ABSTRACT
Syria’s policy towards the PLO, especially with regard to Fatah, the organisation’s mainstay since 1968, has fluctuated with bewildering intensity from support and collaboration to suppression and persecution. Having virtually baptised al-Fatah as a guerrilla organisation in 1964, thereafter championing its cause, training its personnel and providing its equipment, the Syrians proceeded to turn against it within less than half a decade. Not long after having arrested the entire Fatah leadership, Syria again changed course, embraced the PLO and even went as far as invading Jordan with a view to rescuing Fatah from the fury of Hussein’s troops. Fully supportive of the PLO/Fatah for the next half-decade, Syria once again turned against it in the course of the 1975–6 civil war in Lebanon. Less than two years later, a Syrian-PLO rapprochement took place, co-operation between the two entities developed and lasted until the autumn of 1982. Following the PLO’s massive defeat at the hands of the Israelis, Syria turned against it yet again, instigated a violent rebellion within its ranks and then proceeded to conduct a war of nerves against the Palestinian organisation.
