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.
Read more on MEMRI: https://www.memri.org/reports/when-palestinian-terror-struck-khartoum