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00:00THE END
00:38THE END
01:09THE END
01:10In the years since 1945, the Middle East has witnessed more conflict and turbulence than any other region in the
01:16world.
01:21Middle East tension has been caused by both internal conflict, especially between Arab and Jew, and also through its geographic
01:28position, standing as it does at the crossroads between Europe, Africa and Asia.
01:42The discovery of oil in the Middle East in the first decade of the century and the world's increasing reliance
01:47on it also added to the global importance of the region.
01:53The Great War of 1914-18 finally saw Turkey's traditional hold on the region relinquished.
02:00The Arabs had played their part in this, and some territories gained their independence after the war.
02:14Others were designated mandates, with Britain responsible for Palestine, Transjordan and Mesopotamia,
02:24and France for Lebanon and Syria.
02:28Egypt had been under British control since 1882, primarily because of the Suez Canal, in which Britain and France were
02:36major shareholders.
02:37In 1922, Egypt gained independence on the proviso that the British would continue to station military forces in the country,
02:44both to guard it against external aggression and to secure the Suez Canal.
02:50This was not to the liking of Egyptian nationalists, and continued unrest led to a new treaty being signed with
02:56young Egyptian King Farouk in 1936.
02:59But the clamour for total independence would continue.
03:04Palestine was an even more difficult problem.
03:07It was the traditional Jewish homeland, but over the centuries the Arabs had taken over.
03:12By 1900, a Zionist movement, bent on reclaiming Israel, had been formed in Europe.
03:18Then, in 1917, the British issued the so-called Balfour Declaration, which indicated support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
03:28After the Great War, there was a large influx of Jews to Palestine.
03:32But while they were bent on taking over the country, the British expected them to coexist in peace with the
03:37Arab population.
03:38The Arabs, though, increasingly resented the Jewish presence, especially since they purchased more and more land.
03:48When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, and began to persecute the Jews there, immigration to Palestine rose
03:55sharply.
04:02Arab anger boiled over into a full-scale revolt in 1936.
04:08Large British forces had to be sent to the country, and it took them three years to restore peace.
04:26By now, the Second World War had broken out, and the Middle East became of vital strategic importance.
04:34A number of campaigns were fought, including the long tussle in the Egyptian and Libyan desert between the British and
04:41the Axis forces.
04:49Palestinians fought on the British side, and some, like these men landing in France in early 1940, were in mixed
04:55Arab-Jewish units.
04:57Egypt, although the main British base, did not participate in the fighting.
05:05But Jewish hardliners in Palestine were still bent on creating an all-Jewish state, and formed two terrorist groups.
05:12The Stern Gang, named after its leader, Avraham Stern, committed a number of atrocities, including the 1944 assassination of Lord
05:20Moyne, the British minister resident in Cairo.
05:23The other was Irgun, led by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
05:29This was less extreme, and contented itself with attacks on symbols of British rule, such as police stations.
05:37At the end of the war in 1945, Lebanon and Syria were finally given their independence by France.
05:44Transjordan gained hers, with Mesopotamia, having done so as Iraq in 1922, although British forces did not leave here until
05:521945.
05:54But large British garrisons remained in Palestine and Egypt, as well as other forces in Cyprus, Sudan, and Aden.
06:04The Palestine problem was to prove intractable.
06:07The Jewish Stern Gang and Irgun groupings were now joined by the moderate Haganah, formed pre-war to protect settlements
06:15from Arab attack.
06:17In October 1945, they launched attacks against police and communications, and the British army had to be called in to
06:23control the situation.
06:31Zionist anger was further inflamed when the British announced that they were rescinding a pre-war proposal to create Jewish
06:37and Arab states out of Palestine,
06:39and restricted Jewish immigration to 1,500 people per month.
06:48Israel was the first time to fight against the Jewish Jewish people.
06:49Many of the survivors of Hitler's Holocaust against the Jews had set their hearts on starting a new life in
06:55Palestine.
06:56On American advice, the British therefore agreed to let in 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe.
07:02This increased Arab resentment, and did not halt Jewish terrorism.
07:13One of the worst attacks by Jewish terrorists came in July 1946, when the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which
07:21was being used by the British administration, was blown up.
07:25Ninety-one lives were lost.
07:32The British, exhausted by six years fighting against the Axis powers, became desperate, and called upon the United Nations to
07:39help solve the problem.
07:45A UN special committee was sent to Palestine in June 1947.
07:49It also visited neighbouring Arab states and camps for homeless Jews in Europe.
07:55But the Palestinian Arabs refused to meet it.
08:05In the meantime, the violence continued.
08:16At the same time, the British were trying to prevent ships from Europe landing Jews in excess of the quota
08:21in Palestine.
08:29In July 1947, the Royal Navy intercepted the Exodus, with 4,000 illegal immigrants on board.
08:36It was sent back to the south of France, and then to Germany, where the passengers were forcibly removed.
08:43Britain was widely condemned.
08:44But de-restricting Jewish immigration would merely further antagonise the Arabs.
08:52That November, the UN decided that Palestine should be split into three states.
08:57Jewish in blue, Arab in orange.
09:00With Jerusalem given international status under UN administration.
09:05The British mandate was to end in May 1948.
09:09The UN solution pleased no one.
09:11The Jews resented not being allowed immediate independence, while the Arabs were angry at losing half Palestine.
09:18The British too resented being caught in the middle, as Arab and Jew increasingly turned on each other.
09:31Indeed, by spring 1948, the British had given up trying to control matters, and had withdrawn to enclaves in Jerusalem
09:39and the ports of Haifa and Jaffa.
09:46In March 1945, Egypt, together with Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, had formed the Arab League.
09:57This became increasingly drawn into the conflict.
10:00The Jews declared the independent state of Israel immediately.
10:03The British mandate ended in May 1948.
10:12The Arab League sent 30,000 troops into Palestine, and bitter fighting broke out.
10:32The UN quickly stepped in, and managed to negotiate a month's truce, long enough for the British evacuation to be
10:39completed.
10:40Hostilities then resumed, with the Israelis mounting limited attacks on all fronts, in order to keep the Arabs off balance.
10:50The UN intervened once more, but their envoy, Count Bernadotte, was murdered.
10:56Probably by Jewish extremists, when he tried to negotiate a readjustment of borders.
11:07Fighting broke out again, when the Israelis, who were receiving arms from abroad, attempted to break through Arab lines to
11:14relieve their beleaguered forces in southern Palestine's Negev desert.
11:18They then managed to trap an Egyptian army in the coastal Gaza area.
11:25This was sufficient for the Egyptians to negotiate for peace, and an armistice was signed on the Greek island of
11:31Rhodes in February 1949.
11:34The Arab League states followed suit.
11:38This resulted in an enlarged Israel, but with Jordan being given sizeable territory west of the river Jordan.
11:45And Egypt, the Gaza Strip, in compensation.
11:48And Egypt, the Gaza Strip, in opposition.
11:48But this did not prevent continued border skirmishes and acts of sabotage.
11:56A British military presence remained in Egypt's canal zone, to the growing fury of the nationalists.
12:03This was fuelled by Egyptian reverses in the war with Israel.
12:18Weak Egyptian governments had also failed to improve conditions in the country.
12:23The fact that Egypt's King Farouk was regarded as an international playboy did not help.
12:29Matters came to a head in July 1952, when a group of army officers, led by General Mohammed Naguib, staged
12:37a coup.
12:38Farouk was forced to abdicate and went into exile.
12:41And the country was now ruled by the Revolution Command Council.
12:50In early 1953, negotiations were opened with the British.
12:54The result was that Sudan was to gain independence in 1956.
12:58More important to the Egyptians, the British now began to evacuate their troops from the canal zone.
13:04But the Suez Canal would remain an international waterway.
13:10Two events now hardened Egypt's attitude to the west.
13:16In 1951, there was a nationalist coup in oil-rich Iran.
13:24Led by Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, it deposed the west-leaning Shah of Iran,
13:29and confiscated all foreign oil assets, which were mainly held by Britain and the United States.
13:43Consequently, in 1953, the Americans engineered a counter-coup, which brought the Shah back into power.
13:53The second event occurred in 1955, when Britain, keen to maintain her influence in the region, formed the Baghdad Pact
14:01with Iraq, Turkey and Pakistan.
14:05Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was soon to depose Naguib and make himself president, saw this as an
14:12attempt to isolate Egypt and moved ever closer to the communist bloc.
14:18Matters came to a head over a prestige engineering project in Egypt, the Aswan Dam.
14:24The western powers had originally agreed to put up money, but withdrew their offer in July 1956, convinced that Egypt
14:32was about to join the communist bloc.
14:35The Soviet Union and its allies, who had already begun to supply arms to Egypt, quickly took advantage of this
14:42and stepped in to help with the project.
14:44The Russians were only too delighted to strengthen their influence in the Middle East at the expense of the West.
14:52At the same time, Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal.
15:01The British and French feared that the Egyptians might bar the West from using this vital waterway.
15:07Accordingly, they decided to reclaim it by force, if need be.
15:12But Israel was experiencing continued tension on her borders.
15:16Egypt, Syria and Jordan had also formed a military pact.
15:20The French, though, now told the Israelis of their plan with the British to regain the Suez Canal by force.
15:30On the 29th of October 1956, the Israelis suddenly invaded Egyptian Sinai in order to pre-empt a feared Arab
15:37attack.
15:37Their multi-pronged thrust totally surprised the Egyptians.
15:44Within a few days, the Israelis were approaching the Suez Canal.
15:53As they did so, thousands of Egyptian soldiers fell into their hands.
16:03The British and French informed the United Nations that if fighting took place around the canal, they would be forced
16:09to intervene.
16:11They blocked a resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal.
16:15On the 31st of October, British and French aircraft began to bomb Egyptian air bases.
16:23An amphibious task force closed to the Egyptian coast.
16:28On the 5th of November, as the Israeli forces approached the Suez Canal,
16:32Anglo-French troops carried out airborne landings around Port Said at its northern end.
16:41These were followed up by amphibious landings the next day.
16:54Egyptian resistance was light, and the French and British soon secured their initial objectives.
17:02But throughout this time, the UN had been demanding an immediate ceasefire, which came into effect that evening, largely thanks
17:09to American pressure.
17:15During the next four months, the British, French and Israeli forces withdrew, and were replaced by the blue helmets of
17:22the United Nations.
17:28Nasser now guaranteed rights of passage for all ships through the Suez Canal, which now had to be cleared of
17:34ships sunk to block it.
17:44But Nasser had gained worldwide sympathy, and was now seen as the champion of the Arab world.
17:49Still determined to destroy Israel, he set about strengthening the Arab League.
17:55In 1958, Egypt and Syria joined to become the United Arab Republic.
18:04In the same year, a coup in Iraq resulted in the death of pro-West King Faisal, seen here with
18:09King Hussein of Jordan,
18:10and took Iraq out of the Baghdad Pact.
18:16Lebanon became embroiled in a civil war, and appealed for help under the terms of the Baghdad Pact.
18:27A force of US Marines was landed, and remained long enough to see a stronger, moderate government installed.
18:47Jordan, too, suffered from instability.
18:50And at the request of King Hussein, British paratroops flew into the country,
18:54leaving at much the same time as the US Marines did from Lebanon.
19:001961 saw oil-rich Kuwait threatened, not for the last time, by her large northern neighbour Iraq.
19:07British troops were sent in to protect her, staying for three months before being relieved by Arab League forces.
19:15Nasser now turned to South Arabia, where British influence was based on the port of Aden.
19:21He began to foment unrest among the people here, and in 1961 encouraged a coup in Yemen to the north.
19:27This brought pro-Nasser Abdullah Salal to power, but many Yemenis objected.
19:33Egyptian troops were sent to support Salal.
19:42Saudi Arabia supported the opposition in what became a six-year civil war.
19:55Saudi Arabia supported the opposition in what became a six-year civil war.
20:02Nasser and Salal also encouraged rebels to operate against the British in Aden.
20:08Initially, they operated from the mountainous Radfal, north of the port,
20:12but were driven out during a brief campaign in 1964.
20:20In Aden itself, growing unrest was not dampened by a British government declaration
20:25that South Arabia would achieve full independence by 1968.
20:41British troops were kept at full stretch, combating what became a vicious terrorist campaign.
21:07This only ended when the British finally withdrew in 1967.
21:16By 1967, though, tension had mounted once more on Israel's borders.
21:22The UN peacekeepers had managed to keep Israel's border with Egyptian Sinai relatively quiet.
21:27But on the Syrian and Jordanian borders, violence was on the increase,
21:32fuelled by Palestinian Arabs living close to them.
21:42This was especially after the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO,
21:47as a result of an Arab summit conference held in Cairo in 1964.
21:52There was further aggravation when Jordan and Syria began to divert the River Jordan,
21:57which provided two-thirds of Israel's water.
22:03Israeli troops tried to interrupt this, and tension mounted still further.
22:15In 1966, there had been a renewed alliance between Egypt and Syria,
22:20after a coup in the latter brought extremist army officers to power.
22:26King Hussein of Jordan was also pressured into joining this alliance in May 1967.
22:38The tension in the region now rose rapidly,
22:41with numerous border clashes between Israeli and Syrian troops.
22:55Believing that Israel was preparing to attack Syria,
22:58the Egyptians began to mass forces in Sinai,
23:00ordering the UN observers to leave, which they were forced to do.
23:11Then, on the 22nd of May, Nasser closed the Straits of Tehran,
23:16which lie at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, to Israeli shipping.
23:19It was the final straw for Israel.
23:24In the early morning of the 5th of June 1967,
23:27Israeli aircraft carried out a massive strike on Egyptian airfields.
23:32Simultaneously, ground forces attacked into Sinai on a broad front.
23:53The bulk of the Egyptian air force was destroyed on the ground.
24:01Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi aircraft retaliated by attacking Israeli targets.
24:06Several of their aircraft were shot down and their airfields bombed.
24:10All this gave the Israelis overwhelming air supremacy by the end of the first day.
24:17It took fierce fighting to break through the Egyptian defences in Sinai.
24:26Once the Israelis had done so, their thrusts rapidly gained momentum,
24:30with these British-built Centurion tanks providing the main armoured punch.
24:35It took merely 24 hours to secure the whole of Sinai,
24:38with vast numbers of Egyptian troops being captured.
24:52The Israelis now secured the Gulf of Aqaba and the east bank of the Suez Canal.
25:07On the Jordan front, there was a fierce battle for Jerusalem.
25:16The Arab half of the city eventually fell to the Israelis after three days fighting.
25:31The Israelis went on to occupy all Jordanian territory west of the Jordan.
25:44The Israelis now attacked Syria and quickly seized the Golan Heights,
25:48which had for so long dominated the extreme north of Israel.
25:53Unlike in 1956, a UN-imposed ceasefire did not bring about Israeli withdrawals from the territory they had overrun.
26:03Their spectacular military triumph would not, however, bring peace to the region.
26:09Only more anguish and bloodshed.
26:15The 1967 war had given Israel more defendable borders,
26:19with the Golan Heights in the north, the River Jordan in the east,
26:23and the Suez Canal in the west.
26:31These conquests trebled the amount of territory now governed by Israel.
26:40But she was now responsible for one and a half million disgruntled Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip in Sinai,
26:47and on the west bank of the River Jordan.
26:55There were two Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon,
27:00which were also fertile recruiting grounds for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
27:09The PLO was also unhappy about UN Resolution 242,
27:13which demanded an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories,
27:17but did not address the Palestinian question.
27:22In 1968, the PLO embarked on a new form of terrorism,
27:27the hijacking of airliners owned by or flying to Israel.
27:32Typical was this Greek Olympic aircraft seized at Athens Airport,
27:35in 1970.
27:36The climax came in September 1970,
27:39when the PLO hijacked no less than four airliners,
27:43three of which were forced to land in Jordan and then destroyed.
27:58This was the last straw for King Hussein, who had become so fed up with the PLO activities in Jordan
28:04that he now sent his army against them.
28:06Syrian forces moved in to support the PLO and wide-scale war threatened.
28:12President Nasser of Egypt, now a sick man, managed to arrange a ceasefire.
28:17The Syrians withdrew and the PLO set up its headquarters in Lebanon.
28:27Achieving this ceasefire cost Nasser his last reserves of strength, and he died, much mourned, in September 1970.
28:43His successor was Anwar el-Sadat, another of the group which had deposed King Farouk in 1952.
28:50He wanted a lasting peace in the region, but not at the expense of Arab territory or the Palestinian cause.
28:57But both Israel and the Arab states continued to receive weaponry from abroad.
29:02Yet the Russians, fearful of direct confrontation with Israel's main arms supplier, America, would not supply all that Egypt wanted.
29:11Consequently, but also because US President Richard Nixon was showing more sympathy towards Egypt, Sadat expelled his Russian advisers in
29:19July 1972.
29:24But that May, Lod Airport in Israel witnessed the terrorist gunning down of nearly 100 civilians, with 26 killed.
29:32The perpetrators were Japanese terrorists, and indicated that the PLO had forged links with international terrorist groups.
29:40At that year's Olympic Games held in Munich, West Germany, a breakaway PLO group murdered 12 members of the Israeli
29:47team.
29:52Sadat was meanwhile working hard among the Arab League to prepare for another war with Israel.
29:57Sadat was also convinced that this was the only way to get the Israelis to talk peace on his terms.
30:04On the 6th of October 1973, Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, one of the holiest days in the
30:11Jewish calendar,
30:13the Egyptians launched a surprise attack across the Suez Canal.
30:16They quickly penetrated the Israeli defences, advanced some way into Sinai, and halted.
30:29Israeli aircraft were kept at bay by surface-to-air missiles, SAMs.
30:44At the same time, the Syrians also attacked the Golan Heights,
30:47and the Israelis had to fight desperately to prevent the northern half of their country from being overrun.
31:03The first Israeli counterattack in Sinai was disastrous,
31:06with many tanks falling victim to Soviet-made anti-tank guided missiles.
31:13On the Golan Front, fierce Israeli counterattacks eventually halted,
31:17and then drove back the Syrians through the heights.
31:21Thereafter, the Israeli counteroffensive slowed,
31:24as a result of Iraqi and Jordanian attacks against its southern flank.
31:31In Sinai, the climax came on the 14th of October,
31:35when some 2,000 tanks became locked in what was the largest armoured battle since that at Kursk, in July
31:411943.
31:53Eventually, it was the Egyptians who withdrew,
31:56and the Israelis launched a daring counteroffensive,
31:59whose momentum increased rapidly.
32:09The Israelis crossed the Suez Canal and rapidly expanded their bridgehead,
32:13almost severing the supply lines of the Egyptian forces still in Sinai.
32:22The losses in weaponry by both sides were enormous,
32:25and it had been by far the bloodiest of the Arab-Israeli wars.
32:33Such was its intensity that both Moscow and Washington agreed to work together to achieve a ceasefire.
32:46This was quickly attained on the northern front,
32:48but the Israelis proved unwilling to give up their gains on the west bank of the Suez Canal.
32:53Only American pressure made them withdraw across to the east bank in January 1974.
33:02In the midst of this, the organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, OAPEC,
33:08raised oil prices by 70%,
33:10and stopped supplies to countries actively supporting Israel,
33:14especially the United States.
33:16Worldwide oil prices rocketed,
33:19and in many countries petrol rationing was introduced.
33:22Although the embargo against America was lifted in March 1974, OAPEC had shown just how vitally important the Middle East
33:30was.
33:32Meanwhile, UN troops once more found themselves keeping the two sides apart.
33:41The UN, in spite of Israeli and American opposition, gave the PLO observer status.
33:48Its leader, Yasser Arafat, addressed the UN Assembly.
33:52But PLO atrocities continued.
33:54In May 1974, they took pupils hostage in a school at Marlot in northern Israel.
34:01Twenty-two of them lost their lives when Israeli commandos stormed the school to rescue them.
34:10In June 1976, two German terrorists combined with two Palestinians to hijack a French airliner with 250 passengers on board,
34:20including 96 Israelis.
34:22They forced the aircraft to fly to Entebbe in Uganda.
34:32When negotiations broke down, Israeli special forces were flown in.
34:37They killed all the terrorists, now numbering 13, with ones who had joined at Entebbe,
34:43and 35 Ugandan soldiers that rescued all the passengers.
34:48But in spite of these highly publicised terrorist actions, progress was being made on the peace front.
34:55This was largely thanks to the shuttle diplomacy of American Special Envoy Henry Kissinger,
35:00seen here with President Sadat, and Russian support for a lasting settlement.
35:06President Sadat was prepared to not only listen, but to take active steps towards peace,
35:12even if his Arab allies were not.
35:17In November 1977, he took the unprecedented step of visiting Israel
35:22Israel in order to persuade the Israelis to recognise the PLO.
35:26But continued PLO attacks across the border with Lebanon made Israel intransigent.
35:34The UN therefore intervened, and created a buffer zone on the border.
35:42Even so, matters seemed deadlocked, until in August 1978,
35:47President Jimmy Carter invited both Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
35:52to stay with him at his summer retreat at Camp David.
35:55After intensive discussion, a draft agreement was signed, which was formalised in March 1979.
36:02Through it, the Israelis agreed to a three-stage withdrawal from Sinai, excluding the Gaza Strip,
36:09while Sadat opened the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.
36:14The Camp David agreement was historic, and the first positive move towards an end to Middle East friction.
36:24But in the meantime, new forces had risen to the surface.
36:30It was the Shah of Iran who provided the impetus for these.
36:34He was determined to make his country the dominant state in the Middle East,
36:38and used his vast oil reserves to purchase large quantities of sophisticated Western weapons.
36:45His first foreign foray was to send troops to help the British-backed Sultan of Oman
36:50prevent Marxist elements in neighbouring Dofar from overthrowing him.
36:55The war lasted until 1975, and resulted in victory for the Sultan,
37:00thanks largely to British help.
37:04But throughout the 1970s, discontent was growing in Iran,
37:07because of the Shah's opulent lifestyle when most of his people were near starvation,
37:12and the repressiveness of his rule.
37:20It was the Ayatollah Rubola Khomeini,
37:22leader of the fundamentalist Shiite Muslims,
37:25and who was in exile in Iraq,
37:27who masterminded opposition to the Shah.
37:30But in 1978, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein expelled Khomeini at the Shah's request.
37:38By this time, resentment was growing in Iran
37:40against what seemed to be the ever-increasing Western influence on the country.
37:49Operating from his new base in Paris,
37:52the Ayatollah fanned the flames of revolt.
37:54Iran soon became ungovernable,
37:56and in February 1979, the Shah fled the country,
38:00enabling Khomeini to return in triumph after 16 years in exile.
38:05The fanatical anti-Western stance of the new fundamentalist regime in Iran
38:10caused the United States to freeze Iranian assets in America.
38:18The Iranians retaliated by storming the US Embassy in Tehran,
38:22and taking 52 of the staff hostage.
38:25They were only prepared to release them if the Shah was returned to face trial.
38:36After negotiations failed, American Special Forces tried a daring rescue operation,
38:42but this proved an embarrassing failure,
38:44with helicopters flown from an aircraft carrier crashing in the Iranian desert.
38:49Not until January 1981 were the hostages released,
38:52only after Iranian assets had been unfrozen.
38:57Islamic fundamentalism soon began to be felt elsewhere in the Middle East,
39:01especially in Lebanon.
39:03Here there had been civil war raging since April 1975,
39:07when the Christian leader Pierre Jamail was killed in Beirut,
39:11and his followers retaliated by massacring 22 Palestinians on a bus.
39:17A peace was brokered in 1976,
39:20after Syrian forces had moved in and occupied much of northern Lebanon.
39:24But the large number of armed militias, both Christian and Muslim,
39:28now in the country, meant that it was at best fragile.
39:33Indeed, in 1978, the Christian militias turned against the Syrians,
39:37and by the end of the year the Lebanese capital had been split into two,
39:41Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut.
39:47Simultaneously, PLO terrorist activity against Israel continued.
39:55This was in spite of the efforts of UN forces on the border with Lebanon to keep the peace.
40:04Israeli aircraft carried out a number of attacks on PLO camps,
40:08and occasionally clashed with Syrian aircraft.
40:19In mid-1982, there was a renewed terrorist campaign against Israeli targets in Europe.
40:24The murder of the Israeli ambassador to London on the 3rd of June was the last straw.
40:31Three days later, the Israelis launched a three-pronged invasion into southern Lebanon,
40:35designed to crush the PLO for good.
40:39The main threat came from Syrian surface-to-air missile, or SAM sites, in the Bekaa Valley.
40:44The Israeli Air Force quickly destroyed many of these,
40:47and 80 Syrian aircraft, before attacking the PLO camps.
41:05The Israeli Merkava tank also proved to be far superior to the Syrian Russian-built T-72s.
41:16In six days, the Israelis had overrun southern Lebanon,
41:19but were unable to make much headway when they tried to subdue West Beirut.
41:24Civilian casualties mounted, and some Israelis began to question the continued fighting.
41:33Not until August 1982 was a ceasefire agreed.
41:37A special multinational force of French, US, and Italian troops arrived to oversee a PLO and Syrian withdrawal from West
41:45Beirut.
41:49The PLO fighters themselves were evacuated to other countries in the Middle East.
42:02This was successfully completed in early September, and the multinational force withdrew.
42:09But the Israeli success did not bring peace to Lebanon.
42:12The president-elect of the country was killed by a car bomb on the 14th of September.
42:22The Israelis moved into West Beirut again, determined to disarm all the Muslims.
42:26Christian militias used the opportunity to settle some old scores.
42:35The result was a massacre of some 800 old men, women, and children in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.
42:48This triggered renewed fighting in Beirut between the Christian and Muslim militias.
43:01In desperation, the new president of Lebanon requested the return of the multinational force.
43:09US, French, and Italian troops duly arrived by the beginning of October, and, joined later by a small British contingent,
43:17began to patrol the so-called Green Line dividing east from West Beirut.
43:24During 1983, efforts to broker Syrian and Israeli withdrawals failed.
43:29Worse, US and French forces found themselves embroiled in the fighting in and around Beirut.
43:35This was even to the extent of using the massive World War II battleship, New Jersey,
43:40to shell Muslim positions in the hills above the capital.
43:45But on the 23rd of October, 1983,
43:48two trucks loaded with explosives detonated in French and American bases,
43:53killing nearly 300 soldiers.
43:55The multinational force's role was clearly untenable.
43:58And by early 1984, it had withdrawn.
44:04Meanwhile, Beirut, which ten years before had been regarded as the Paris of the Middle East,
44:09was rapidly being reduced to mere ruins.
44:13But Israel, too, was beginning to tire of the problem,
44:16which was draining both manpower and the economy.
44:19More and more Israelis were opposing the occupation of Lebanon.
44:22And during 1985, Israeli forces gradually withdrew.
44:27But the Syrians remained.
44:37That same year, the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah group came to the fore in Beirut,
44:42making its presence felt by kidnapping a number of Westerners for use as bargaining counters.
44:51The fighting among the various militias continued unabated.
45:11Finally, in early 1987, Syrian forces moved into Beirut in an attempt to restore order.
45:21This melee inflamed the Christian militias, but there was also a power struggle among the Muslim militias.
45:29Maverick General Michel Aoun, former Lebanese army commander,
45:34became the main obstacle to peace,
45:36but was forced to seek refuge in the French embassy in October 1990.
45:40Now, under President Elias Harawi, seen here with Syrian President Assad,
45:45peace slowly began to return to Lebanon.
45:52In Egypt, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood
45:55had never forgiven President Sadat for signing the Camp David Agreement.
46:00It took its revenge at a military parade held in October 1981.
46:12Soldiers leapt from trucks, charged the saluting base, and gunned Sadat and others down.
46:39This, however, did not deter Egypt from moving ever closer to the United States,
46:44and a number of joint manoeuvres were held.
46:53In contrast, American relations with Egypt's neighbour Libya worsened during the 1980s.
47:00The Libyan leader, Muhammad Gaddafi, had long been regarded as the maverick of the Middle East.
47:06The West also believed that he was encouraging international terrorism.
47:11In April 1986, terrorists bombed a disco frequented by American soldiers in West Berlin.
47:22US aircraft, some taking off from Britain, retaliated by attacking targets in Benghazi and Tripoli.
47:39But throughout the 1980s, the Middle East lived in the shadow of a bitter war between Iran and Iraq.
47:50The Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, seen on the left in army uniform, had ambitions to dominate the Middle East.
47:57He was also irritated by the fact that Iran had been supporting Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
48:05The Iranians also controlled the vital Shat-el-Arab waterway at the mouth of the Euphrates,
48:11and through which all Iraqi oil tankers had to pass.
48:15Ayatollah Khomeini also had no love for Saddam after his expulsion from Iraq in 1978.
48:22Believing Iran to now be militarily weak as a result of the turmoil of revolution,
48:28Iraqi forces crossed the borders at several points on the 22nd of September, 1980.
48:33But hopes that a quick Iraqi victory would be gained were soon shattered.
48:37The invasion galvanised the Iranian people as never before,
48:41and what they lacked in modern weapons was made up by sheer massive numbers and fanatical belief in their cause.
48:52Thus, although the Iraqis managed to capture Khurram Shah on the east bank of the Shat-el-Arab,
48:58they were soon halted,
48:59and a war of attrition similar to that on the Western Front during 1914-18 developed.
49:12It was characterised by massive bombardments and Iranian human wave attacks
49:17by virtually untrained young revolutionary guards.
49:25During 1982, Iranian attacks forced the Iraqis virtually back to their borders,
49:30before stalemate returned.
49:33Yet throughout, the Western powers and Eastern Bloc were careful to keep at arm's length from the conflict.
49:39Neither wanted the delicate balance of power in the Middle East upset.
49:47This was even though they sent warships to protect tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf.
49:53In May 1987, the Iraqis damaged the American frigate Stark with an Exocet missile.
49:59They later apologised for this act.
50:02But the Americans too were guilty of a mistake,
50:04when in July 1988, the cruiser Vincennes,
50:07with her highly sophisticated target acquisition equipment,
50:11shot down an Iranian airliner.
50:15There were no survivors.
50:19The Iraqis used chemical weapons against the Iranian forces.
50:26They also launched rocket attacks on Iranian cities
50:29in an effort to break the deadlock, but in vain.
50:37Both sides became increasingly exhausted.
50:45Eventually, in August 1988,
50:48the two countries accepted a UN-sponsored ceasefire,
50:51and prisoners of war were exchanged.
51:00There were further encouraging signs when fundamentalist groups in Lebanon began to release their Western hostages.
51:07Some had been in captivity for up to five years.
51:15It seemed that the arrival of the 1990s was finally bringing peace to the Middle East.
51:23The End
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51:47The End