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| 1985 |
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| Launching of Arabsat, two medium-size space satellites operated by the Arab League. On the second mission, the satellite was accompanied by the first Arab astronaut, Saudi prince Sultan ibn Salman. Arabsat has served primarily as a communications network for pan-Arab broadcasting. | 1 |
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| Oct. 1 |
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| Israeli jets attacked PLO headquarters in Tunis, killing between 30 and 50 people. The raid was in retaliation for a PLO terrorist strike against a yacht in Cyprus. | 2 |
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| Oct. 7 |
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| PLO commandos hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt, killing one American. U.S. fighter planes forced the Egyptian jet carrying the surrendered hijackers to land in Italy. | 3 |
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| Dec. 27 |
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| Palestinian terrorists killed 16 people in attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports. | 4 |
| By the 1980s, PLO officials were becoming increasingly divided over the wisdom of terrorism. Mainstream groups in the PLO began to see diplomacy as the only realistic option for achieving universal recognition and a Palestinian state. But Palestinian extremists, such as Abu Nidal, vowed never to compromise and continued to carry out terrorist strikes in Europe and the Middle East, often against moderate officials within the PLO itself. | 5 |
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