Black September

Overview

Black September names the September 1970 fighting in Jordan between the armed forces of King Hussein and factions led by Yasser Arafat. The PLO and its constituent groups, including Fatah, had built an independent armed presence inside the kingdom and challenged the authority of its government. Hussein’s offensive sought to restore state control. The crisis became a regional confrontation when Syria sent tanks across Jordan’s border to support the factions. Jordanian forces repelled the intervention and continued their campaign against the PLO. A ceasefire signed in Cairo on September 27 ended the principal September battles, although fighting continued until July 1971.^[1][7][12]

The name has a second, distinct meaning. After losing its base in Jordan, Fatah used Black September as a name for attacks abroad. That organization was connected to Arafat’s leadership and carried out the 1972 Munich massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered. The 1970 conflict was a struggle for control of Jordan; the later organization was an apparatus for overseas attacks. Treating them as one event obscures both the Jordanian war and the decisions Fatah made after its expulsion.^[2][11][15]

The war changed security along Israel’s eastern border. Expulsion from Jordan deprived PLO factions of a direct base beside Israel. Many cadres relocated to Lebanon, where the PLO developed another armed enclave and launched attacks on Israeli civilians. The movement’s transfer contributed to instability before the Lebanese Civil War and shaped the circumstances preceding the 1978 South Lebanon conflict.^{[1][7][10][11]}

Background

After the Six-Day War, PLO factions used Jordanian territory for attacks against Israel. Their operations brought Israeli counterattacks and placed pressure on Hussein’s government. Within Jordan, armed groups accumulated weapons, exercised control in refugee camps, disregarded state officials and increasingly acted as an authority separate from the monarchy. The contest was therefore about who governed Jordan as well as whether armed factions could continue using it as a base against Israel. Hussein attempted to reach an accommodation, but the factions retained their independent forces and refused to submit to government control.^[1][7]

Clashes between the Jordanian army and PLO fighters had begun before September 1970. Hussein faced a growing challenge from Arafat’s organization while seeking to avoid a wider civil war. He survived two assassination attempts before deciding to oust Arafat’s forces. By September, the king concluded that the armed structure maintained by the PLO threatened the survival of Hashemite rule. Fatah was central to that structure, although other factions pursued their own operations and tactics.^[1][5][7]

Aircraft hijackings brought the confrontation to a crisis. On September 6, 1970, PFLP hijackers seized passenger aircraft, diverting three to Jordan. Four hijacked aircraft were ultimately destroyed during the episode, including the three in Jordan. On September 12, the hijackers blew up the aircraft in Jordan after releasing their passengers. The destruction made the armed factions’ ability to defy Jordanian authority visible far beyond the kingdom. It also showed how a hijacking could serve as political communication: the aircraft and hostages drew a worldwide audience to the perpetrators’ demands, while the televised destruction turned violence into a spectacle. The crisis sharpened Hussein’s decision to end the factions’ independent military presence.^[1][13]

The hijackings also exposed the danger of allowing armed groups to conduct operations from territory under another government’s sovereignty. Jordan was left to manage an international hostage crisis and the prospect of further fighting on its own soil. For Hussein, the immediate issue was no longer limited to individual attacks or local clashes. His forces faced organizations capable of seizing aircraft, controlling areas of the kingdom and openly resisting the government. That combination made a decisive military confrontation increasingly likely.^[1][4][7]

Course of the war

On September 16, King Hussein declared martial law and sent Jordanian troops into areas controlled by PLO armed factions. The offensive developed into a battle for control of the kingdom, particularly its capital, Amman. Hussein’s forces fought to reassert the authority of the army, police and government over districts in which armed factions had established their own power. Fatah and other PLO groups resisted. The fighting was intense and caused heavy loss of life among those caught in the confrontation.^[1][12][13]

The regional danger rose on September 19, when Syria sent tanks into Jordan to support the factions fighting Hussein. United States officials had considered intervention by either Syria or Iraq possible and had judged Iraq the more likely participant. The Syrian intervention therefore changed the crisis that Washington had been preparing for. Syrian armored units entered northern Jordan while Jordanian forces were already engaged against the PLO. The kingdom faced an external military force alongside its internal rebellion.^[1][14]

The Syrian tanks did not receive air cover. Hafez al-Assad, then commander of Syria’s air forces, withheld air support from the intervention. That decision left the armored force more vulnerable to Jordanian resistance. Jordanian troops repelled the Syrian advance, after which Hussein’s army resumed its campaign against PLO positions. The absence of Syrian air support was a consequential part of the intervention’s failure; Jordan did not have to defeat a coordinated Syrian air and ground attack while fighting the factions inside its borders.^[1][14]

Hussein sought outside help as the Syrian force threatened his position. On September 20, United States national security adviser Henry Kissinger told Israel’s ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin, that Hussein wanted Israeli airstrikes against the Syrian forces. On September 21, Hussein asked Britain to intervene and to seek Israeli help. Britain declined to intervene and passed his request to the United States. Hussein also appealed directly for United States airstrikes in support of Jordanian forces. President Richard Nixon moved the United States Sixth Fleet closer to Jordan while preferring Israeli intervention to direct United States military action against the Syrian force.^[1][4]

Kissinger conveyed to Prime Minister Golda Meir that the United States would favor an Israeli air attack on the Syrians. Israel positioned troops near its border with Syria, and Israeli fighter aircraft flew over Syrian tanks in Jordan. The flights signaled readiness to intervene. Israel did not launch the proposed attack: Jordanian troops drove the Syrian force out before Israeli combat intervention became necessary. The military signal nevertheless formed part of the pressure surrounding the Syrian withdrawal and showed that an attack on Jordan could draw Israel into the war.^[1][4][8]

Hussein and Arafat attended an Arab leaders’ meeting in Cairo, where a ceasefire was signed on September 27, 1970. Its terms required Jordanian army and fedayeen forces to withdraw from Amman, detainees to be released, security duties to return to Jordan’s police and military government to end. The agreement also called for military and civilian conditions in other towns to return to those prevailing before the crisis. These provisions sought to stop the immediate fighting and restore ordinary state administration. They did not settle the underlying question of whether the PLO could maintain armed authority within Jordan. Confrontations continued after September, reaching their end only in July 1971.^[1][7]

Israel's conduct and the protection of civilians

Israel’s role in September 1970 was limited but strategically important. Syrian tanks had entered a neighboring kingdom while PLO factions sought control of territory along Israel’s border. A PLO victory or a durable Syrian military presence in Jordan would have created a direct security threat to Israel. Israeli troop movements and fighter flights signaled a capacity to act against the Syrian force. They stopped short of an airstrike or a ground offensive. Jordanian forces remained responsible for defeating the intervention and restoring government control.^[1][8]

The crisis also involved civilians whose safety was affected by decisions made beyond the battlefield. Passengers aboard the hijacked aircraft were used in a confrontation over prisoners and political demands; the aircraft were destroyed after the passengers were released. Inside Jordan, combat between the army and armed factions caused extensive deaths and injuries. Israel’s military signal occurred without an Israeli attack on the Syrian tanks, so it did not add an Israeli strike to fighting already under way in Jordan. These distinctions matter when describing the episode: Israeli readiness to help Hussein, Jordan’s conduct of the war and the hijackers’ treatment of passengers were separate actions by separate actors.^[1][4]

The conflict demonstrated the connection between Jordan’s sovereignty and Israel’s security without making their interests identical. Hussein fought to keep control of his kingdom. Israel wanted to prevent hostile armed forces from gaining a stronger position along its border. The United States saw Hussein as a regional partner and treated Israel’s ability to deter Syria as strategically valuable. Once Jordan repelled the Syrian tanks, the immediate prospect of a wider interstate war receded, while Jordan continued confronting the PLO on its own territory.^[1][4][8]

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

The September hijackings were both acts of coercion and public performances. The PFLP used civilian aircraft and passengers to gain attention for its demands, then destroyed aircraft in front of an international audience. Wadi Haddad’s approach to such operations treated violence as a broadcast carrying a political message beyond the site of an attack. The destruction at Dawson’s Field illustrated that logic: control of passengers gave the hijackers bargaining power, and the images of burning aircraft extended the operation’s reach through global news coverage. The spectacle heightened pressure on Hussein while displaying the factions’ willingness to challenge the state that hosted them.^[1][13]

After its expulsion, Fatah adopted the Black September name for overseas operations. The organization initially targeted Jordanians, then expanded its attacks abroad. Arafat’s lieutenants Salah Khalaf, known as Abu Iyad, and Ali Hassan Salameh directed attacks under the name. Abu Iyad defended overseas attacks as a response to Fatah’s loss of its Jordanian base for operations against Israel. Arafat denied a connection after Black September’s attacks, but Fatah’s overseas apparatus operated with his and other senior leaders’ knowledge and approval. In a March 1973 diplomatic interview, a Black September member stated that Fatah and Black September were inseparable. The same interview reported annual funding of $30 million from Libya and $15 million from Saudi Arabia; those figures were the member’s account of the organization’s finances.^[2][11][15]

Black September’s best-known attack was the Munich massacre. On September 5, 1972, eight trained operatives entered the Israeli team residence at the Olympic Village. They killed two Israelis and took nine others hostage. A failed rescue attempt ended with all nine hostages dead, bringing the number of murdered Israeli athletes and coaches to 11. The attack against an Olympic delegation gave the perpetrators worldwide publicity while targeting Israelis who had come to compete in sport. Prime Minister Golda Meir led Israel at the time. The massacre was an operation of Fatah’s Black September apparatus, connected to Arafat’s leadership, rather than a continuation of the Jordanian battlefield fighting.^[11][15][16]

The organization also hijacked a Sabena airliner flying to Israel and made two failed attempts to assassinate Meir in 1972. On March 1, 1973, eight Black September terrorists seized the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum as a reception for a departing United States diplomat was ending. They slightly wounded the United States ambassador and Belgian chargé d’affaires, then took five diplomats hostage, including representatives of the United States, Belgium, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The captors demanded the release of prisoners held in Jordan, Israel and the United States. Fatah representatives in Khartoum helped carry out the seizure, and a Fatah vehicle transported the attackers. Arafat personally approved the operation. The attack resulted in the murder of United States ambassador Cleo Noel and other diplomats.^[17]

Outcome

Jordan retained control of the kingdom. Hussein’s forces repelled the Syrian tanks, weakened the PLO’s armed structure and ultimately expelled its factions. The September 27 Cairo agreement ended the principal phase of fighting but did not reverse the government’s campaign to eliminate the PLO’s separate military authority. Further combat continued until July 1971. Arafat escaped Jordan disguised in a visiting Kuwaiti mediator’s spare robe, and many surviving PLO fighters and officials moved to Lebanon.^[1][5][7]

The toll was severe. Approximately 3,000 people died in the confrontation between Hussein’s forces and PLO supporters; one estimate places those killed by the Jordanian army while it restored control at 2,000 to 3,000. These figures describe a violent conflict extending beyond a single September battle. They also explain why the name Black September became associated with loss and defeat among the factions driven out of Jordan. Jordan’s military victory restored the monarchy’s control, but it did so through fighting that killed thousands.^[1][4][7]

For Israel, the outcome removed the PLO’s direct operating base along its eastern border. It did not end attacks on Israelis. The displaced factions established themselves in Lebanon and used its territory for further operations, including attacks on Israeli civilians. Hussein’s survival also preserved a government with which Israel could maintain contact. Israel’s willingness to signal support during the Syrian intervention helped establish the strategic value of that relationship during a moment when Jordan’s government faced a serious threat.^{[1][8][10][11]}

Aftermath and legacy

The PLO’s move to Lebanon transferred a major center of its armed activity from Jordan to Israel’s northern border. In southern Lebanon, it developed a quasi-state that challenged the authority of Lebanon’s government and provided a base for attacks against Israelis. This shift contributed to the pressures that preceded the Lebanese Civil War. It also formed part of the background to later Israeli operations across the Lebanese border, including the 1978 South Lebanon conflict. Black September thus had consequences well beyond the question of who governed Jordan in 1970.^{[1][7][10][11]}

The later Black September organization carried the name of that defeat into a campaign of attacks abroad. Munich made it internationally notorious. Israel pursued individuals connected to the massacre; in 1973, Sayeret Matkal participated in Operation Spring of Youth against Black September figures in Beirut. The Khartoum embassy seizure demonstrated that the organization also targeted diplomats and sought prisoner releases through hostage-taking. Its operations brought the conflict to civilian aircraft, an Olympic Village and diplomatic premises far from Jordan.^[16][17][18]

Fatah’s subsequent public treatment of Munich further illustrates the continuing connection between the organization and the attack. On September 5, 2018, its Bethlehem branch praised the attackers as Fatah heroes in an official Facebook post. Its Nablus branch posted photographs of the eight attackers under a heading calling them heroes, with photographs of the 11 murdered Israelis below. Those commemorations presented the murderers as figures to celebrate decades after the massacre. They also contradicted attempts to portray Munich as an action detached from Fatah’s identity and history.^[15]

Black September therefore remains a name for two linked developments: Jordan’s defeat of armed factions challenging King Hussein in 1970, and Fatah’s later use of that defeat as the name for overseas attacks. The first restored Jordanian state control and displaced the PLO to Lebanon. The second culminated in the murder of Israel’s Olympic team members at Munich and extended hostage-taking and assassination into international venues. Keeping those meanings distinct makes the sequence clear: a lost territorial base preceded a campaign designed to reach targets and audiences abroad.^{[1][2][7][11]}