Black September1970: Black September: The PLO Goes to War with Jordan *

The history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is one of myths in the eyes of the Palestinians. One of their most potent ones was the Battle of Karameh which was a 15-hour military engagement between Israel and the combined forces of Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Jordanian border town of Karameh during the War of Attrition on 21 March 1968.

The Myth of Karameh

Recovering from the defeat on the West Bank in 1967, Fatah scored an important success when 300 of its guerrillas fought off an Israeli assault by 15,000 troops and tanks at the Fatah base near Karameh in Jordan.20 This was the first Arab victory against Israel since 1948 - and it had been achieved by irregular Palestinian forces. There was jubilation throughout the Arab world: even King Hussein was compelled to comment: "The time may come … when we will all be fedayeen.'21" Karameh was the signal for more Palestinians to flock to recruiting centres in the camps, while in Egypt, where Nasser had been humiliated by the crushing defeat of the 1967 war, thousands rushed to Fatah offices to enrol as guerrilla fighters.2 - Intifada : Zionism, imperialism and Palestinian resistance / Phil Marshall

Fatah increased its stature, particularly after the Battle of Karameh in Jordanian territory on March 21, during which Israeli forces suffered severe losses in a confrontation described by Fatah as "the greatest achievement since 1948" (see below). Arafat gained prominence as the commander of this battle, and in February 1969 the Palestinian National Council appointed him chairman of the PLO. - The Palestinian people seeking sovereignty and state - Mustafa Kabha

The importance of the date is that it marked the first post-1967 and post-1948 battle between regular Israeli forces, which had crossed the Jordan River to raid a Palestinian town called Karameh inside Jordan, and Palestinian irregular forces. The Palestinian fighters were backed up later in the day-long battle by Jordanian army regulars, but (the Palestinian account goes) the brunt of the fighting was lsraeli-Palestinian. Not only did the Karameh defenders stay and fight; they inflicted much damage and many casualties on the Israeli armored columns, who until that time had been accustomed (e.g. in the West Bank village of as-Sammu) to amble in with impunity, destroy property, kill Arabs, and leave pretty much unscathed. The Question of Palestine - Edward Said.

There was Israeli overconfidence and bungling: they underestimated the number of fedayeen (fighters), their weaponry and their defenses. The Israeli commanders assumed that the Jordanian army would stay out of the fight. Instead, they engaged with heavy artillery fire from surrounding hills and tank support, causing the bulk of Israeli casualties. The Israeli tanks were highly vulnerable to Jordanian artillery and close-quarters ambushes in the confined urban environment of Karameh. Several Israeli tanks and vehicles were abandoned or destroyed and were later dragged through the streets of Amman in a victory parade. Nevertheless, they destroyed most of the Karameh camp and took around a hundred PLO prisoners who were quickly replaced as Fatah was besieged by new young recruits after the "victory."

There was overconfidence, arrogance and lack of discipline in Yasser Arafat and the PLO as well. During and after the 1967 Six-Day War, a large number of heavily armed Palestinian guerrilla fighters fled to Jordan. The disorganized fedayeen swaggered around Jordan, established autonomous zones, broke Jordanian laws, victmised Jordanians, demanded money and launched attacks into Israel which triggered harsh Israeli military reprisals. They began to setup a separate state and agitated to overthrow King Hussein. In September 1970 a PLO faction hijacked 4 international jetliners and blew three of them up on an airstrip in Jordan. This forced Hussein to declare martial law and order the Royal Jordanian Army to restore order.

In September 1970 the Jordanian military attacked Palestinians, resulting in massive destruction and high casualties in refugee camps and the capital city of Amman. In mid-September, Syria sent an armored invasion force into northern Jordan to support the PLO. Israel moved forces to the border to threatedn the Syrians and the Jordanian tank attacks forced the Syrians to retreat. On September 20 Hussein and Arafat signed the Cairo Agreement at the behest of the dying Nasser. He died the next day. Another Arab mythical figure who was worshipped no matter how much damage he caused. Fighting continued. Brigadier Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, then serving in Jordan, made a significant contribution to the suppression of PLO strongholds in Amman and surrounding areas between September 17 and 27, 1970.[36][37]The Jordanian military completely defeated the remaining PLO forces and forced them out of the country by July 1971. They moved through Syria into Lebanon where they destroyed that country as thoroughly as if it was Israel.

KIlled: 25,000 Jordan government vs. Palestinians, 1970-71 (Black September)
150,000 Lebanon civil war, 1975-90

Former Israeli Defence Minister and swashbuckling eye-patched hero Moshe Dayan quipped: "Jordan's King Hussein killed more Palestinians in 11 days than Israel could kill in 20 years."

PLO Black September Terror Attacks

A PLO faction took the name "Black September" and committed terrorist acts in the fight for "the Palestinian cause." The most well-known of these was conducted against Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972.

  • November 1971 Black September assassinated the Jordanian Prime Minister, Wasfi Tal. He may be the only Jordanian killed in their terrorist attacks
  • On May 8 1972 Black September hijacked a Belgian passenger plane flying to Tel Aviv. They demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the passengers and crew.The aircraft was forced to land at Lod Airport in Israel. On May 9 Israeli commandos stormed the plane in a rescue operation codenamed Operation Isotope. Disguised as mechanics, they killed the two male hijackers, captured the two women and only one passenger died. Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the commandoes so it can be argued that Black September helped a bitter opponent of the Palestinians to become Prime Minister.
  • On September 5 eight heavily armed terrorists infiltrated the Olympic Village in West Germany, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine others hostages. A botched rescue attempt by West German authorities at a nearby airfield resulted in the deaths of all nine hostages, five of the terrorists, and one German police officer. Three terrorists were arrested but released when their fellows infiltrated ed a Lufthansa flight. Two were later executed by Mossad and one survived.
  • In September 1972 the Black September terrorist group sent dozens of letter bombs to Israeli embassies worldwide. On September 19 one killed Ami Shachori, an Israeli agricultural counselor in London. Of all the possible secret Mossad spies and agents in Israeli embassies they got a man who really was just an agronomist. Did they expect to find a Jordanian in an Israeli embassy?
  • In March 1973 Black September members attacked the Saudi embassy in Sudan, taking several diplomats hostage. They subsequently murdered three, including 2 U.S. diplomats. No Jordanians were harmed in this event.
  • In March 1973 Black September planted car bombs in New York City targetting visiting Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, they were discovered and defused

Israel proved its value in 1970 when the United States asked for help bolstering King Hussein's regime. Israel's willingness to aid Amman, and the movement of troops to the Jordanian border, persuaded Syria to withdraw the tanks it had sent into Jordan to support PLO forces challenging the king during "Black September."

I think Khalidi places the events of Karameh and the PLO into perspective.

In the Arab world, the movement received an enormous boost in March 1968, nine months after the war, in Karameh, a small Jordanian town (whose name by fortuitous coincidence means "dignity"). In Israel's biggest military operation since the war, about fifteen thousand troops with armor, artillery, and air support crossed the Jordan River to eliminate a concentration of Palestinian fighters based in and around Karameh. The attackers unexpectedly met fierce resistance from the Jordanian army and the PLO, which inflicted between one hundred to two hundred casualties on the seemingly invincible Israeli army, and forced it to abandon a number of damaged tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other equipment.

In the wake of the disastrous war barely a year earlier, this relatively small engagement, in which the Israelis seemed to leave the battlefield in disarray, electrified the Arab world and revolutionized the image of the Palestinians. Although it was Jordanian artillery and armor, positioned in the hills overlooking the Jordan River valley, which undoubtedly inflicted the most damage on Israel's forces, the Palestinians fighting inside Karameh reaped most of the glory from this episode. The battle of Karameh proved to be a godsend to the propaganda of the Palestinian resistance movement, which effectively publicized the clash as a stand for Arab dignity, trampled underfoot as it had been by the failures of the Arab regimes. As a result, the Palestinian resistance was lionized throughout the Arab world.

The irony of this self-presentation was that at its height, the PLO never posed any kind of military challenge to Israeli forces, which defeated all the Arab armies in the field in every one of their conventional wars. Even when PLO forces fought well defensively, as at Karameh, they were rarely capable of going head-to-head for very long with one of the most experienced, well-trained, and best-equipped militaries in the world. Moreover, from the beginning of the Palestinian armed struggle in the 1960s until the PLO later renounced this approach, they never were able to develop a successful guerrilla war strategy that might have countered the superiority of Israel's conventional forces or the limitations of being based in Arab countries vulnerable to Israeli military pressure. - The Hundred Years War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi