Even by Middle Eastern standards, it was a week of abnormal tension and turmoil. The carefully engineered truce imposed on that divided nation by Syria had collapsed (see below). Bitter fighting continued between hard-pressed Christian rightists and forces of the National Movement, an amalgam of Moslem leftists and Palestinians led by a gaunt, shambling politician-mystic, Kamal Jumblatt (see page 34), who vowed to fight on until Lebanon's antiquated sectarian political system was reformed.
The civil war grew so intense that Syria came as close to threatening intervention as at any time since the crisis began a year ago. Under severe...
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