Whip by David E. Bonior

Author:David E. Bonior [Bonior, David E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Point Press
Published: 2017-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

FOUR FLOORS UNDERGROUND: THE WHEREABOUTS OF YASIR ARAFAT

I believe that one aim of Israel’s drive deep into Beirut in 1982 was to find and either capture or kill Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Some time after my walk through the rubble, our delegation was informed that a meeting with Arafat could be arranged.* With the exception of Elliot Levitas, we all agreed to meet the Palestinian leader. The meeting, however, was to take place at an undisclosed location and in the wee hours of the morning. After a late dinner near the Green Line—the line of demarcation that separated Muslim West Beirut from mostly Christian East Beirut—we met with other Lebanese leaders before the five of us were shown into five separate cars to travel to our meeting with Arafat. We drove around for perhaps twenty minutes before we stopped and were ushered into different cars. The time was approaching midnight. After another twenty-minute ride through what I assumed was West Beirut, we stopped, were ushered into a building, and were taken by elevator into a bunker about four floors below ground level.

I assumed that these elaborate precautions were taken to avoid discovery of Arafat’s whereabouts by his enemies. People have always said that Arafat had nine lives; now I knew how he continued to survive when so many people wanted him dead, although in the back of my mind I kept thinking that Israeli intelligence must have known his hiding place.

Riding in the cars, I was nervous. Would I be kidnapped? Held hostage? We had put our complete trust in the Palestinian officials. My guess was that they saw us as sympathetic to their plight and hoped we would help get their message out to the Western press. Arafat and his fighters were trapped as the Israelis and Phalange laid siege to his location. At the same time, much of the international community and a good number of Israelis thought that the invasion had gone too far, well beyond the original purpose of protecting northern Israeli communities from attacks by Palestinians in southern Lebanon. Thousands had died. More would lose their lives in the weeks ahead.

After my dinner with the Gemayels and what I had witnessed in the city earlier that day, I was interested in hearing what Arafat had to say.

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