Black September

Founded in 1970, Black September was a Palestinian militant faction. It chose its name to commemorate the violent Hashemite-Palestinian clash in Jordan in September 1970, during which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) tried to seize power from King Hussein. The king ordered his military forces to forcefully confront the PLO, leading to the killing and expulsion of thousands of Palestinians and driving the PLO out of Jordan.

Black September apparently formed within Fatah, the PLO group led by Yasir Arafat (who in 1994 became the chairman of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority), though members of smaller Palestinian groups also joined. The urgent goal was to seek retribution by attacking Jordan's military and King Hussein, but soon thereafter the group turned its attention to attacking Israeli and Western targets worldwide. The group apparently received marching orders from the Fatah security apparatus, serving as one of its auxiliary units. However, it has also been argued that the faction eventually came to represent a radical split from the arguably more moderate Fatah.

The setup of Black September followed that of many other resistance movements. The group's members were prearranged in closed cells, which consisted of a few members. Cells were kept in the dark regarding the identity of other cells, so that the possible capture or tracking of one cell by the [Page 107]authorities would not jeopardize other cells. Orders were delivered by couriers, who were also kept in the dark regarding the identity of other cells and intermediaries. The group's members apparently included Palestinians residing in the Middle East, as well as Palestinians and Arabs residing abroad as students, or working as small businessmen, diplomats, and so forth.

The group's most notorious act was the attack on Israeli athletes taking part in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, which resulted in the deaths of 11 Israelis and a West German policeman. In response, the State of Israel ordered Mossad (the Israeli national intelligence agency) to track and kill senior Black September and PLO operators. The Mossad conducted several operations, including the 1973 killing of Black September members in Beirut; the 1973 killing of a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, who, it turned out, was apparently blameless; and the 1979 killing of Ali Hassan Salameh, the “Red Prince,” who is said to have masterminded several deadly Black September attacks.

Other attacks ascribed to Black September included the assassination of Jordan's prime minister following the PLO eviction from Jordan (November 1971); damaging gas and electric systems in the Netherlands and West Germany (February 1972); hijacking a Belgian aircraft flying from Austria to Israel (May 1972); sending letter bombs to Israeli diplomats, one of which killed a diplomat in London (September–October 1972); attacking the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, where they took hostages and killed the U.S. chief of mission to Sudan, his deputy, and a Belgian diplomat (March 1973); and attacking passengers waiting to board a flight to Tel Aviv, Israel, in Athens’ international airport, killing five people and wounding more than 50 (August 1973).

In the fall of 1973, the PLO apparently concluded that attacking Israeli and Western targets worldwide no longer served the cause of forming a Palestinian state, and the Black September group was dissolved. In the following years, the PLO militant operations centered on attacking Jewish targets in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip territories, which Israel occupied during the Six-Day War in June 1967.

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