Black September
Black September, also known as the Jordanian Civil War, was an armed conflict between Jordan, led by King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by chairman Yasser Arafat. The main phase of the fighting took place between 16 and 27 September 1970, though certain aspects of the conflict continued until 17 July 1971.
After the 1967 Six-Day War, Palestinian fedayeen guerrillas relocated to Jordan and stepped up their attacks against Israel and what had become the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They were headquartered at the Jordanian border town of Karameh, which Israel targeted during the Battle of Karameh in 1968, leading to a surge of Arab support for the fedayeen. The PLO's strength grew, and by early 1970, leftist groups within the PLO began calling for the overthrow of Jordan's Hashemite monarchy, leading to violent clashes in June 1970. Hussein hesitated to oust them from the country, but continued PLO activities in Jordan culminated in the Dawson's Field hijackings of 6 September 1970. This involved the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine seizing three civilian passenger flights and forcing their landing in the Jordanian city of Zarqa, where they took foreign nationals as hostages and blew up the planes in front of international press. Hussein saw this as the last straw and ordered the Jordanian Army to take action.
On 17 September 1970, the Jordanian Army surrounded cities with a significant PLO presence, including Amman and Irbid, and began targeting fedayeen posts that were operating from Palestinian refugee camps. The next day, 10,000 Syrian troops bearing Palestine Liberation Army markings began an invasion by advancing towards Irbid, which the fedayeen had occupied and declared to be a "liberated" city. On 22 September, the Syrians withdrew from Irbid after suffering heavy losses to a coordinated aerial–ground offensive by the Jordanians. Mounting pressure from other Arab countries, such as Iraq, led Hussein to halt his offensive. On 13 October, he signed an agreement with Arafat to regulate the fedayeen's presence in Jordan. However, the Jordanian military attacked again in January 1971, and the fedayeen were driven out of the cities, until 2,000 surrendered after they were encircled during the Ajlun offensive on 23 July, formally marking the end of the conflict.
Jordan allowed the fedayeen to relocate to Lebanon via Syria, where they later became involved in the Lebanese Civil War. The Palestinian Black September Organization was founded after the conflict to carry out attacks against Jordanian authorities in response to the fedayeen's expulsion; their most notable attack was the assassination of Jordanian prime minister Wasfi Tal in 1971, as he had commanded parts of the military operations against the fedayeen. The following year, the organization shifted its focus to attacking Israeli targets and carried out the Munich massacre against Israeli athletes. Though the events of Black September did not reflect a Jordanian–Palestinian divide, as there were Jordanians and Palestinians on both sides of the conflict, it paved the way for such a divide to emerge after the conflict.
History
Background
Palestinians in Jordan
After the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank in 1950, it conferred its citizenship on the West Bank Palestinians. The combined population of the West Bank and Jordan consisted of two-thirds Palestinians and one-third Jordanians. Jordan provided Palestinians with seats amounting to half the parliament, and Palestinians enjoyed equal opportunities in all sectors of the state. This demographic change influenced Jordanian politics.King Hussein considered that the Palestinian problem would remain the country's overriding national security issue; he feared an independent West Bank under PLO administration would threaten the autonomy of his Hashemite kingdom. The Palestinian factions were supported vicariously by many Arab governments, most notably Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who gave them political support.
The Palestinian nationalist organization Fatah started organizing cross-border attacks against Israel in January 1965, often drawing severe Israeli reprisals upon Jordan. The Samu incident launched by Israel on 13 November 1966 was one such reprisal, taking place after three Israeli soldiers were killed by a Fatah landmine. The Israeli assault on the Jordanian-controlled West Bank town of As-Samu inflicted heavy casualties on Jordan. Israeli writer Avi Shlaim argued that Israel's disproportionate retaliation exacted revenge on the wrong party, as Israeli leaders knew from their interaction with Hussein that he was doing everything he could to prevent such attacks. Hussein, who felt he had been betrayed by the Israelis, drew fierce local criticism because of this incident. It is thought that this contributed to his decision to join Egypt and Syria's war against Israel in 1967. In June 1967 Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the Six-Day War.
PLO's growing strength after the Battle of Karameh
After Jordan lost the West Bank, Fatah stepped up their guerrilla attacks against Israel from Jordanian soil, making the border town of Karameh their headquarters. On 18 March 1968, an Israeli school bus was blown up by a mine near Be'er Ora in the Arava, killing two adults and wounding ten children—the 38th Fatah operation in little more than three months. On 21 March, Israel Defense Forces units entered Jordan and launched a reprisal attack on Karameh that developed into a full-scale battle that lasted a day. The PLO suffered some 200 casualties and another 150 taken prisoner; 40–84 Jordanian soldiers were also killed. Israeli losses stood at around 30 killed and 69–161 wounded, and they also left behind several vehicles.File:Karama aftermath 1.jpg|thumb|King Hussein after checking an abandoned Israeli tank on 21 March 1968 during the Battle of Karameh. The perceived joint Palestinian-Jordanian victory led to an upsurge in support for the fedayeen in Jordan.
Both sides declared victory: Israel had fulfilled its objective of destroying the Karameh camp, but failed to capture Arafat; while Jordan and the PLO had exacted relatively heavy Israeli casualties. Although the Palestinians had limited success in inflicting Israeli casualties, King Hussein let them take the credit. The fedayeen used the battle's wide acclaim and recognition in the Arab world to establish their national claims. The Karameh operation also highlighted the vulnerability of bases close to the Jordan River, so the PLO moved them farther into the mountains. Further Israeli attacks targeted Palestinian militants residing among the Jordanian civilian population, giving rise to friction between Jordanians and guerrillas.
Palestinians and Arabs generally considered the battle a psychological victory over the IDF, which had been seen as "invincible" until then, and recruitment into guerrilla units soared. Fatah reported that 5,000 volunteers had applied to join within 48 hours of the events at Karameh. By late March, there were nearly 20,000 fedayeen in Jordan. Iraq and Syria offered training programs for several thousand guerrillas. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf, led by Kuwait, raised money for them through a 5% tax on the salaries of their tens of thousands of resident Palestinian workers, and a fund drive in Lebanon raised $500,000 from Beirut alone. The Palestinian organizations also began to guarantee a lifetime support for the families of all guerrillas killed in action. Within a year after the battle, Fatah had branches in about eighty countries. After the battle, Fatah gained control of the PLO in Egypt.
Palestinian fedayeen from Syria and Lebanon started to converge on Jordan, mostly in Amman. In Palestinian enclaves and refugee camps in Jordan, the police and army were losing their authority. The Wehdat and Al-Hussein refugee camps came to be referred to as "independent republics" and the fedayeen established administrative autonomy by establishing local government under the control of uniformed PLO militants—setting up checkpoints and attempting to extort "taxes" from civilians.
Seven-point agreement
In early November 1968, the Jordanian army attacked a fedayeen group named "Al-Nasr" after the group had attacked Jordanian police. Not all Palestinians were supportive of Al-Nasr's actions, but the Jordanian response was meant to send a message that there would be consequences for challenging the government's authority. Immediately after the incident, a seven-point agreement was reached between King Hussein and Palestinian organizations that restrained unlawful and illegal fedayeen behavior against the Jordanian government.The PLO would not live up to the agreement, and came to be seen more and more as a state within a state in Jordan. Fatah's Yasser Arafat replaced Ahmad Shukeiri as the PLO's leader in February 1969. Discipline in the different Palestinian groups was poor, and the PLO had no central power to control the different groups. A situation developed of fedayeen groups rapidly spawning, merging, and splintering, sometimes trying to behave radically in order to attract recruits. Hussein went to the United States in March 1969 for talks with Richard Nixon, the new American president. He argued for Israel's adherence to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, in which it was required to return territories it had occupied in 1967 in return for peace. Palestinian factions were suspicious of Hussein as this meant the withdrawal of his policy of forceful resistance towards Israel. These suspicions were further heightened by Washington's claim that Hussein would be able to liquidate the fedayeen movement in his country upon resolution of the conflict.
Fatah favored not intervening in the internal affairs of other Arab countries. However, although it assumed the leadership of the PLO, more radical left-wing Palestinian movements refused to abide by that policy. By 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by George Habash and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by Nayef Hawatmeh, began to openly question the legitimacy of the Hashemite monarchy, and called for its overthrow and replacement with a revolutionary regime. Other radical groups included the Syrian Ba'ath's As-Sa'iqa, and the Iraqi Ba'ath's Arab Liberation Front: these saw Hussein as "a puppet of Western imperialism", "a reactionary", and "a Zionist tool". They claimed that the road to Tel Aviv passed through Amman, which they sought to transform into the Hanoi of the Arab world. They also stirred up conservative and religious feelings with provocative anti-religious statements and actions, such as putting up Marxist and Leninist slogans on mosque walls.
According to Shlaim, their growing power was accompanied by growing arrogance and insolence. He quotes an observer describing the PLO in Jordan,
Palestinians claimed there were numerous agents provocateurs from Jordanian or other security services present among the fedayeen, deliberately trying to upset political relations and provide justification for a crackdown. There were frequent kidnappings and acts of violence against civilians: Chief of the Jordanian Royal Court Zaid Rifai claimed that in one extreme instance "the fedayeen killed a soldier, beheaded him, and played football with his head in the area where he used to live".