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The period between May and October 1969 witnessed violent clashes between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian militias in various parts of the country, particularly in the areas adjacent to Israel and Syria, where the Palestinian commando movement had been establishing its bases. The fact that the Lebanese State had ceased to exercise its rightful sovereignty over these sensitive areas, because of the forceful presence of the Palestinian commandos there, was as intolerable to the Lebanese Army as it was to Christian Lebanese opinion and to at least a sector of Muslim Lebanese opinion. As the clashes between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian militias continued, the radical Arab regimes rose to the support of the Palestinian commando cause, and openly condemned the efforts of the Lebanese Army to liquidate the Palestinian commando movement in Lebanon. Even conservative Arab regimes, under pressure from the PLO, began, one after another, to pronounce themselves in favour of the continued existence of the commando movement in Lebanon under a minimum of controls. They argued that the Palestinian armed struggle was the natural right of the Palestinian people, and that it was not necessarily incompatible with the sovereignty of those Arab States that happened to be its hosts. In the end, the regime of Sharil Hulw (Charles Helou) was forced to agree and a Lebanese Army delegation, headed by General Imil Bustani, proceeded to Cairo, where it met with a PLO delegation headed by Yasir Arafat, in the presence of the Egyptian Ministers of War and of Foreign Affairs, representing President Jamal Abdannasir. The outcome of the meeting was the so-called Cairo Agreement, which was signed on 3 November 1969 by Imil Bustani and Yasir Arafat.
Keywords: Palestinian resistance movement in Lebanon - Israeli armed reprisals - problems of Lebanese sovereignty - Arab support for the Palestinians - Cairo Agreement.
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