Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of an attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September, which the year before had carried out the notorious Munich Olympics massacre. At an embassy reception, the terrorists took ten hostages, including four children, and eventually killed the two Americans in the group, along with a Belgian diplomat. Alberto M. Fernandez comments:

We now know, of course, that Black September was a subsidiary of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah organization. The attack was carried out with the full approval and knowledge of Arafat from his headquarters in Beirut. Both the killings and the hit team’s surrender were coordinated with Arafat. The Sudanese government of Jaafar al-Nimeiry, initially furious about the attack, handed the gunmen over to the PLO for punishment; [that is], it handed them over to the organization that had carried out the attack. Sudan was reportedly pressured towards leniency by Gaddafi’s Libya, a great patron of the Palestinians at the time and a major influence on Sudan.

The immediate aftermath of this terror attack is kind of a snapshot, a scene caught in amber of the region half a century ago. You have Black September, forged in the wake of the PLO’s failure to overthrow the Hashemite [dynasty] in Jordan. You have Arafat sending the team out from his safe haven in Beirut, capital of a Lebanon the PLO would help destabilize and destroy. You have the enabling of Palestinian terror by Gaddafi and Anwar Sadat, both of whom would come to a bad end. Finally, you have a Sudan at the mercy of others, fearing Gaddafi and punished by the Americans.

Fifty years later much has changed in the region. The greatest patron of Palestinian terror is no Arab state, but Iran (with both Erdoğan’s Turkey and Qatar playing supporting roles). The violence is less in foreign countries and diplomatic missions and closer to home. Last year was the bloodiest year on the West Bank since the second Palestinian intifada and 2023 does not look much better. Thirty Israelis and 167 Palestinians were killed in 2022 with anger running high on both sides.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.