Palestine- Pakistan relations
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The Zia-Ul-Haq years
Srijana Siri, Nov 11, 2023: The Indian Express
A set of hijackings carried out by Palestinian resistance groups in September 1970 set off a war between them and Jordan. It culminated in the killing of approximately 10,000 to 25,000 Palestinians. The war was significant because of its unusual geopolitics. It involved Pakistan’s former General Muhammad Zia-Ul-Haq rebuilding Jordan’s tattered military
“This is your new captain speaking… We will take you to a friendly country with friendly people”, announced the female hijacker of Tel Aviv-New York TWA Flight 741, which now found itself on a runway in the middle of a Jordanian desert. On the same day — September 6, 1970 — a Swiss Air 100 flying from Zurich to New York was hijacked and brought to Jordan, and Pan-American Flight 93 from Brussels to New York landed in Cairo. Three days later, on September 9, another flight, BOAC Flight 775, was “flown into Dawson’s Field”.
The hijackers were from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a militant group formed by Dr George Habash and Dr Wadia Haddad in January 1968. PFLP advocated for the liberation of Palestine and the creation of a Marxist-Leninist Arab society.
The hijackings set off a war between Jordan and Palestine resistance groups which culminated in the killing of approximately 10,000 to 25,000 Palestinians and led to Black September, also known as the Jordanian Civil War. The war was significant because of its unusual geopolitics. It involved Pakistan’s former General Muhammad Zia-Ul-Haq rebuilding Jordan’s tattered military, Iraq and Syria supporting the Palestine cause, and the famous Six-Day War of 1967.
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War
On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a series of preemptive airstrikes in Egypt and Syria, launching the Six-Day War during which it captured the Gaza Strip, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Historians Roger Louis and Avi Shlaim in the book The 1967 Arab-Israeli War Origins and Consequences (2012) write that the reasons for the war were complex, involving retaliatory decisions from many countries including Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Israel.
“No strategic plan for the conduct of this war ever existed,” writes Shlaim, adding that it emerged gradually in response to changing circumstances.
One of these circumstances was the Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s newspaper interview on May 12, 1967. Shlaim notes that Rabin threatened to “occupy Damascus and overthrow the Syrian regime”. This statement contradicted the official stand of Israel which was to “not interfere in the internal politics of the Arab states but only act in self-defence against Arab aggression”.
A day after Rabin’s interview, the Soviet leaders on May 13 sent a report to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser that Israel was gathering military forces on its northern front. Although Nasser knew that the intel was untrue, he took three steps that intended to prevent any military escalation but ultimately failed. These included increasing military deployment at Sinai, removing the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) on May 13, and closing the Straits of Tiran, at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, to Israeli shipping, on May 22.
While then Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol issued a statement that the country is not “heading for war, we do not want war”, Israel saw the closure of the Straits of Tiran as exactly that — a declaration of war.
On May 23, Eshkol called for a meeting with Rabin and Aharon Yariv, the director of Military Intelligence. The minutes of this meeting in the Israel Defence Force Archive suggest that Rabin believed that the “war is not a matter of a day or two. The behaviour of Jordan and Syria will depend on the extent of our success in the Egyptian theatre, for us it is a question of survival”.
Although the Israeli military saw this as an indication of war, they chose to wait. Prime Minister Eshkol through the Norwegian commander of the UN Truce Supervision Organisation sent a message, “We shall not initiate any action whatsoever against Jordan. However, should Jordan open hostilities, we shall react with all our might and the King will have to bear full responsibility for the consequences.”
In the meantime, the Egyptian army increased the concentration of forces at Sinai, while Jordan was on high alert. Historian Robert Stephans in Nasser: A Political Biography (1972), writes that on May 26, Nasser declared, “If Israel embarks on an aggression against Syria or Egypt, the battle against Israel will be a general one… and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel”.
After assessing the situation where Egypt was “placing two hundred tanks in preattack position” and the armies of Jordan and Syria were also involved, Israel decided to go to war. King Hussein of Jordan was privy to this information and sent an urgent message to Cairo. But it was too late by then. The Israeli defence forces opened air strikes on the Egyptian airfields.
Louis and Shlaim write that Israel’s initial plan was to either capture the Gaza Strip and the southern flank of al-Arish or occupy the Gaza Strip and the eastern part of the Sinai Peninsula. “The main enemy was Egypt,” they write. However, the defence pact signed on May 30, 1967, for five years, between the Jordanian King Hussein and Egypt placed the Jordanian army under Egyptian command, and the Jordanian military began strikes along Israeli settlements in West Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Syria, unlike Jordan, was confused and reclusive. It was utterly unaware of the mass destruction in Egypt and was still awaiting communication from there. They were also hesitant to actively participate in the war because any movement on the part of the Israeli military would elicit a response from the Soviet Union. Yet the Israelis captured the Golan Heights and, on June 10, the Soviet Union broke diplomatic ties with Israel.
Historian David W Lesch in an essay Syria: Playing with Fire writes that apart from some “sporadic shellings of Israeli settlements across the border, Syria primarily stayed out of the war for the first four days”.
In a matter of six days, Israel captured Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. The consequences of this war were devastating. David Raab in his eyewitness testimonial Terror in Black September writes, “about 200,000 Palestinian Arabs [who were the primary population in West Bank] fled to the East Bank”. They hoped to return to the West Bank after Jordan won the war but they never could.
Historian and author Tom Segev in an article, The June 1967 War and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, writes that approximately 220,000 to 250,000 refugees left Gaza and the West Bank. The majority of them, almost 200,000 Palestinians, moved into the East Bank in Jordan. More than 20,000 Arab people were killed, while 1,000 casualties were seen on the Israeli front.
Palestinian resistance
Jordan’s humiliating defeat in the 1967 War left Palestinians with little hope. “Many Palestine leaders concluded as well that Arab regimes could not destroy Israel,” writes Raab. As a result, they took control “over their own fate and promoted guerrilla warfare” to assert themselves.
It was then that groups like Fatah and the PFLP were formed and strengthened in Jordan. Founded in 1959 by Yasser Arafat, Salakh Khalaf and a few others, Fatah became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the Six-Day War.
William B Quandt, Fuad Jabber and Ann Lesch in the book The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (1973) write that “Fatah’s argument was that the liberation of Palestine was primarily a Palestinian affair and could not be entrusted to the Arab states”.
The year 1968 witnessed an important moment in the unification of the Palestinian resistance. Raab writes that Arafat became such an important and popular leader that he along with Fatah “seized control of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)”. By 1970, Arafat’s PLO had headquarters in Amman in Jordan and included 27 commando groups. PLO and Fatah promoted guerrilla warfare and formed groups called Fedayeen.
The sociologists Barukh Kimmerling and Joel Migdal in The Palestinian People (2009) write that Fatah started to assert themselves in 1965. In the 1967 War, the fedayeen “carried out about one hundred attacks, leaving at least eleven Israelis dead and sixty-two injured”.
“With its large Palestinian population (displaced from the 1967 war) and long border with Israel, it was no surprise that Jordan became the front line in this struggle,” writes historian Nigel Jon Ashton in King Hussein of Jordan (2008).
PFLP’s dramatic move
In an attempt to gain lost territory, Egypt attacked Israel in 1969, which marked the beginning of the War of Attrition around the Suez Canal. However, Israel relinquished Egypt’s air defence system. Afraid of any retaliation from the Soviet Union, US President Richard Nixon, on August 7, 1970 sent Secretary of State William Rogers to successfully establish a ceasefire.
All parties agreed to exchange territory for peace in the famous “Rogers Plan”. Yet, Egypt violated the agreement immediately. King Hussein sent the guerrillas over the edge. But Israel did not retaliate further. No exchange of land was undertaken.
The US involvement went against the fedayeen’s vision of demolishing the Israeli nation-state. Raab writes that the fedayeen feared that the “Rogers Plan” was a “diplomatic effort to liquidate the Palestine issue”. They feared that their cause would be compromised if left to the Arab countries and the West. Their anger was levelled at King Hussein. On September 1 1970, the PFLP attempted to kill Hussein who was on his way to the airport to meet his daughter.
On September 3, the fedayeen and the Jordanian army clashed again. The fedayeen claimed that army shelling killed 33 people and wounded 160 others. King Hussein made a public announcement asking the PLO to “exercise control over its groups.” Despite these requests, Arafat did not take any action and the distrust between the government and the fedayeen groups grew stronger.
Having failed to kill King Hussein, PFLP took the dramatic step of hijacking three planes — TWA Flight 741, Swiss Air 100 and Pan-American Flight 93. Two flights were flown into Dawson’s Field, a desert airstrip in Jordan. The third plane was flown into Cairo and was blown up “under the noses of the Egyptian army”.
To increase the pressure on Nasser and Hussein, Ashton writes, PFLP on September 9 hijacked another flight, BOAC Flight 775, flying from Bahrain that was “flown into Dawson’s Field”. The PFLP had more than 500 hostages, amongst whom were a large number of American and British nationals. Barry and Judith Rubin, authors of Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, write that the PFLP “threatened to kill the hostages and blow up the planes unless European governments freed Palestinians being held in jails”.
Before staging the destruction of the hijacked plane, Raab writes that the PFLP released “all women and children”. They captured 56 male hostages to demand the release of Palestinians from Israeli jails. Barry and Judith Rubin further say that Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation “freed several Western hostages from the hijackings who came into Fatah’s hands”. However, Arafat did not publicly voice his opinion on the hijackings.
By September 15, the fedayeen took control of Irbid and Yasser Arafat, and declared the district as a ‘liberated zone’. At the dawn of September 17, the Organisations attacked positions of authority in Amman such as the King’s Palace. Political scientist William B Quandt in his book The Politics of the Palestinian Nationalism (1973) writes that Syria entered the fighting in full strength on September 19.
The Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA) station in Syria possessed Soviet T-34 tanks. Quandt approximates that 100 to 200 Syrian tanks entered Jordan. The United States and Israel were also on high alert assuming “Soviet backing for the Syrian intervention”. Quandt further writes that Israel was ready to intervene against the Syrian tanks with support from the United States.
Troubled by this and fearing an “Israeli invasion of Jordan”, Hussein moved his military, which was funded by the United Kingdom, to open fire the same day. The orange-blue hues of sunrise in Amman quickly turned into a suffocating prison of black smoke. Water supply, telephone lines, electricity and the airport were shut down. Jordan’s army entered Amman and attacked the base of Palestine Resistance Organisations. Refugee camps in Jabal Al Hashemi, Jabal Al-Hussein and Jabal Wahadat were completely destroyed. The ‘liberated area’ that Arafat announced a few hours ago ceased to exist.
The number of casualties reported is subject to controversy. Arafat claims that approximately 10,000 to 25,000 Palestinians were killed, while official numbers from Jordan record 5,000 to 7,000 casualties. A New York Times report said that about 60,000 Palestinians were moved into Lebanon from Jordan.
Jordan’s existential crisis
The Six-Day War also required Jordan to mend diplomatic relations with other countries. “The decimation of the Jordanian armed forces and the plight of the refugees and the general economic dislocation within the East Bank” affected Jordan and the King deeply, writes Ashton.
King Hussein in his autobiography, Uneasy Lies the Head admits to his alignment with the West. When Britain tried to include Jordan in the Baghdad Pact and protests ensued in the West Bank, King Hussein withdrew his support.
Political Scientist Naseer H Aruri in Jordan: A Study in Political Development (1972) writes that in 1958, America started subsidizing Jordan for USD 40 million annually. However, after Israel’s victory in 1967 and the West’s open support, King Hussein had to turn to other powers who had a turbulent relationship with the West.
Unity within his country was also wavering. Raab notes that by the 1970s, the Palestine resistance movement in Jordan comprised about 20,000 full-time commandos and another 20,000 in popular militias. The fedayeen groups in Jordan continued to retaliate against Israel. In response, Israeli forces also attacked Jordanian land.
Raab observes that the fedayeen had “set up roadblocks around the country not only to protect themselves from the government but to shake down civilians”. Divisions between the Jordanian army and Fedayeen were prominently visible. A report in The New York Times says, “Palestinian guerrillas began interfering with highway traffic, controlling refugee camps and clashing with the Jordanian Army and systematically defying the Jordan government”. On June 9 1970, Fedayeen groups attacked the Jordanian Intelligence headquarters in Amman. This posed a danger to King Hussein’s sovereignty, who was also forced into the 1967 War due to the defence pact with Egypt.
Ashton notes that the King tried to maintain a balance between both the factions and even established secret personal alliances with the PFLP leadership and the Fatah. However, these alliances failed miserably and did not avert any guerrilla activities in Jordan as intended.
By July 1970, the situation in Jordan had deteriorated. King Hussein enforced 12 rules that the fedayeen had to abide by. Huge demonstrations followed. The King received letters of caution from both the United Kingdom and the United States about a possible strike from the fedayeen groups. The King remarked, “I am completely at bay, surrounded by enemies. On the West Bank I have Israelis; to the north, I have Syrians; in my own country I have Iraqi troops who are not loyal to me”.
A Complicated Trident
An article by Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, on the 50th anniversary of Black September, states that about 20,000 Iraqi troops and 200 tanks were present in Jordan in 1970. Syrian tanks bearing PLO insignia were also entering Jordan.
Since both Iraq and Syria supported the Palestinian cause, the growing military support for the PLO threatened King Hussein.
In order to make a more clear assessment of the situation at Irbid, which Arafat declared liberated, King Hussein sent the Pakistani commander Zia-ul-Haq. Upon inspection, Zia-ul-Haq reported, “Jordan can handle the Syrian tanks with its own forces and prevail”.
“The small Royal Jordanian Air Force was completely destroyed in the 1967 war”, and to “rebuild, train and prepare” the military, Jordan asked for assistance from experts in Pakistan, writes Riedel.
Zia-ul-Haq was part of this team. The alliance was also not out of the ordinary as Pakistan was one of the two countries that formally recognised the annexation of the West Bank to Jordan even though it was annexed to Israel at that time.
The Jordanian attack and limited resources left Syria and Iraq with no other option but to retreat from the war. With the PLO now left with limited military equipment, Jordan gained the upper hand by September 22. Quandt writes that “the lack of both heavy armour and air power contributed to the defeat of the fedayeen at the hands of the Jordanian army”. Zia-ul-Haq’s role in Black September is blurry. Some reports claim that he helped train the Jordanian army, and many even called him the “butcher” of Palestinians.
Tayyab Siddiqui, chargé d’affaires of the Pakistani embassy in Jordan in a 2010 article wrote that although Zia-ul-Haq played a crucial role in Jordan’s supposed victory, he himself did not engage in combat.
Quoting Zia, Siddiqui said, “I received a call from Brig Zia informing me that the king has asked him to take over the command of the 3rd Armoured Division stationed in Irbid”. “This was the sum total of Pakistan’s involvement or Zia’s role in the alleged massacre of the Palestinians”, Siddiqui said. On September 26, Egyptian President Nasser insisted on a ceasefire between King Hussein and Arafat. It was signed the next day, halting almost 10 days of violence and bloodshed.
