Cairo agreement
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The Cairo agreement or Cairo accord is purported to be a secret 1969 agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the government of Lebanon granting the PLO the right to operate on Lebanese soil (including attacking Israel from Lebanese territory). It is disputed whether any such agreement actually existed; it is even more unlikely that such a collaboration would be formalized in treaty-style documentation.
Proponents of the theory believe that an agreement was signed by PLO chief Yasser Arafat and the Lebanese army. Theorists place the meeting in Cairo on November 3, 1969, a year before King Hussein ousted the PLO from Jordan in what became known as Black September.
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser helped to broker the deal and was meant to be the guarantor of the agreement because of his positive relations with both the Lebanese and the Palestinians. His death in September 1970 brought to power Anwar Sadat, who had little or no interest in retaining Nasser's role.
Whether an explicit agreement existed or not, Palestinian involvement did increase in Lebanon in the early 1970s, especially after the failed coup in Jordan, and may have contributed to the Lebanese civil war.
Ultimately, the Cairo agreement escalated into something Lebanon could not control, due to its weak governmental structures and the Lebanese civil war. Lebanon's army was unable to keep a check on the PLO's operations, which had come to include cross-border attacks on Israel from Southern Lebanon.
This led to an Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of Lebanon in the 1982 Lebanon War.
- See also: Israel-Lebanon conflict
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