Cairo Agreement (1969)

Cairo agreement or Cairo accord was an agreement reached on 2 November 1969 during talks between Yassir Arafat and the Lebanese army commander General Emile Bustani . Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser helped to broker the deal. Although the text of the agreement was never published, an unofficial (but probably accurate) text appeared in the Lebanese daily newspaper An-Nahar on 20 April 1970. The agreement established principles under which the presence and activities of Palestinian guerrillas in southeast Lebanon would be tolerated and regulated by the Lebanese authorities. Under the agreement the 16 official UNWRA camps in Lebanon - home to 300,000 Palestinian refugees - were removed from the stern jurisdiction of the Maronite -dominated Lebanese army's Deuxième Bureau and placed under the authority of the Palestinian Armed Struggle Command . Although the camps remained under Lebanese sovereignty the new arrangements meant that, after 1969, they became a key popular base for the guerrilla movement. The agreement also established the right of the Palestinian residents of Lebanon "to join the Palestinian revolution through armed struggle". Subsequently, the Palestine Liberation Organization effectively established "a state within a state" in Lebanon.¹