The Israeli invasion has plunged Washington into a state of invincible gloom. The Lebanon situation is grave for all the perceived reasons, and graver still for one largely unreported one, namely, the intertwining of the Israel/ PLO/ Syrian conflict with the Iran/ Iraq war. The Pentagon sees the chain between the two wars as having these links: Israel is using American weaponry to smash the PLO—planes, ships, tanks, missiles, everything that $1.7 billion per year in U.S. military aid can buy. The PLO is supported by all Palestinians, practically speaking, regardless of where the diaspora has deposited them (let no one tell you otherwise). And they have been deposited throughout the Middle Eastern world: 1.7 million in Jordan, 1.2 million in the West Bank and Gaza, 600,000 in Lebanon, 600,000 in Israel, 175,000 in Syria, 250,000 each in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and a goodly number in the other Persian Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Palestinians loathe our government for having armed Israel to the teeth and have fought against the inclination on the part of their moderate Arab host nations (the last cited six above) to permit the United States to extend military aid to these governments, or fix installations on their territory (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman, notably).
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