Communists and Terrorists: Brothers in Arms or Allies of Convenience?

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Communists and Terrorists: Brothers in Arms or Allies of Convenience?

By Eliza Gheorghe on April 13, 2020

Romanian sources provide a fuller picture of Eastern Bloc involvement in Middle East politics after June 1967, including connections to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Yasser Arafat & Nicolae Ceausescu, 1974
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In 2008, the Cold War International History Project published . Those conversations, which took place on the occasion of Ceaușescu’s visit to Cairo in April 1972, gave impetus to Romania’s mediation efforts in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Obtaining a mandate from the Egyptian side was no easy task for the Romanian delegation. After a 3-year hiatus in Romanian-Egyptian relations, caused by Romania’s exchange of ambassadors with Israel in 1969, Ceaușescu had to buy his way back into Middle East diplomacy by granting Egypt a loan worth $100 million.[1]

Nevertheless, the trip’s success exceeded Ceaușescu’s expectations: not only did Sadat ask Ceaușescu to be a mediator in the conflict with Israel, but the April 1972 meeting also planted the seeds for the close personal relationship that would develop between the Egyptian President and the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party.

Ceaușescu’s trip to Cairo marked the beginning of another friendship, between Ceaușescu and Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Declassified materials from the Romanian archives shed light not only on the bond between the two leaders, but also on PLO’s diplomacy and its role in the Cold War more broadly.

With the help of recently declassified archival materials from various archives in Bucharest, over the last decade Romanian scholars have been uncovering fascinating Cold War episodes that reveal Romania’s role in the Middle East and its relations with the PLO.[2] However, this scholarship remains largely inaccessible to international historians, as it has not yet been translated into English.

Although some of the most important decision-makers in Israel and Egypt have discussed, at least in passing, Romania’s role as a mediator in the Middle East,[3] the English-language historiography on the Arab-Israeli conflict largely overlooks Bucharest – perhaps with the exception of Ceaușescu’s reaction to the Six-Day War, when he refused to sever diplomatic relations with Israel as Moscow and most of the Eastern bloc did in June 1967. A few scholars have briefly touched upon Romania’s role in the Middle East in the late 1970s, crediting Ceaușescu with passing crucial messages between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat that led to Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem.[4]

Understandably, diplomatic historians, whose object of study generally consists of high-level politics and the foreign relations of states, find it easier to discuss Israeli-Romanian relations than PLO-Romanian ties. For a long time, the inaccessibility of PLO records and the emphasis on state-to-state diplomacy have confined the study of PLO foreign policy to the sidelines.

This is no longer the case. Path-breaking works like The Global Offensive by Paul Chamberlin have risen to the challenge of documenting the international relations of a non-state actor.[5] Chamberlin added empirical depth to the literature on the PLO during the Cold War, advancing the effort to write a truly international history of the PLO based on multi-archival, multilingual, and multifocal research. By using primary sources from the Middle East, Chamberlin argues that the PLO was not a terrorist organization on the margins of the Cold War, but a participant in the global anti-colonial struggle, fighting on the same barricades with the Front de la Libération Nationale in Algeria or the Viet Cong in Vietnam. For the Romanians, the Palestinians were “brothers in arms,” despite causing the leadership in Bucharest and the security services occasional headaches.

Documents from various archives in Romania – many now available in English translation on ��ϲ�’s Digital Archive in the collection “” – provide a fuller picture of Eastern Bloc involvement in Middle East politics after June 1967, and account for the place the PLO occupied on the priority list of communist countries, especially in regard to their interests in the Middle East.

Among other things, the translated archival sources confirm Chamberlin’s findings: for communist leaders in the Eastern Bloc, the PLO was, indeed, a fellow standard-bearer of the socialist revolution, fighting for the same cause. As a result of this affinity, the Romanian Communist Party duly provided Arafat with support and advice about political, ideological, organizational, and diplomatic matters.

However, there was much more to the camaraderie with the Palestinians than meets the eye. Similarly to the dynamics between Czechoslovakia and Carlos the Jackal discovered by Daniela Richterova, the Palestinians posed several problems for the Romanian security apparatus.[6]

First, the recurrent attacks carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFPL) on Israeli diplomats in Bucharest threatened a break-down in Romanian-Israeli relations. For Bucharest, everything had a price, and the cost of solidarity with the Palestinians exceeded the Romanians’ purchasing power. Bucharest’s profit-seeking approach explains why, despite the brotherly relationship between Ceaușescu and Arafat, the Romanians remained keen on the Camp David Accords, which the Palestinians saw as a betrayal.

Second, for the communist leadership in Bucharest, the economic potential of the independent state of Palestine represented a fraction of the advantages that could be extracted from Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and, above all, the United States. Throughout the years, the Romanians sided with the stronger camp, making sure to provide the losers with some form of compensation.

Last but not least, these documents reveal much more flexibility in the US’s attitude toward Palestinian participation in the peace negotiations in Geneva than previously assumed. In December 1973, the Romanians from Yasser Arafat to Henry A. Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor. Kissinger’s reply was surprising – it was much less rigid than most scholars would expect. It did not matter whether his interlocutors were communists or terrorists. To Kissinger, they were all the same. What he cared about was whether they could help him (intentionally or unintentionally) advance America’s redefined global preeminence.[7]

List of Documents

ANIC, CC al PCR, Secţia Cancelarie, dosar nr. 90/1967. Contributed and translated by Eliza Gheorghe.

Meeting of the Permanent Presidium of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party discussing the end of the Six Day War. The Romanian Party shows support for the June 10, 1967 Declaration, an end to the armed conflict, and support for the United Arab Republic (Egypt) and other Arab countries.

ANIC, CC al PCR, Secţia Cancelarie, dosar nr. 90/1967. Contributed and translated by Eliza Gheorghe.

Minutes of conversation of a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party to discuss the diplomatic response to the Six Day War, including Israel's support from the West, food aid to Egypt, and the USSR helping the Arabs in the future.

ANIC, C.C. al P.C.R., Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 19/1972, pp. 71-92. Contributed and translated by Eliza Gheorghe.

Nicolae Ceaușescu and Yasir Arafat discuss the struggles of Palestine and goals in regards to Israel.

Arhiva diplomatică - Ministerul Afacerilor Externe, dosar 1938, problema 211/1972, pp. 31-32. Contributed and translated by Eliza Gheorghe.

Romanian consul in Alexandria reports on shipments to the PLO and conversations members of the PLO have had with other Eastern BLOC countries including Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

ANIC, C.C. al P.C.R., Sectia Relatii Externe, dosar 284/1973, pp. 2-3. Contributed and translated by Eliza Gheorghe.

A memorandum reporting on the American feelings toward Palestine and the territorial lines for Israel and Jordan.