Tacit support for terrorism: The rapprochement between the USSR and Palestinian guerrilla organizations following the 1967 war

Abstract

This article demonstrates the inconsistent and wavering Soviet attitude towards national liberation movements in general and the Palestinian organizations in particular. Until the late 1960s, the Soviets viewed these organizations with suspicion, hesitating to engage in political dialogue with them. However, in the 1970s, political and military events in the region, as well as modifications in the Kremlin's Cold War strategies, led to a general shift towards the Middle East in Soviet foreign policy. Soviet leaders showed increased willingness to provide certain Palestinian organizations with arms with which to conduct terrorist activities against Israeli, pro-Israeli, Jewish and Western targets. The article explores the complex relations between Palestinian organizations and the USSR in the field of international terror. The study also exposes and analyzes the nature and content of Soviet–Palestinian arms dialogues and transactions. It provides clear evidence that Soviet policymakers and other luminaries were fully informed of, and sometimes directly involved in, these transactions and dialogues at the highest levels.

Key words:

• USSR
• Soviet Union
• PLO
• Terrorism
• CPSU
• Guerrilla
• Cold War
• KGB
• Israel
• Zionism
• Middle East
• Fatah
• PLF
• PFLP

Notes

¹See for instance, Samuel Francis, The Soviet Strategy of Terror (Washington DC: The Heritage Foundation 1981); Claire Sterling, The Terror Network: the Secrets of International Terrorism (London: Weidenfeld c.1981); Ray S. Cline and Yonah Alexander, Terrorism: the Soviet Connection (New York: Crane & Russak 1984).

²Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization (New York: Praeger 1980); Stephen Segaller, Invisible Armies: Terrorism into the 1990s (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1987).

³See a report prepared by the Research Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry: [Jerusalem, Israel, Ginzakh Hamedina (Israel State Archives)] FM [Foreign Ministry] 2530/8/A, ‘Communism and Islam’, 30 Sept. 1951. J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East A Documentary Record: 1914–1956, Vol.II (London/ New York: Van Nostrand 1956), 27–8.

⁴George F. Kennan, Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (Boston and Toronto: Atlantic Little, Brown, 1961), 343. Mohrez M. El-Hussini, Soviet–Egyptian Relations, 1945–85 (Basingstoke/London: Macmillan 1989), xvii and 37. Rami Ginat, ‘British Concoction or Bilateral Decision? Revisiting the Genesis of Soviet-Egyptian Diplomatic Relations’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 31 (1999), 40–1. Idem, ‘Syria's and Lebanon's Meandering Road to Independence: The Soviet Factor and the Anglo-French Rivalry’, Diplomacy in Statecraft 13/4 (Dec. 2002), 97–8.

⁵This included an extended support to Kurds who were fighting their struggle for independence from Iraqi rule. For a detailed description see, Rami Ginat, The Soviet Union and Egypt, 1945–1955 (London: Frank Cass, 1993); Idem, Syria and the Doctrine of Arab Neutralism, From Independence to Dependence (Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press 2005); Aleksandr Kiselev, Sekretnaia missiia na blizhnem vostoke (Moscow: LG Information Group 2000).

⁶See, for instance, John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know, Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997); Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East from World War Two to Gorbachev (Cambridge: CU Press 1990); Muhammad H. Heikal, Milaffat al-Suways (Cairo: Markaz al-Ahram’1986); Idem, Nasser: The Cairo Documents (London: New English Library 1972); Aaron S. Klieman, Soviet Russia and the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1970); Oles Smolansky, The Soviet Union and the Arab East under Khrushchev (New Brunswick, NJ: Associated UP 1974); Aryeh Yodfat, Arab Politics in the Soviet Mirror (Jerusalem: IUP 1973). H. Hanak, Soviet Foreign Policy Since the Death of Stalin (London/ Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1972); J.M. Mackintosh, Strategy and Tactics of Soviet Foreign Policy (London: Oxford UP 1962); Adam Ulan, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1967 (New York: Praeger 1968).

⁷On Soviet policy towards the Middle East in the 1940s see, Ginat, ‘British Concoction or Bilateral Decision’, 39–60; Ginat, ‘Syria's and Lebanon's Meandering Road to Independence’, 96–122.

⁸On Soviet policy towards Palestine in the period 1946–49, see, Yaacov Ro'i, Soviet Decision Making in Practice (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books 1980); Avigdor Dagan, Moscow and Jerusalem (NY: Abelard Schuman 1970); Ginat, Soviet Union and Egypt, 77–88.

⁹‘Vystuplenie postoiannogo predstavitelia SSSR pri OON A.A. Gromyko na plenarnom zasedanii vtoroi sessii general'nom assamblem OON’, 26 noiabria 1947 g., in V.V. Naumkin (ed.), Dokumenty blizhnevostochnyi konflikt, 1947–1956gg (Moscow: Materik 2000), 8–13.

¹⁰See an interview with General Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB senior officer, in Haaretz–Friday Supplement (Tel Aviv), 11 Oct. 1996. See also [Independence, Missouri, USA, Truman Library] ORE 48–8, Box 255, President's Secretary's Files, File Subject: Central Intelligence Report –‘Probable Effects on Israel and the Arab States of a UN Arms Embargo’, 5 Aug. 1948; Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science, US Declassified Documents Reference System, US, 1975, 4F, ‘Possible Developments from the Palestine Truce’, 27 July 1948; [Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives], FO[reign Office], 371/71648, N1509/31/38, “Monthly Review of Soviet Tactics”, 6 Feb. 1948. [Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland], Box 187, File No. 800, Dispatch 204 from American Legation, Jeddah, 19 Aug. 1948, Cairo Embassy – General Records (1948).

¹¹On Israel's inter-bloc orientation, see Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel's Foreign Policy Orientation 1948–1956 (Cambridge: CUP 1990), 197–234.

¹²“Telegramma poslannika SSSR v Izraile P.I. Ershova v MID SSSR”, 26 maia 1950 g., Naumkin (ed.), Dokumenty blizhnevostochn'i konflikt, 127; Ibid., “Telegramma poslannika SSSR v Israile P.I. Ershova v MID SSSR”, 29 noibria 1951 g., s. 156–8.

¹³Ginat, Soviet Union and Egypt, 84–5, 102–3. On Soviet–Israeli relations at the time, see Laurent Rucker, ‘Moscow's Surprise: The Soviet-Israeli Alliance of 1947–1949’, in Christian F. Ostermann (ed.), Cold War International History Project (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars), <www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/CWIHP_WP_461.pdf>.

¹⁴Ibid., 94–204; Idem, Syria and the Doctrine of Arab Neutralism, 43–84, 130–70.

¹⁵Talal Nizameddin, Russia and the Middle East (London: C. Hurst 1999), 16.

¹⁶Ibid., 29–38.

¹⁷Aryeh Y. Yodfat and Yuval Arnon-Ohanna, PLO Strategy and Politics (London: Croom Helm 1981), 83–4.

¹⁸Memo by I. Bakulin and G.T. Zaitsev, 31 Aug. 1949, in Documents on Israeli–Soviet Relations, 1941–1953, Part I (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2000), 521–3. See also ‘Tezisy k vystupleniiu delegatsii SSSR na chetvertoi sessii general'noi assamblei OON po voprosu o pomoshchi palestinskim bezhentsam’, Naumkin, Dokumenty blizhnevostochn'i konflikt, 95–6.

¹⁹Jaan Pennar, The USSR and the Arabs: The Ideological Dimension (London: C. Hurst 1973), 19–20.

²⁰Yodfat and Arnon-Ohanna, PLO Strategy and Politics, 84.

²¹‘Zapis’ besedy posla SSSR v Livane D.C. Nikiforova s predsedatelem organizatsii osvobozhdeniia palestiny Akhmedom Shukeiri’, 9 avgusta 1965 g, in Naumkin, Dokumenty blizhnevostochn'i konflikt, 482–4. On the negative Soviet attitude towards the PLO see also, Yosef Govrin, Israeli–Soviet Relations, 1953–1967 (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass 1998), 83–5.

²² al-Musawwar (Cairo), 5 Jan. 1968; Ruz al-Yusuf (Cairo), 1 July 1968.

²³Rami Ginat, ‘The Soviet Union and the Syrian Ba‘th Regime: From Hesitation to Rapprochement’, Middle Eastern Studies 36/2 (2000), 150–71.

²⁴On the doctrine of ‘Popular Liberation War’, see articles in al-Thaura (Damascus), 15 Dec. 1966; Kifah al-‘Umal al-Ishtiraki (Damascus), 21 Nov. 1966; al-Ba‘th (Damascus), 26 Nov. 1966.

²⁵Yodfat and Arnon-Ohanna, PLO Strategy and Politics, 84–5.

²⁶Ginat, ‘The Soviet Union and the Syrian Ba‘th Regime’, 166.

²⁷Ibid., 162–7.

²⁸Yaacov Ro'i, From Encroachment to Involvement (Jerusalem: IUP, 1974), pp. 513–4. See also, {author}“The USSR and the Middle East”, in Daniel Dishon (ed.), Middle East Record 1968, Vol.4 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press 1973), 25–7.

²⁹Ro'i, From Encroachment to Involvement, 522.

³⁰Ibid. See also Rami Ginat, Egypt's Incomplete Revolution (London/Portland, OR : Frank Cass 1997), 60–1; Mohamed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar (London/New York: Harper & Row 1978), 211.

³¹Interviews with Lutfi al-Khuli, Cairo, 28 Sept. and 2–3 Oct. 1994 (by Rami Ginat).

³²Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books 2005), 250.

³³Yodfat and Arnon-Ohanna, PLO Strategy and Politics, 88. See also, Pennar, USSR and the Arabs, 37.

³⁴Ro'i, From Encroachment to Involvement, 536–7. On the US conduct of the Jordanian crisis, see Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Tel Aviv: Ma‘ariv Library 1981), 622–56.

³⁷As cited in Pennar, USSR and the Arabs, 43.

³⁵Radio Moscow and Tass in English, 23 Sept. 1970, as cited in Ro'i, From Encroachment to Involvement, 541.

³⁶Yodfat and Arnon-Ohanna, PLO Strategy and Politics, 89.

³⁸Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, 251.

³⁹See his statement in Pravda (Moscow), 9 Sept. 1974.

⁴⁰Ibid.

⁴¹Yodfat and Arnon-Ohanna, PLO Strategy and Politics, 96.

⁴²Ibid., 95; Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, 253.

⁴³Ibid., 100–1.

⁴⁴See the full text of the Soviet–PLO talks in Arabic and English in Raphael Israeli (ed.), PLO in Lebanon Selected Documents (London: Weidenfeld 1983), 34–73.

⁴⁵Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, 257.

⁴⁶Nizameddin, Russia and the Middle East, 47.

⁴⁷Ibid., 48.

⁴⁸Ibid., 55.

⁴⁹Francis, Soviet Strategy of Terror, 40–2. Sterling, The Terror Network, 13–14; Cline and Alexander, Terrorism, 4–5.

⁵⁰Stephen Segaller, Invisible Armies, 122–3; Alexander George (ed.), Western State Terrorism (New York: Routledge 1991), 1–2; Noam Chomsky, “International Terrorism: Image and Reality”, in George, Western State Terrorism.

⁵¹Vladimir Il'ich Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, ‘June 1906–January 1907’ (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1962), 161, 216, 219, 222–3.

⁵²Cline, and Alexander, Terrorism, 5–6.

⁵³Ibid., 555–7.

⁵⁴For an excellent overview of the International Department's activities, see, Jan S. Adams, ‘Incremental Activism in Soviet Third World Policy: the Role of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee’, Slavic Review 48/4 (Winter 1989), 614–30.

⁵⁵John Barron, KGB Today: the Hidden Hand (New York: Berkley Books 1985), 218, 221–2.

⁵⁶INFP-RUSS, Documents collected by Vladimir Bukovsky, prepared for electronic publishing by Julia Zaks and Leonid Cherikhov, <http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/∼kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/buk.html>. Osobaia papka no. ST3/42GC, No. 25-S-436. Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK KPSS. ‘O pros'be rukovodstva Livanskoi kompartii’, 29 marta 1976 g; Osobaia papka no. ST11/73GC. Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK KPSS. ‘O prieme dvukh siriiskikh kommunistov na spetsucheba v Moskve’, 7 iiunia 1976 g.; Osobaia papka no. ST 165/55. Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK KPSS. ‘O pros'be rukovodstva Livanskoi kompartii’, 3 iiulia 1979 g.; Osobaia papka no. ST168/47GC. Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK KPSS. ‘O pros'be rukovodstva Livanskoi kompartii’, 24 iiulia 1979 g.; Osobaia papka no. CT2/OA80. Iz Beiruta, Shifrom KGB, no. 1054, 7 maia 1980 g.; Osobaia papka no. ST2/OA80. Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK KPSS. ‘O pros'be rukovodstva Livanskoi kompartii”, 8 maia 1980 g.

⁵⁷Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: the Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 374; Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World was Going Our Way, 143.

⁵⁸ New Evidence on Soviet Intelligence: the KGB's 1967 Annual Report, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 10 (March 1998), 211–18.

⁵⁹Ilya Zemtsov, Andropov: Policy Dilemmas and the Struggle for Power (Jerusalem: IRICS Publications, 1983), 41–2.

⁶⁰Ibid., 43–4; Sterling, The Terror Network, 14–15.

⁶¹Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 377.

⁶²Matti Steinberg, ‘The Worldview of Habash's Popular Front’, Jerusalem Quarterly 47 (Summer 1988), 3–26; See also the entry titled ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), al-Jabha ash-Sha'abiya li-Tahrir Falestin, al-Jabha ash-Sha'abiya’ from the website of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel <www.ict.org.il>.

⁶³Sterling, The Terror Network, 122–3.

⁶⁴Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, 246–50; 253–5.

⁶⁵Ibid., 257–8; Cline and Alexander, Terrorism, 31.

⁶⁶John C. Reppert, ‘The Soviets and the PLO: the Convenience of Politics’, in Augustus Richard Norton and Martin H. Greenberg (eds.), The International Relations of the Palestine Liberation Organization (Carbondale/ Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP 1989), 111–13.

⁶⁷Ibid.

⁶⁸‘Arafat: a Trained KGB Terrorist’, Commentary by the Wall Street Journal, 22 Sept. 2003. See a broader account of Arafat's relations with the Romanian President and the Securitate's help to the PLO in the 1970s in Ion Mikai Pacepa, Ofakim Adumim[Red Horizons], in Hebrew, trans. Michael Tamari (Tel Aviv: Ma'ariv Book Guild 1989), 34–45, 85–99.

⁶⁹Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, 214–18. John C. Reppert, ‘The Soviets and the PLO’, 116–17.

⁷⁰Ibid.; Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 379–80.

⁷¹[Moscow, Russian Federation, Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (hereafter RGANI)], fond 05 [Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union], ll. 27–8. No. 1071-A/ob, Sovershenno sekretno, osoboi vazhnosti. Iz Andropova Iu., predsedatela Komiteta gosbezopasnosti, s tovarishu Brezhnevu L.I., 23 aprelia 1974 g.

⁷²INFP-RUSS, http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/∼kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/pdfs/terr-wd/plo75c.pdf, Osobaia papka, ll. 16–17. No. 55-A/ob, Sovershenno sekretno, osoboi vazhnosti. Iz Andropova Iu., predsedatela Komiteta gosbezopasnosti, s TsK KPSS, 10 ianvaria 1975 g.

⁷³RGANI, fond 05, osobaia papka, l. 44. No. 1218-A/ob, Osoboi vazhnosti. Iz Andropova Iu., predsedatela Komiteta gosbezopasnosti, s tovarishu Brezhnevu L. I., 16 maia 1975 g.

⁷⁴See documents 8–15 in Israeli, PLO in Lebanon Selected Documents, 74–80.

⁷⁵See a full text of the report in Arabic in document 27 A-1-8, in ibid., 112–19.

⁷⁶Documents 22 and 24 in, ibid., 91, 94.

⁷⁷See a full text of the report in document 28A-1-19, ibid., 123–32.

⁷⁸INFP-RUSS, <http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/∼kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/pdfs/terr-wd/plo83.pdf>, No. P113/110, sovershenno sekretno, osobaia papka. Vypiska iz protokola no. 113 zasedaniia Politbiuro TsK KPSS. “O dostavke spetsimushestva Organizatsii osvobozhdeniia Palestiny iz Siriiskoi Arabskoi Respubliki v Tunisskuiu Respubliku”, 21 Iunia 1983 g.

⁷⁹Michael Weller, ‘International Terrorism: the Communist Connection Revised’, Papers and Studies of the Institute of World Politics 1 (June 2002). See: <www.iwp.edu/printVersion/print_news.asp?newsID=54>.