Front of steadfastness
The front of steadfastness and rejection , according to other sources also front of steadfastness and confrontation ( English Steadfastness and Confrontation Front ; Arabic جبهة الصمود والتصدي, DMG ǧabhat aṣ-ṣumūd wa-t-taṣaddī ) or Front of Steadfastness and Resistance was from 1977 to 1981 a de facto only informal front of rejection of some Arab states and the PLO against a policy of rapprochement between Egypt and the USA and Israel .
Libya's revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has been trying to establish a stable and broad anti- Sadat front since a brief and unsuccessful solo armed attack against Egypt in 1977 . To this end, he invited the "revolutionary" regimes of Algeria , South Yemen , Syria , Iraq and the PLO to Tripoli . In 1978 a second conference followed in the Algerian capital. The final declarations of December 1977 and February 1978 condemned the looming separate peace at Camp David , called for the isolation of Egypt and expressed solidarity for the "just cause" of the Palestinians . The final declaration of the heads of state of the front is published in the Europa-Archiv , episode 20/1980, p. 581ff.
Only Iraq did not sign the Tripoli Declaration because of differences with Syria, stayed away from the Algiers Conference at all and assumed an allegedly even more radical position with which it intended to position itself at the head of a more active front of steadfastness and liberation . In 1978 and 1979, Baghdad invited the Arabs to summit meetings at which finally the expulsion of Egypt from the Arab League and a (short-lived) reconciliation between Iraq and Syria were decided ( Charter of Joint National Action Syria-Iraq ). Egypt, which in 1979 was also excluded from the Organization for Islamic Cooperation , founded a counter-organization with the League of Arab and Islamic Peoples and in turn promoted anti-regime resistance groups in Libya, Syria and the VDR Yemen.
In September 1980, Libya and Syria agreed to merge to form a unitary state . In 1980, on the instigation of Libya and communist South Yemen, the front of steadfastness was expanded to include the communist regime of non-Arab Ethiopia - Libya, Ethiopia and South Yemen concluded an additional three-party alliance in 1981.
literature
- Lothar Rathmann (Ed.): History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present . Volumes 6 and 7 Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1983.
- Johannes Berger, Friedemann Büttner and Bertold Spuler: Middle East PLOETZ - history of the Arab-Islamic world to look up . Freiburg / Würzburg 1987
- Robin Leonard Bidwell : Dictionary of Modern Arab History , 391. London / New York 1998