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Episode Eight
Monday, 3 May, 2021 - 10:45
An archive photo of the late President Hafez al-Assad and his deputy, Abdel-Halim Khaddam, at a meeting (Asharq Al-Awsat).
London- Asharq Al-Awsat
In this eighth episode of the memoirs of Abdel-Halim Khaddam, published by Asharq Al-Awsat, the late Syrian vice-president narrates the decisive moments of the military intervention in Lebanon in 1976, the parallel contacts that took place between Syria and the Arab countries to form an Arab deterrent force, in addition to the role of the Syrian forces.
He says: “In light of the insistence of the Palestinian leadership and the allied Lebanese parties on continuing the fighting and the refusal to lift the siege on Zahle and the Christian villages in the north of Lebanon, and in the face of all the damage inflicted on the Lebanese people… the Syrian military intervention became urgent to stop this dirty war, so our forces crossed the Lebanese borders on June 1, 1976, on the day Alexei Kosygin, Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, arrived in Damascus.”