Cable 1975BEIRUT02837_02894 · Mar 3–4, 1975 · CONFIDENTIAL

Beirut, March 3–4, 1975

The Army Tries to Take Sidon Back, and Fails

Two cables filed March 3 and March 4, 1975 document the second round of the Sidon crisis: the Lebanese Army tries to reopen the coastal road, is ambushed by 1,000+ fedayeen armed with rockets and recoilless rifles, is forced to withdraw, and then sees one of its trucks hit by rockets fired from the medieval citadel itself. Army casualties pass 9 dead, 43 wounded. An all-out clean-up operation is planned for March 4, then scotched. The PLO is running the town.

Based on cable 1975BEIRUT02837_02894 CONFIDENTIAL → UNCLASSIFIED

After the February 27 Army withdrawal to the outskirts of Sidon, the town remained closed to Lebanese state authority. Fedayeen-manned barricades held the coastal road shut. The Sidon garrison was penned in its barracks; all Lebanese Army units in South Lebanon were cut off from resupply. On March 1 President Frangieh, in consultation with Prime Minister Solh, ordered the Army to force the coastal road open. The resulting 48-hour battle produced five Army dead and ten wounded and ended in a second Army withdrawal. Two days later, on March 3, an Army resupply truck was ambushed with rockets fired from inside Sidon’s Crusader-era citadel; one soldier was killed and 29 wounded. Army leadership seriously considered an all-out clean-up operation before shelving it in exchange for the PLO arresting — with conspicuous speed — the alleged instigator of the attack. By the morning of March 4 Sidon remained quiet but under insurgent control; traffic inside the town was being directed by men in civilian clothes; the first cabinet resignation (Malik Salam) had landed; and the Lebanese state had demonstrated, in practice, that it could not impose its will on the town.

What this document reveals

The March 1 Army re-entry was a logistical imperative, not aggression. All Lebanese Army units in South Lebanon were cut off: the Sidon garrison was penned in its barracks, the coastal road was blocked, and the mountain passes to the Bekaa were blocked by snow. The Army had to reopen the coast road or lose control of an entire region. It could not.
Frangieh ordered the operation with Solh’s concurrence. The Sunni narrative that the Army acted unilaterally — which became the basis of the demand to sack General Ghanem — is contradicted by Army G-2’s reporting to the Embassy. Solh knew. He simply chose not to defend the decision publicly.
The insurgents had heavy weapons in military quantities. RPGs, Katyusha rockets, recoilless rifles, 23mm Soviet heavy machine-guns. The Army came with tanks and APCs; the fedayeen put “several armored vehicles out of commission by rocket fire.” This was a pitched battle between two light-mechanized forces, not a crowd-control operation.
PFLP is named. The first direct Embassy attribution to a specific fedayeen faction comes from Army G-2: the insurgents were “leftist Sidonian civilians and fedayeen (primarily PFLP).” The rejectionist hypothesis of cable 1975BEIRUT02611 is confirmed.
The March 4 all-out clean-up operation was scotched. After the March 3 citadel ambush, the Army seriously planned a full clearing operation in Sidon. It was cancelled — not because the Army could not execute it, but because the Solh government could not survive ordering it. This is the moment at which the Lebanese state implicitly conceded that Sidon would not be taken back by military means.
Abu Za’im produces the instigator. The PLO security chief arrests the alleged attack organizer and hands him to the GOL with startling speed. The Embassy notes, drily, that no explanation has been offered for how Abu Za’im managed this — implying the obvious answer: the PLO, not the Lebanese state, was the functional security authority in Sidon.

Chronology

What happened, in sequence

Feb 27 – Mar 1, 1975

Army garrison isolated

Army units in Sidon’s barracks cut off. All South Lebanon resupply blocked by the closed coastal road and snowbound mountain routes. A logistical crisis accumulates.

5:00 PM, Mar 1, 1975

Deadline expires; Army moves

After a 1700 local ultimatum for barricade removal passes without compliance, the Army forces its way in. One detachment is ambushed on approach. Continuous fighting begins.

Mar 1–2, 1975

48 hours of urban combat

Army tanks, armored cars, APCs vs. fedayeen (primarily PFLP) with RPGs, Katyushas, recoilless rifles. Rooftop and alley positions defeat the armor. Several armored vehicles put out of action.

4:00 PM, Mar 2, 1975

Second truce; Army withdraws

A truce is arranged. Army units withdraw for the second time. Gendarmes take their outer positions. Men in civilian clothes direct the traffic inside the town.

Evening, Mar 2, 1975

GOL–PLO negotiations resume

A combined team of GOL ministers and PLO notables — including Abu Za’im and Zuhayr Muhsen — reopens talks with the insurgents.

Mar 3, 1975

Malik Salam resigns

Water and Electricity Minister Malik Salam (Sunni) resigns in protest at the failure to sack General Ghanem. First cabinet-level casualty of the crisis.

Mar 3, 1975

Mass funeral in Sidon

Eight persons killed in the weekend fighting are buried together. The atmosphere is charged but the funeral passes without incident.

17:20 Z, Mar 3, 1975

Cable 1975BEIRUT02837 filed

Embassy Beirut reports the weekend battle. CONFIDENTIAL. PFLP is named. The Embassy reinforces its February 26 ‘ruse’ hypothesis.

6:15 PM, Mar 3, 1975

Citadel ambush on Army truck

An Army supply truck is hit by rockets fired from inside the Crusader citadel. One killed, 29 wounded. Cumulative Army-police casualties now 9 dead, 43 wounded.

Night, Mar 3, 1975

Army plans clean-up operation

Army leadership seriously considers launching an all-out clearing operation in Sidon on March 4.

Mar 4, 1975

Clean-up scotched; Abu Za’im produces instigator

The operation is shelved. PLO security chief Abu Za’im arrests the alleged attack organizer and hands him to the GOL with conspicuous speed. The Embassy notes the implication.

16:04 Z, Mar 4, 1975

Cable 1975BEIRUT02894 filed

Embassy Beirut reports the citadel ambush, the aborted clean-up, and Abu Za’im’s arrest. CONFIDENTIAL.

Mar 6, 1975

Maarouf Saad dies

Two days later, Saad dies of his wounds at AUB Hospital, Beirut. The Embassy’s Feb 27 prediction is validated. See cable 1975BEIRUT03028.

Key figures

Who was involved

Rashid Solh

Prime Minister of Lebanon — trapped between street and palace

Sunni Prime Minister, October 1974 to May 15, 1975. Across this cable he is seen making impossible choices: concurring in the Army re-entry on March 1, allowing the false ‘Army acted alone’ charge to circulate unrefuted, holding his cabinet together against Sunni pressure to dissolve it, and still insisting in public — eight days into a battle in which PFLP has been named by name — that ‘no rpt no fedayeen’ have been involved. He would resign ten weeks later on exactly the ground of army-command reform.

Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Suleiman Frangieh

President of Lebanon — ordered the re-entry

Maronite Christian President (1970–1976). It was Frangieh, in consultation with Solh and the Army high command, who gave the March 1 order to force the coastal road open. His refusal throughout the crisis to consider Sunni demands for army-command reform — specifically the dismissal of General Ghanem — was the political brick wall against which the Solh government would eventually break.

Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Kamal Jumblatt

Druze paramount chief — still holding the cabinet together

Founder of the Progressive Socialist Party and paramount leader of Lebanon’s Druze community. In this cable he is seen preventing his own Minister of Economy, Abbas Khalaf, from resigning — continuing the ‘ticklish position’ diagnosed in cable 1975BEIRUT02682. He is cooperating with Frangieh to restore order while privately sympathetic to the leftist-fedayeen position. The contradiction was about to crack open entirely.

Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Yasser Arafat

PLO Chairman — the shadow negotiator

Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and leader of its largest faction, Fatah. Not named directly in these cables but present in the form of his security chief Abu Za’im, whose ability to arrest the March 3 attack instigator at speed demonstrated that the PLO under Arafat — not the Lebanese state — was the functional security authority in Sidon. The rejectionist provocation aimed at embarrassing Arafat’s mainstream had, by this point, forced him to act as the de facto policing arm of the Lebanese state.

Abu Za’im (Atallah Atallah)

Fatah security chief — PLO interlocutor with the GOL

Senior Fatah intelligence officer and head of PLO security in Lebanon during the Sidon crisis. Arafat’s principal lieutenant for managing the Lebanese-PLO relationship. His arrest of the March 3 attack instigator, and the speed with which he produced the suspect, demonstrated the depth of PLO operational control inside Sidon. He later defected to a pro-Jordanian dissident faction and died in 2008.

Zuhayr Muhsen

Sa’iqa leader — the Syrian Palestinian seat at the table

Leader of Sa’iqa, the Syrian Ba’ath-sponsored Palestinian faction, and senior PLO Executive Committee member. His presence on the GOL-PLO mediation team alongside Abu Za’im signals the direct involvement of Syrian-backed Palestinian leadership in the Sidon negotiations — a reminder that the rejectionist/mainstream dichotomy did not map cleanly onto Palestinian factional lines. Assassinated in Cannes in July 1979.

The Record

The logistical trap

To understand why the Lebanese Army re-entered Sidon on March 1, 1975, and why the operation ended the way it did, it is necessary to see the Army’s position not as a political choice but as a logistical emergency.

On February 27 the Army had withdrawn to the outskirts of Sidon in return for unconfirmed PLO assurances that the PLO would restore order inside the town. Over the next 48 hours, the PLO did not do so. Fedayeen-manned barricades stayed up. The coastal road stayed closed. The Sidon garrison — a regular Army unit in its own barracks inside the town — found itself effectively besieged, unable to receive ammunition, rations, or rotation. Much more seriously, every Lebanese Army unit in the entire south of the country depended on the coastal road for resupply, because the alternative routes — the mountain passes to the Bekaa Valley in the east — were blocked by unusually heavy late-February snow.

The Lebanese Army therefore faced a binary choice within 48 hours: reopen the coastal road or progressively lose its capacity to operate in South Lebanon. President Frangieh, in consultation with Prime Minister Solh and the Army high command, chose to reopen the road. A 1700 local deadline was set for the voluntary dismantling of the barricades. When the deadline passed without compliance, the Army moved.

One detachment was ambushed on its approach to the town. That first engagement was, in retrospect, the warning. The Army proceeded into Sidon with tanks, armored cars, and APCs. Over the next 48 hours it fought a running urban battle against a force of insurgents armed with RPGs, Katyusha rockets, recoilless rifles, and 23mm Soviet heavy machine-guns, firing from rooftops, windows, and alleyways. Several armored vehicles were put out of commission by rocket fire. By 1600 local on March 2 a second truce had been negotiated and the Army had, again, withdrawn.

PFLP named

Cable 02837 is the first Embassy cable to name a specific fedayeen faction as responsible for the Sidon insurgency. Army G-2 — the intelligence section of the Lebanese Armed Forces — identifies the insurgents as “a combination of leftist Sidonian civilians and fedayeen (primarily PFLP).”

The attribution is significant. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded by George Habash in 1967, was the largest and most militarily capable of the Palestinian “rejectionist” factions — those opposed to any negotiated settlement with Israel. The Rejectionist Front, formed in October 1974 in response to the PLO’s Ten-Point Program, had brought together the PFLP, the PFLP-General Command, the Arab Liberation Front, and dissident Sa’iqa elements in a common position against Arafat’s diplomatic opening. By 1975 the PFLP was headquartered in Beirut and had a major armed presence in Ain al-Hilweh camp, just outside Sidon.

The February 26 Embassy hypothesis — that the fishermen’s demonstration was a ruse engineered by rejectionist fedayeen to draw the Lebanese Army into a confrontation that would embarrass the PLO mainstream — is now confirmed by the Army’s own intelligence. The force the Lebanese Army had been fighting was not a crowd of angry townspeople; it was a pre-positioned light-infantry battalion of a specific political faction, with weapons it had been stockpiling for exactly this kind of engagement.

The weapons themselves tell the story. RPGs, Katyushas, recoilless rifles, 23mm heavy machine-guns — these are not the arms of a neighborhood self-defense committee. They are the arms of a unit that expected an armored assault and had prepared for it. The fedayeen did not merely defeat the Army’s re-entry; they defeated it efficiently, putting tanks and APCs out of action in hours of street fighting.

Civilian clothes and traffic control

One of the most quietly devastating sentences in cable 02837 appears in paragraph 4. The Army, after its second withdrawal, has left the outer perimeter to the gendarmerie. The coastal road is open again. But inside Sidon, “traffic on it and elsewhere in Sidon was being directed by persons wearing civilian clothes.”

This is the practical face of sovereignty lost. Not a declaration, not a speech, not a formal transfer — just the small administrative fact of who stands at the intersection and waves the cars through. In Sidon in early March 1975, that person was no longer a Lebanese policeman or Lebanese gendarme. It was a fedayeen or a fedayeen-aligned leftist, functioning as the de facto municipal authority in a Lebanese city. The Lebanese state had withdrawn not just its Army but its capacity to perform even the most routine administrative functions. The town was being governed by the people who had defeated the Army.

The Sunni political cascade

Paragraph 5 of cable 02837 documents the political fallout as it unfolded inside the Solh government. Governor Henri Lahoud of South Lebanon had already been placed on 20 days “administrative leave” — a euphemism for sacrificial suspension. On March 3, Malik Salam, Minister of Water and Electricity and a member of the prominent Salam clan of Beirut, resigned in protest at the failure to dismiss General Ghanem. Abbas Khalaf, Minister of Economy and a member of Kamal Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party bloc, reportedly wanted to resign but was blocked by Jumblatt himself, who was still trying to hold the cabinet together from his “ticklish position.”

The specific Sunni demand is important. It was not for Prime Minister Solh to be replaced; it was for General Ghanem, the Army Commander, to be dismissed. The demand rested on a false premise — the claim that the Army had acted unilaterally on March 1, without civilian authorization. The Embassy’s reporting, drawing on Army G-2, directly contradicts this: the March 1 operation was ordered by Frangieh “in consultation with Primin Solh and Army high command.” But Solh chose not to defend the decision publicly. His silence was a political calculation: to admit that he had concurred in the Army re-entry would have meant defending the resulting Army operation, and defending the Army operation was exactly what his Sunni base would not accept.

The structural problem visible here is one the Embassy has diagnosed repeatedly across the Sidon file. A Sunni Prime Minister of Lebanon is responsible for a state apparatus — the Army command — whose confessional composition he cannot change. He cannot deliver army-command reform without Frangieh’s agreement, and Frangieh will not agree. His electoral base demands the reform. When a crisis comes that requires the Army to be either mobilized (against the fedayeen) or constrained (in deference to Sunni sentiment), he cannot do either with full authority, and so he does both partially and ends up defending neither. The Sidon crisis is this structural trap activated. Solh will resign from it on May 15.

The Kissinger timing

The Embassy’s closing Comment in cable 02837 returns to the hypothesis of February 26 and strengthens it. The Sidon clashes, the cable argues, can now be read more confidently as “a deliberate attempt by fedayeen ‘rejectionist’ elements and their local leftist allies to cause commotion on the eve of Secretary Kissinger’s return to the Middle East and to embroil fedayeen leadership with the Lebanese Army and GOL.”

The political logic is precise. Henry Kissinger was in the middle of shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Egypt; the second Sinai disengagement agreement was six months away. Arafat’s PLO mainstream, under the Ten-Point Program of June 1974, was cautiously inclining toward accepting political engagement. The rejectionists wanted to destroy that opening. A Lebanese Army “massacre” of fedayeen-aligned protestors during Kissinger’s visit would have been a gift to them: it would have forced Arafat to respond with force or lose all legitimacy with his own base, it would have tipped Lebanon into open Palestinian-state confrontation, and it would have made the diplomatic opening impossible.

The Embassy observes — with what is clearly relief — that this particular objective has not been achieved. The GOL has not broken with the PLO mainstream; indeed, the PLO through Abu Za’im has been drawn in as a partner in crisis management. But this success was narrow. The Embassy closes with the observation that preventing a general PLO-GOL rupture is “probably the only plus to emerge out of this whole sad affair.”

The citadel ambush

Cable 02894, filed the next afternoon, reports an incident whose theatrical quality is impossible to miss. At 1815 on March 3, an Army truck carrying soldiers to their units in South Lebanon was ambushed on the main coastal road by “armed elements firing rockets and machine guns from positions in the town’s citadel.”

The firing position matters. Sidon’s citadel — the Castle of St. Louis on its landward side, the Sea Castle on the water — is the most visible historical monument in the city. It is also, as cable 1975BEIRUT02611 had established a week earlier, the location where fedayeen munitions (including SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles) were being stockpiled. To convert the citadel into a heavy-weapons firing position and then use it against a Lebanese Army convoy was not merely a military act. It was a deliberate political statement about who held Sidon.

The official casualty toll — one dead and 29 wounded — brought the Army’s cumulative losses to 9 dead and 43 wounded. Nine dead soldiers in ten days. In a Lebanese Army of the size and cohesion of the mid-1970s, these were not losses that could be absorbed without a response.

The clean-up operation that wasn’t

Paragraph 2 of cable 02894 contains the single most operationally revealing sentence in the entire Sidon file: “We understand that it also caused Army leadership to consider launching an all-out clean-up operation in Sidon March 4, but this idea apparently was scotched.”

The Army command, after the citadel ambush, seriously planned a full clearing operation in Sidon. The plan was abandoned. The reason it was abandoned was not that the operation was militarily impossible — the Lebanese Army had the forces to clear Sidon at cost — but that the political aftermath of an Army assault producing high civilian casualties in a predominantly Sunni city, coming on top of the February 26 shooting of Maarouf Saad, was judged unsurvivable by the Solh government.

This is the moment at which the Lebanese state formally conceded to itself that the Sidon problem would not be resolved by military action. Every decision after this point — the negotiations, the cabinet committee for army-command “study,” the transfer of the southern district commander to “other posts” — flows from this decision. The state chose accommodation over escalation because the escalation would have destroyed the state before it destroyed the armed groups.

In exchange, the state received a gesture: Abu Za’im’s arrest of the alleged attack organizer. The speed of the arrest is the Embassy’s most eloquent observation. The PLO’s security chief produced the suspect “so handily” that the cable cannot resist noting the implication. Either Abu Za’im knew who the attackers were because the PLO had been in communication with them, or the PLO had its own security penetration of the insurgent networks deep enough to produce a suspect on demand. Either way, the arrest demonstrated that the operational security authority in Sidon was the PLO, not the Lebanese state. The Lebanese state had to ask the PLO to make the arrest; the PLO did so as a political favor, in exchange for the cancellation of the clean-up operation.

A town held and a death approaching

By the morning of March 4, Sidon was “again quiet but still under insurgent control.” The coastal road was open; traffic was moving; the negotiations between the GOL-PLO team and the leftist Sidonian elements were continuing. The eight fighters killed in the weekend battle were buried together on March 3 in a funeral that passed, the Embassy notes, “without incident.”

The larger funeral was two days away. On March 6 Maarouf Saad would die of his wounds at American University Hospital in Beirut — the Embassy’s February 27 prediction validated to the day. On March 7 the funeral of Maarouf Saad himself would take place in Sidon, paralyzing Beirut through a countrywide general strike, filling every Sunni city with mourning processions, and producing the fourth cable in this series: 1975BEIRUT03064, “SECURITY SITUATION IN LEBANON.”

But already the pattern was set. The Army had tried to take Sidon back and had failed, twice, in eight days. The clean-up operation had been considered and scotched. The PLO was the functional security authority inside the town. The Sunni street was mobilizing. The cabinet had its first resignation. And the Embassy was reporting all of it to Washington, precisely, in time. None of it was stopped.

Key Locations

●

Sidon (Saida) — Principal port of South Lebanon; site of the March 1–2 battle and the March 3 citadel ambush; under fedayeen control for the duration of the crisis

●

Sidon Citadel — Crusader-era fortress at the town center; heavy-weapons firing position used against the Army truck ambushed March 3

●

Sidon Old Quarter — Medieval urban core; site of the March 1–2 street fighting between Army armor and fedayeen with RPGs and recoilless rifles

●

Coastal Road — North-south arterial between Beirut and Tyre; closed by fedayeen barricades Feb 26–Mar 1; reopened by the Army March 2; site of the March 3 ambush

○

Ain al-Hilweh — Palestinian refugee camp on Sidon’s outskirts; base for PFLP operations in the area

○

Bekaa Valley — Eastern Lebanon; alternative supply route for South Lebanon Army units, blocked by February snow during the crisis

○

Beirut — Location of U.S. Embassy; site of the Feb 28 bombing of the Chamoun Protéine fishing company office

··

Bekaa mountain passes — Alternative routes from Beirut to South Lebanon via the eastern interior; snowbound in late February 1975, eliminating the Army’s only way around the closed coastal road

Primary Source

This article is based entirely on U.S. Embassy Beirut cable 1975BEIRUT02837_02894, dispatched on Mar 3–4, 1975 and originally classified CONFIDENTIAL. Declassified and released by the U.S. Department of State under Executive Order Systematic Review, July 5, 2006. No facts have been added, removed, or altered.

View original on Wikileaks PlusD →

Topics

1975 Sidon crisis fedayeen PFLP rejectionist Army withdrawal citadel ambush Abu Za'im cabinet crisis Malik Salam civil-war origins precursor

CONFIDENTIAL

Origin	U.S. Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon
To	Secretary of State, Washington D.C. (Priority precedence)
Date	Mar 3–4, 1975
Cable ID	1975BEIRUT02837_02894
Classification	CONFIDENTIAL → Declassified 2006

Renewal of Clashes in Sidon / More Clashes in Sidon (Companion Cables)

Annotated version — all original facts and language preserved in full

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
CABLE 1 OF 2: 1975BEIRUT02837 — 031720Z MAR 75
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

C O N F I D E N T I A L

FM AMEMBASSY BEIRUT
TO SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3169, DIA WASHDC PRIORITY
INFO AMEMBASSY AMMAN, USINT BAGHDAD, AMEMBASSY CAIRO,
     AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS, AMCONSUL JERUSALEM, AMEMBASSY JIDDA,
     AMEMBASSY KUWAIT, AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV, USCINCEUR

E.O. 11652: GDS
TAGS: PINS LE
SUBJECT: RENEWAL OF CLASHES IN SIDON
REF: BEIRUT 2682

SUMMARY: RENEWED CLASHES BETWEEN LEBANESE ARMY AND "ARMED ELEMENTS" IN
SIDON OVER WEEKEND HAVE CULMINATED IN ANOTHER TRUCE.

1. UNEASY TRUCE REPORTED REFTEL BETWEEN LEB ARMY AND "ARMED ELEMENTS" IN
SIDON WAS SHATTERED APPROX 1700 LOCAL MAR 1, WHEN ARMY UNITS REENTERED
TOWN TO REOPEN ARTERIAL NORTH-SOUTH COASTAL ROAD WHICH HAD BEEN CLOSED BY
INSURGENTS IN AFTERMATH OF FEB 26 CLASHES (BEIRUT 2611). ACCORDING ARMY
G-2, ARMY FORCED BARRICADES WHEN 1700 LOCAL DEADLINE FOR THEIR DISMANTLING
PASSED WITHOUT COMPLIANCE. ONE DETACHMENT WAS AMBUSHED AND SUFFERED
CASUALTIES AS IT APPROACHED SIDON, AND ALTHOUGH ROAD WAS SUBSEQUENTLY
REOPENED, TROOPS BECAME INVOLVED IN CONTINUOUS FIGHTING WITH INSURGENTS
(ENCROACHING FROM OLD CITY LOCATED BETWEEN ROAD AND SEACOAST) UNTIL 1600
LOCAL MAR 2 WHEN SECOND TRUCE WAS ARRANGED.

2. WE UNDERSTAND FROM G-2 THAT DECISION TO IMPOSE AND ENFORCE MAR 1
DEADLINE WAS TAKEN BY PRES FRANGIE IN CONSULTATION WITH PRIMIN SOLH AND
ARMY HIGH COMMAND. BETWEEN ORIGINAL FEB 27 TRUCE AND MAR 1 ACTION, ARMY
GARRISON IN SIDON HAD BECOME PENNED UP IN ITS BARRACKS AND ROUTINE
RESUPPLY -- NOT ONLY OF SIDON GARRISON BUT OF ALL ARMY UNITS IN SOUTH
LEBANON -- WAS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE COAST ROAD WAS BLOCKED BY INSURGENTS
AND MOUNTAIN ROUTES TO BEKAA VALLEY IN EASTERN LEBANON WERE BLOCKED BY
SNOW. FRANGIE'S DECISION TO FORCE COASTAL ROAD OPEN WAS THUS APPARENTLY
MADE WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE OF PRIMIN SOLH, ONE OF WHOSE CABINET MINISTERS
(MINECON ABBAS KHALAF) WAS ENGAGED IN "NEGOTIATIONS" WITH INSURGENTS
THROUGHOUT MAR 1 UNTIL ARMY DEADLINE EXPIRED AND FIGHTING RESUMED.

3. RESULT OF MAR 1-2 STREET FIGHTING BETWEEN ARMY (EQUIPPED WITH TANKS,
ARMORED CARS AND APCS) AND UNKNOWN NUMBER OF INSURGENTS (WHOSE ARSENAL
INCLUDES RPG AND KATYUSHA ROCKETS, RECOILLESS RIFLES AND 23MM SOVIET
HEAVY MACHINE-GUNS) POSITIONED ON ROOFTOPS, WINDOWS AND IN ALLEYWAYS OF
SIDON'S MEDIEVAL QUARTER WAS 5 DEAD AND 10 WOUNDED ON ARMY SIDE, PLUS
SEVERAL ARMORED VEHICLES PUT OUT OF COMMISSION BY ROCKET FIRE. INSURGENT
AND "CIVILIAN" CASUALTIES MORE DIFFICULT TO DEFINE, BUT MOST RELIABLE
ESTIMATES PLACE THEM AT 10-15 DEAD AND AT LEAST 40 WOUNDED. ARMY G-2
IDENTIFIES INSURGENTS AS COMBINATION OF LEFTIST SIDONIAN CIVILIANS AND
FEDAYEEN (PRIMARILY PFLP).

4. AT LAST REPORT, ARMY UNITS HAD AGAIN WITHDRAWN FROM SIDON UNDER TERMS
OF TRUCE ARRANGED MAR 2, BUT THEIR POSITIONS HAVE BEEN TAKEN BY LEBANESE
GENDARMES. COASTAL ROAD WAS OPEN ON MAR 3, BUT TRAFFIC ON IT AND
ELSEWHERE IN SIDON WAS BEING DIRECTED BY PERSONS WEARING CIVILIAN CLOTHES.

5. ABOVE DEVELOPMENTS HAVE SERVED TO HEIGHTEN ANTI-GOL AGITATION AND
SENSE OF OUTRAGE AMONG LEBANESE LEFTIST AND SUNNI MOSLEM GROUPS.
(SIDONIAN POPULATION IS PREDOMINANTLY SUNNITE, AND ITS LEFTIST GROUPS ARE
THICK AS FLEAS WITH FEDAYEEN, ESPECIALLY LATTER'S MOST RADICAL ELEMENTS.)
EVEN BEFORE FIGHTING RESUMED MAR 1, PRIMIN SOLH HAD THROWN HENRI LAHOUD,
GOVERNOR OF SOUTH LEBANON, TO WOLVES BY ANNOUNCING THAT HE HAD BEEN
PLACED ON 20 DAYS "ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE". AS RESULT OF LATEST CLASHES,
LEFTIST AND SUNNI PRESSURES ON SOLH CABINET TO RESIGN HAVE MATERIALIZED,
AND ONE SUNNI MINISTER (MALIK SALAM, MIN OF WATER AND ELECTRICITY) HAS
SUBMITTED HIS RESIGNATION IN PROTEST AGAINST GOL'S FAILURE TO DISMISS GEN
GHANEM FOR ARMY'S "UNILATERAL ACTION" IN REENTERING SIDON ON MAR 1.
(GENERAL SUNNI COMPLAINT -- WHICH IS FALSE BUT WHICH PRIMIN SOLH HAS DONE
NOTHING TO DENY -- IS THAT ARMY MOVED ON ITS OWN INITIATIVE AND WITHOUT
CONSULTING GOL.) MINECONOMY ABBAS KHALAF REPORTEDLY ALSO WANTS TO RESIGN,
BUT HIS PARTY BOSS KAMAL JUMBLATT HAS THUS FAR BEEN COOPERATING WITH PRES
FRANGIE IN TRYING TO RESTORE ORDER AND IS PREVENTING KHALAF FROM QUITTING.

6. "NEGOTIATIONS" BETWEEN SIDON INSURGENTS ON ONE HAND AND COMBINED TEAM
OF GOL MINISTERS AND PLO NOTABLES (ABU ZA'IM AND ZUHAYR MUHSEN) ON THE
OTHER RESUMED ON EVENING OF MAR 2, AND HOPE IS THAT THIS WILL AT LEAST
ALLOW TIME FOR TEMPERS TO COOL AND ENABLE GOL-PLO TEAM TO PERSUADE "ARMED
ELEMENTS" TO VACATE ROOFTOPS AND OTHER STRATEGIC POINTS WHICH THEY
CONTINUE TO OCCUPY IN SIDON. IN MEANTIME, TOWN REMAINS CONTROLLED BY
INSURGENTS; TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS WITH IT ARE STILL CUT; LEFTIST,
SUNNI AND OTHER "OPPOSITIONIST" AGITATION AGAINST GOL CONTINUES; AND
PRIMIN SOLH REMAINS INSISTENT THAT NO RPT NO FEDAYEEN HAVE BEEN INVOLVED
IN THE ENTIRE AFFAIR.

7. COMMENT: (A) SOLH'S POSITION IS ADMITTEDLY DIFFICULT, CAUGHT AS HE IS
BETWEEN (A) HIS OFFICIAL RESPONSIBILITIES TO ENFORCE LAW AND ORDER AND
(B) HIS DESIRE NOT TO LOSE CREDIBILITY WITH LEBANON'S SUNNI COMMUNITY AND
LEFTIST FORCES AND TO PRESERVE FICTION OF FEDAYEEN NON-INVOLVEMENT. WHOLE
BUSINESS POINTS UP ONCE AGAIN HOW DIFFICULT IT IS FOR ANY LEBANESE SUNNI
POLITICAL LEADER TO ACT WITH PURPOSE AND DETERMINATION IN DEALING WITH
TROUBLESOME SITUATIONS RESULTING FROM STRONG ATTACHMENT ON PART OF HIS
CO-RELIGIONISTS TO SECTARIAN AND NON-LEBANESE (I.E., EXTREMIST FEDAYEEN)
CAUSES. NEXT FEW DAYS WILL TELL WHETHER SOLH GOVT CAN SURVIVE FUROR AND
TENSIONS CREATED BY SIDON CLASHES, AND ALSO WHETHER SITUATION WHICH
PRODUCED THOSE CLASHES CAN BE RESOLVED WITHOUT FURTHER FIGHTING.
(B) IN MEANTIME, FISHERMEN WHOSE COMPLAINT WAS OSTENSIBLE CAUSE OF THIS
ENTIRE EPISODE HAVE BEEN LARGELY FORGOTTEN, EXCEPT FOR PURPOSES OF
CONTINUING LEFTIST AGITATION. (MYSTERIOUS BOMB-BLAST WHICH DESTROYED
BEIRUT OFFICE OF CAMILLE CHAMOUN'S FISHING COMPANY NIGHT OF FEB 28 HAS
BEEN ATTRIBUTED TO FISHERMEN, BUT THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT THAT IT WAS
PERPETRATED BY RADICAL LEFTISTS.) ALL THIS TENDS TO REINFORCE OUR INITIAL
SUSPICION (PARA 3 BEIRUT 2611) THAT SIDON CLASHES RESULTED FROM
DELIBERATE ATTEMPT BY FEDAYEEN "REJECTIONIST" ELEMENTS AND THEIR LOCAL
LEFTIST ALLIES TO CAUSE COMMOTION ON EVE OF SECRETARY KISSINGER'S RETURN
TO ME AND TO EMBROIL FEDAYEEN LEADERSHIP WITH LEBANESE ARMY AND GOL. FACT
THAT LATTER OBJECTIVE HAS NOT BEEN ATTAINED IS PROBABLY THE ONLY PLUS TO
EMERGE OUT OF THIS WHOLE SAD AFFAIR.

HOUGHTON


═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
CABLE 2 OF 2: 1975BEIRUT02894 — 041604Z MAR 75
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

C O N F I D E N T I A L

FM AMEMBASSY BEIRUT
TO SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3195, DIA WASHDC PRIORITY
INFO AMEMBASSY AMMAN, USINT BAGHDAD, AMEMBASSY CAIRO,
     AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS, AMCONSUL JERUSALEM, AMEMBASSY JIDDA,
     AMEMBASSY KUWAIT, AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV, USCINCEUR

E.O. 11652: GDS
TAGS: PINS LE
SUBJECT: MORE CLASHES IN SIDON
REF: BEIRUT 2837

1. DEPT WILL DOUBTLESS HAVE NOTED FROM FBIS REPORTS THAT ANOTHER INCIDENT
OCCURRED IN SIDON AT 1815 LOCAL MAR 3, WHEN ARMY TRUCK TRANSPORTING
LEBANESE SOLDIERS TO THEIR UNITS IN SOUTH LEBANON WAS AMBUSHED ON MAIN
COASTAL ROAD BY "ARMED ELEMENTS" FIRING ROCKETS AND MACHINE GUNS FROM
POSITIONS IN TOWN'S CITADEL. OFFICIAL CASUALTY TOLL WAS ONE SOLDIER
KILLED AND 29 RPT 29 WOUNDED, WHICH BRINGS TOTAL ARMY-POLICE CASUALTIES
IN SIDON TO 9 DEAD AND 43 WOUNDED SINCE FIGHTING BEGAN ON FEB 26.

2. ABOVE INCIDENT APPARENTLY PROVOKED RENEWED EXCHANGES OF FIRE BETWEEN
LEBANESE TROOPS AND SIDON INSURGENTS DURING EVENING HOURS MAR 3. WE
UNDERSTAND THAT IT ALSO CAUSED ARMY LEADERSHIP TO CONSIDER LAUNCHING
ALL-OUT CLEAN-UP OPERATION IN SIDON MAR 4, BUT THIS IDEA APPARENTLY WAS
SCOTCHED AND CEASE FIRE RESTORED WHEN PLO'S ABU ZA'IM SUCCEEDED IN
ARRESTING ALLEGED INSTIGATOR OF INCIDENT (IDENTIFIED AS A LEBANESE
LEFTIST THUG) AND TURNED HIM OVER TO GOL AUTHORITIES. HIS ACCOMPLICES ARE
STILL BEING SOUGHT, BUT THERE SEEMS TO BE NO INFO REGARDING THEIR
WHEREABOUTS, NOR HAS THERE BEEN ANY EXPLANATION OF HOW ABU ZA'IM MANAGED
TO LAY HIS HANDS ON ALLEGED INSTIGATOR SO HANDILY.

3. AS OF MID-DAY MAR 4, SIDON REPORTEDLY WAS AGAIN QUIET BUT STILL UNDER
INSURGENT CONTROL, AND "NEGOTIATIONS" WERE EVIDENTLY STILL IN PROGRESS
BETWEEN GOL-PLO TEAM AND LEFTIST SIDONIAN ELEMENTS. PRESSURES REPORTED
REFTEL ON SOLH CABINET TO RESIGN ARE STILL IN EVIDENCE, BUT WE EXPECT NO
DECISIVE DEVELOPMENTS ON THIS FRONT UNTIL AFTER CABINET MEETING WITH PRES
FRANGIE, REPORTEDLY SCHEDULED FOR MAR 5.

4. MAR 3 WITNESSED MASS FUNERAL IN SIDON OF 8 PERSONS KILLED IN CLASHES
REPORTED OVER PAST SEVERAL DAYS. ALTHOUGH ATMOSPHERE WAS CHARGED WITH
TENSION, FUNERALS PROCEEDED WITHOUT INCIDENT.

HOUGHTON

Originally classified CONFIDENTIAL · Declassified and released by U.S. Department of State · Now UNCLASSIFIED

Archival Note — Merged Entry

This is a merged archival entry combining two companion cables filed on consecutive days, March 3 and March 4, 1975, documenting the second round of the Sidon crisis. Cable 1975BEIRUT02837 (031720Z) reports the March 1–2 street fighting: the Army attempted to reopen the coastal road, was ambushed by 1,000+ fedayeen with RPGs and recoilless rifles, and was forced to withdraw again after 48 hours of urban combat. Cable 1975BEIRUT02894 (041604Z) is the next-day report: an Army truck has been ambushed from the medieval citadel itself, nine soldiers are dead, and an all-out Army clean-up operation in Sidon has been seriously discussed and then scotched. Together the two cables document the moment when the Lebanese state tried to reassert control over Sidon and failed.

Cable 1 of 2 — 1975BEIRUT02837 — 031720Z Mar 75

Subject: Renewal of Clashes in Sidon · CONFIDENTIAL · Ref: BEIRUT 2682

SUMMARY: Renewed clashes between Lebanese Army and “armed elements” in Sidon over the weekend have culminated in another truce.

1.
The uneasy truce reported reftel between the Lebanese Army and “armed elements” in Sidon was shattered at approximately 1700 local on March 1, when Army units reentered the town^[1] to reopen the arterial north-south coastal road which had been closed by insurgents in the aftermath of the February 26 clashes. According to Army G-2, the Army forced the barricades when the 1700 local deadline for their dismantling passed without compliance. One detachment was ambushed and suffered casualties as it approached Sidon, and although the road was subsequently reopened, troops became involved in continuous fighting with insurgents (encroaching from the old city located between the road and the seacoast) until 1600 local on March 2 when a second truce was arranged.

2.
We understand from G-2 that the decision to impose and enforce the March 1 deadline was taken by Pres Frangie in consultation with Primin Solh and the Army high command.^[2] Between the original February 27 truce and the March 1 action, the Army garrison in Sidon had become penned up in its barracks and routine resupply — not only of the Sidon garrison but of all Army units in South Lebanon — was impossible because the coast road was blocked by insurgents and the mountain routes to the Bekaa valley in eastern Lebanon were blocked by snow. Frangie’s decision to force the coastal road open was thus apparently made with full knowledge of Primin Solh, one of whose cabinet ministers (MinEcon Abbas Khalaf) was engaged in “negotiations” with insurgents throughout March 1 until the Army deadline expired and fighting resumed.^[3]

3.
The result of the March 1–2 street fighting between the Army (equipped with tanks, armored cars and APCs) and an unknown number of insurgents (whose arsenal includes RPG and Katyusha rockets, recoilless rifles and 23mm Soviet heavy machine-guns) positioned on rooftops, windows and in alleyways of Sidon’s medieval quarter was 5 dead and 10 wounded on the Army side, plus several armored vehicles put out of commission by rocket fire. Insurgent and “civilian” casualties are more difficult to define, but the most reliable estimates place them at 10–15 dead and at least 40 wounded. Army G-2 identifies the insurgents as a combination of leftist Sidonian civilians and fedayeen (primarily PFLP).^[4]

4.
At last report, Army units had again withdrawn from Sidon under terms of the truce arranged March 2, but their positions have been taken by Lebanese gendarmes. The coastal road was open on March 3, but traffic on it and elsewhere in Sidon was being directed by persons wearing civilian clothes.^[5]

5.
The above developments have served to heighten anti-GOL agitation and a sense of outrage among Lebanese leftist and Sunni Muslim groups. (Sidonian population is predominantly Sunnite, and its leftist groups are thick as fleas with fedayeen, especially the latter’s most radical elements.) Even before fighting resumed March 1, Primin Solh had thrown Henri Lahoud, Governor of South Lebanon, to the wolves by announcing that he had been placed on 20 days “administrative leave”. As a result of the latest clashes, leftist and Sunni pressures on the Solh cabinet to resign have materialized, and one Sunni minister (Malik Salam, Min of Water and Electricity) has submitted his resignation^[6] in protest against the GOL’s failure to dismiss Gen Ghanem for the Army’s “unilateral action” in reentering Sidon on March 1. (General Sunni complaint — which is false but which Primin Solh has done nothing to deny — is that the Army moved on its own initiative and without consulting the GOL.)^[7] MinEconomy Abbas Khalaf reportedly also wants to resign, but his party boss Kamal Jumblatt has thus far been cooperating with Pres Frangie in trying to restore order and is preventing Khalaf from quitting.

6.
“Negotiations” between Sidon insurgents on one hand and a combined team of GOL ministers and PLO notables (Abu Za’im and Zuhayr Muhsen) on the other resumed on the evening of March 2, and the hope is that this will at least allow time for tempers to cool and enable the GOL-PLO team to persuade “armed elements” to vacate the rooftops and other strategic points which they continue to occupy in Sidon. In the meantime, the town remains controlled by insurgents; telephone communications with it are still cut; leftist, Sunni and other “oppositionist” agitation against the GOL continues; and Primin Solh remains insistent that no rpt no fedayeen have been involved in the entire affair.^[8]

7. Comment
(A) Solh’s position is admittedly difficult, caught as he is between (a) his official responsibilities to enforce law and order and (b) his desire not to lose credibility with Lebanon’s Sunni community and leftist forces and to preserve the fiction of fedayeen non-involvement. The whole business points up once again how difficult it is for any Lebanese Sunni political leader to act with purpose and determination in dealing with troublesome situations resulting from the strong attachment on the part of his co-religionists to sectarian and non-Lebanese (i.e., extremist fedayeen) causes.^[9] The next few days will tell whether the Solh government can survive the furor and tensions created by the Sidon clashes, and also whether the situation which produced those clashes can be resolved without further fighting.

(B) In the meantime, the fishermen whose complaint was the ostensible cause of this entire episode have been largely forgotten, except for purposes of continuing leftist agitation. (A mysterious bomb-blast which destroyed the Beirut office of Camille Chamoun’s fishing company on the night of February 28 has been attributed to fishermen, but there is little doubt that it was perpetrated by radical leftists.)^[10] All this tends to reinforce our initial suspicion (para 3 Beirut 2611) that the Sidon clashes resulted from a deliberate attempt by fedayeen “rejectionist” elements and their local leftist allies to cause commotion on the eve of Secretary Kissinger’s return to the Middle East and to embroil fedayeen leadership with the Lebanese Army and GOL.^[11] The fact that the latter objective has not been attained is probably the only plus to emerge out of this whole sad affair.

HOUGHTON

Cable 2 of 2 — 1975BEIRUT02894 — 041604Z Mar 75

Subject: More Clashes in Sidon · CONFIDENTIAL · Ref: BEIRUT 2837

1.
The Department will doubtless have noted from FBIS reports that another incident occurred in Sidon at 1815 local on March 3, when an Army truck transporting Lebanese soldiers to their units in South Lebanon was ambushed on the main coastal road by “armed elements” firing rockets and machine guns from positions in the town’s citadel.^[12] Official casualty toll was one soldier killed and 29 rpt 29 wounded, which brings total Army-police casualties in Sidon to 9 dead and 43 wounded since fighting began on February 26.

2.
The above incident apparently provoked renewed exchanges of fire between Lebanese troops and Sidon insurgents during the evening hours of March 3. We understand that it also caused Army leadership to consider launching an all-out clean-up operation in Sidon on March 4, but this idea apparently was scotched and a cease-fire restored when PLO’s Abu Za’im succeeded in arresting the alleged instigator of the incident (identified as a Lebanese leftist thug) and turned him over to GOL authorities.^[13] His accomplices are still being sought, but there seems to be no info regarding their whereabouts, nor has there been any explanation of how Abu Za’im managed to lay his hands on the alleged instigator so handily.^[14]

3.
As of mid-day March 4, Sidon reportedly was again quiet but still under insurgent control, and “negotiations” were evidently still in progress between the GOL-PLO team and leftist Sidonian elements. Pressures reported reftel on the Solh cabinet to resign are still in evidence, but we expect no decisive developments on this front until after the cabinet meeting with Pres Frangie, reportedly scheduled for March 5.

4.
March 3 witnessed a mass funeral in Sidon of 8 persons killed in clashes reported over the past several days. Although the atmosphere was charged with tension, the funerals proceeded without incident.^[15]

HOUGHTON

Editorial Footnotes

[1]The Army re-entry of March 1: The most consequential Army action of the entire crisis. On February 27 the Army had withdrawn to the outskirts of Sidon in the expectation that the PLO would restore order inside the town. Over the next 48 hours the PLO did not do so: fedayeen-manned barricades remained in place, the coastal road stayed closed, the Army garrison in Sidon’s barracks was cut off from resupply, and through the same road closure all Lebanese Army units in the entire south of the country were unable to receive ammunition, food, or rotation. Mountain passes to the Bekaa were blocked by unusually heavy February snow. The March 1 deadline was not aggressive policing; it was a logistical imperative. That even this necessary re-entry produced 48 hours of street fighting and forced another Army withdrawal demonstrated that the Lebanese state could no longer impose its will in Sidon by any means short of a massive escalation it was not politically capable of ordering.

[2]Frangieh-Solh concurrence: This paragraph is the Embassy’s direct rebuttal of the Sunni political narrative that would dominate the rest of the crisis. Sunni leaders charged that the Army had acted unilaterally, bypassing the civilian (Sunni) Prime Minister. The Embassy’s Army G-2 source — citing the Army chain of command itself — confirms that the decision to enforce the deadline was taken by President Frangieh in direct consultation with Prime Minister Solh. Solh knew the action was coming; his own Minister of Economy Khalaf was conducting parallel negotiations with the insurgents right up to the moment the Army moved. This is an important counterfactual anchor: when Sunni commentators accused the Army of acting without civilian authorization, they were making a claim that the contemporaneous diplomatic record contradicts. Solh’s silence in the face of this false charge — noted in paragraph 5 — was a political choice, not a factual concession.

[3]Parallel negotiations: The pattern of a senior Lebanese minister (Khalaf) conducting back-channel talks with the insurgents while another arm of the state (the Army) prepares a forced entry on a set deadline is a characteristic Lebanese governmental mode. Each track acts as leverage for the other; each creates deniability for the other. In this case the tracks failed to coordinate: Khalaf did not deliver a negotiated dismantling of the barricades before the deadline, the Army moved, and the result was the March 1–2 battle. Khalaf’s subsequent frustration (he reportedly wanted to resign and was blocked from doing so only by Jumblatt) reflects the position of a negotiator whose process was short-circuited by his own government.

[4]PFLP identification: The first public attribution by an Embassy cable to a specific fedayeen faction in the Sidon fighting. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded by George Habash in 1967, was the largest of the “rejectionist” factions — those opposed to any diplomatic settlement with Israel. By 1975 the PFLP was a core component of the Rejectionist Front (formed October 1974) and had a major presence in Ain al-Hilweh camp just outside Sidon. The attribution here confirms the Embassy’s February 26 hypothesis that Sidon was being used as a staging ground by factions specifically opposed to the PLO-Fatah mainstream’s diplomatic opening. The insurgent arsenal listed — RPGs, Katyushas, recoilless rifles, 23mm heavy machine-guns — is not that of a neighborhood self-defense group; it is a light infantry brigade’s worth of weapons, pre-positioned.

[5]Civilian-clothed traffic control: The most precise single image of the sovereignty question in these cables. The Lebanese state’s formal arm — the Army — has been withdrawn. The gendarmerie is positioned on the outskirts. The coastal road is open. But traffic inside Sidon is being directed by men in civilian clothes: fedayeen or fedayeen-aligned leftists, functioning as the de facto municipal authority. This is a precise documentary record of the transfer of practical sovereignty from the state to the armed groups on Lebanese territory — not by proclamation but by the small administrative fact of who stands at the intersection and waves the cars through.

[6]Malik Salam resignation: Salam’s resignation as Minister of Water and Electricity on March 3 was the first cabinet-level defection from the Solh government produced by the Sidon crisis. A Sunni politician from Beirut’s Salam clan (a leading Sunni family; Saeb Salam had been Prime Minister multiple times), Malik Salam framed his resignation as specifically tied to the failure to dismiss General Ghanem. It was a political act aimed at creating momentum for precisely the army-command reform that Frangieh had refused to consider. Within ten weeks Solh himself would resign on the same ground.

[7]The Army-acted-alone myth: An important example of how political narratives are constructed in real time from material that the record shows to be false. The Sunni street’s belief — or convenient claim — that the Army had moved without civilian authorization allowed Sunni political leaders to demand General Ghanem’s dismissal without having to demand Prime Minister Solh’s dismissal, and allowed Prime Minister Solh to avoid having to defend the decision he had actually concurred in. The Embassy’s notation that Solh “has done nothing to deny” the false charge is the key point: Solh chose silence because correcting the record would have forced him to defend a policy he could not politically defend. The fiction was load-bearing for everyone.

[8]Solh’s denial, restated: The same denial the Embassy flagged as implausible in cable 1975BEIRUT02682 is now flagged again. Eight days after the fighting began, after PFLP involvement has been confirmed by Army G-2 and the PLO has sent its senior security official (Abu Za’im) to negotiate with the insurgents, the Prime Minister is still publicly insisting that “no rpt no fedayeen” have been involved. The use of the teletype convention “rpt” (repeat, used to emphasize an unusual or key word so it is not read as a typo) is the Embassy’s wry signal that it is flagging this claim as diplomatic fiction.

[9]The Embassy’s structural diagnosis of Sunni political leadership: The Sunni political leader — Solh here, but the structure applies to his predecessors and successors — is caught between formal responsibility for a state apparatus he does not fully control (the Army command is Maronite) and an electoral base whose sympathies lie substantially with non-Lebanese causes (the Palestinian struggle) that produce exactly the confrontations he is then expected to manage. The Embassy treats this not as a personal failing of Solh but as a structural feature of the Lebanese political system. In the long view it is a prediction: no Sunni Prime Minister will be able to deliver on the Maronite half of his brief, and the office will therefore periodically collapse into resignation crises. Solh’s own May 15 resignation confirms the diagnosis.

[10]The Chamoun fishing-company bombing: A detail that retrospectively reads as a miniature template for everything that followed in 1975–76. A political-economic grievance in Sidon (the Protéine concession) produces mass protest, which produces an Army shooting, which produces fedayeen-Army confrontation, which produces a retaliatory bombing of a Maronite commercial target in Beirut, which deepens Maronite conviction that the left is waging an undeclared war on Christian commerce and persons. The Embassy notes that the bombing was attributed to fishermen but clearly was the work of “radical leftists” — a distinction that in practice did not matter: the perception on the Christian side was of Sunni-leftist violence against Christians, and that perception was mobilizable into militia recruitment.

[11]The Kissinger timing: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was in the midst of his ongoing shuttle diplomacy between Israel and the Arab states in early 1975, attempting to broker a second Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement (which would be signed September 4, 1975). The Embassy’s hypothesis — that rejectionist fedayeen timed the Sidon provocation to coincide with Kissinger’s expected return to the region — places the Sidon crisis in the context of the broader Palestinian factional struggle. The PLO mainstream under Arafat was inclining cautiously toward political engagement (the Ten-Point Program of June 1974); the rejectionists wanted to foreclose that path. A Lebanese Army “massacre” of fedayeen-aligned protesters during Kissinger’s shuttle would have been devastating for Arafat’s diplomatic legitimacy. The Embassy notes with restrained relief that this particular objective “has not been attained.”

[12]Rockets from the citadel: The March 3 ambush was qualitatively different from the February 26 or March 1 fighting. It was not an urban melee; it was a pre-planned ambush of a military convoy on the main coastal artery, using heavy weapons (rockets, machine guns) from fortified positions inside Sidon’s Crusader-era citadel itself. The choice of firing position is pointed: the citadel is the most recognizable historical landmark in Sidon, and using it as a heavy-weapons platform against the Lebanese Army was a deliberate political statement about who controlled the town. It also repurposed a building identified in cable 1975BEIRUT02611 as a fedayeen ammunition dump — including SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles — into an active firing position.

[13]The Army’s aborted clean-up operation: The most important single operational fact in these cables. After the March 3 ambush, the Lebanese Army command seriously considered and then shelved a plan for an all-out clearing operation in Sidon. The decision not to proceed was not taken because the operation was considered militarily infeasible — the Army had the force to clear Sidon at cost — but because the political aftermath of an Army-fedayeen pitched battle with high civilian casualties in a Sunni city was judged unsurvivable by the Solh government. This is the moment at which the Lebanese state formally conceded to itself that the Sidon problem would not be resolved by military action. Every subsequent decision in the crisis flows from this concession.

[14]Abu Za’im’s arrest: The Embassy’s unspoken question in this paragraph — “how did the PLO’s own security chief manage to produce the instigator of an attack on a Lebanese Army convoy so quickly?” — is a polite way of observing that the PLO was acting as the functional police authority in Sidon. Either Abu Za’im knew who the attackers were because the PLO had been in communication with them, or the PLO had its own intelligence penetration of the insurgent networks deep enough to produce a suspect on demand. Either way, the answer is that the PLO and not the Lebanese state was the authority with the operational capacity to act inside Sidon — the Lebanese state had to ask the PLO for the arrest, and the arrest was delivered as a political favor to avert the feared Army clean-up operation.

[15]The March 3 funeral: Eight of the insurgent/civilian dead from the March 1–2 fighting were buried together on March 3. That the funeral — a gathering of leftist and fedayeen mourners in a town still held by armed insurgents — proceeded “without incident” is a signal of the effective ceasefire then prevailing. It also established a template: the larger, more politically charged funeral for Maarouf Saad himself, whose own death was then three days away, would take place on March 7 amid countrywide strikes and demonstrations (see cable 1975BEIRUT03064).

CONFIDENTIAL

How to Cite

Annotated version:
Institute for Lebanon, “Renewal of Clashes in Sidon / More Clashes in Sidon (Companion Cables)” (1975BEIRUT02837_02894), Mar 3–4, 1975. instituteforlebanon.com/cables/1975BEIRUT02837_02894/

Original cable:
U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon, “Renewal of Clashes in Sidon / More Clashes in Sidon (Companion Cables)” (1975BEIRUT02837_02894), Mar 3–4, 1975. Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD).

GOL
Government of Lebanon
PRIMIN
Prime Minister (cable abbreviation)
PRES
President (cable abbreviation)
MINECON
Minister of Economy (cable abbreviation)
G-2
Army intelligence section staff code — here the Lebanese Armed Forces intelligence branch
APC
Armored Personnel Carrier
RPG
Rocket-Propelled Grenade — Soviet RPG-7 shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon
KATYUSHA
Soviet-designed multiple-rocket launcher system — BM-21 Grad 122mm or 107mm Type 63
PFLP
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — Marxist-Leninist faction (Habash)
SAʿIQA
Syrian Ba’ath-sponsored Palestinian faction (الصاعقة, ‘Thunderbolt’)