lebanon). The class contradictions between the Palestinian guerrillas and the Jordanian monarchy came to a head in the beginning of July 1970; there were massive rallies on the streets of Amman which did not even spare Nasser, who had accepted the Rogers Plan a month earlier – seen as a betrayal of the Palestinian resistance. On his side, Nasser had also been careful in dealing with the Palestinian resistance, not allowing it to launch any attacks against Israel from Egyptian soil without prior coordination and control.

Another factor which precipitated the eventual confrontation between the Palestinian guerrillas and the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan was the policy of hijacking of Israeli and Western airplanes across the world by the PFLP from the first week of September 1970. The architect of this tactic of ‘revolutionary violence’ was one of PFLP’s co-founders Wadi Haddad. It may seem a contradiction in terms for a Marxist-Leninist group to be espousing a seemingly-adventurist tactic short of armed struggle; but these should now be seen in the context of the relative invisibility of the Palestinian struggle from the consciences of a Europe and North America ridden with guilt over their failure to prevent the mass murder of Jewish people by Nazi Germany. The spectacularly daring acts of the PFLP won it – and the Palestinian cause – world attention, but it also led to the beginning of the final confrontation between the Jordanian monarchy and the Palestinian resistance, which had now begun to openly call for the overthrow of the former.

A military cabinet was appointed in Amman on September 16 and the Jordanian government deployed the army in Amman; there were street battles between the army and Palestinian guerrillas. The fighting lasted from September 17 until September 27. It is believed that anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 people were killed in the ten days of the conflict, mostly civilians caught in urban warfare. Iraqi forces, though stationed in Jordan did not intervene, since their justification was that they had been stationed there after the Arab-Israeli war to protect the Palestinians against Israel. Damascus tried to intervene on the side of the Palestinians, but did not provide air cover to the advancing Syrian troops. King Hussein had even requested Israeli assistance but then he used his own airforce; and Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian airforce commander had to stand down his own airforce. Various theories are proffered for Assad’s actions: his internal power struggles within the Syrian Baathist apparatus; his relationship with the Jordanian king; as well as threats originating from the United States and Israel regarding Syrian involvement.



Even a then-obscure Pakistani Brigadier bearing the uplifting name of Zia-ul-Haq performed a yeoman’s service for King Hussein by blatantly violating the terms of his secondment to the Jordanian army by taking part in the massacre – undoubtedly valuable match practice for what he was to wreak in his native country just seven years later as its worst military dictator.

The hapless Arafat was whisked to Cairo in Kuwaiti robes thanks to the intervention of Sheikh Saad, the Kuwaiti Interior and Defense Minister. On September 27, a ceasefire between Arafat and King Hussein brokered by Nasser was agreed in Cairo. Nasser passed away the following day.

(to be continued)