Black September

Black September, Palestinian guerrilla organization responsible for several notorious acts of terrorism in the 1970s. Palestinian guerrilla operations intensified after the defeat of the Arab armies by Israel and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War in 1967. The buildup of irregular militia forces in countries bordering Israel led to a series of reprisals against the Palestinians, notably in Jordan, from where the Palestinian forces were expelled in September 1970. In the aftermath of the September events, the Jordanians closed all Palestine Liberation Organization institutions and arrested those leaders who had not managed to flee. These events in Jordan sparked the establishment of the Black September Organization, a group reputed to be run by the security and intelligence wing of Fatah, Jihaz ar-Rasd, tasked with carrying out operations.

Black September’s first victim was the Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tall, seen by the Palestinians as the architect of Jordanian policy against them, who was assassinated in Cairo in 1971. The most notorious act of Black September was the seizure of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the September 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Two athletes were killed outright, and by the time the tragedy was resolved all the Israelis and a German policeman were dead, five members of Black September had been killed and three others captured. The arrested terrorists were released from West German prison a short time later, after the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane. Israel retaliated for the attack with raids against refugee camps and border villages in Lebanon. The Munich events caused Fatah to reject Black September operations and to expel from its ranks members who were associated with it. One of these, Ahmed Abdel-Gaffer, defected to Libya and was later assassinated while on a visit to Beirut. The other, Sabri al-Banna (Abu Nidal), defected to Iraq, where he became the head of a renegade terrorist group operating not only against Israel and its allies internationally, but also against the Fatah leadership itself. Black September was also responsible for a number of other attacks inside and outside the Arab world, including that on the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum in 1973 in which the United States Ambassador died. Black September was disbanded in 1974.