[3] Colonel Raphael Eitan (who later became IDF chief of staff), carried out a raid on Beirut airport during operations against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

In response, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi told the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat that he intended to organize a retaliatory event in Haifa, Israel.

He spoke directly to other Arab leaders demanding that they open their borders to allow Libyans to march into Palestine, to join the Palestinian uprising.

During his years in the army, he became angered hearing the news that the Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) had lost to Israel during the Six-Day War.

During Egypt's involvement in the War of Attrition, Gaddafi's focus on portraying Zionism as an extension of imperialism, was a strategic move to place Libya onto a global stage and to be noticed by Nassar.

He exclaimed that Israel must be destroyed and that, “the arms struggle [is] the only course left for the Arab nation to liberate Palestine.” [14] Gaddafi encouraged acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians.

[16] He said that the Egyptian and Syrian effort to merely, "take back the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 [was not as extensive as the Libyan goal] to free the Palestinians from the Zionist yoke.”  [17] As Libyan-Egyptian relations were strained beginning in 1973, and escalating in 1977 with the Egyptian-Libyan War, Gaddafi felt himself becoming increasingly alienated by the Arab world.

In August 1977, 500 Palestinian commandos from Lebanon arrived in Libya, “to join Libyan troops along the border with Egypt.”[18] Gaddafi’s move was an effort to maintain relevance in the larger Arab world.

He continued to maintain close ties with the Palestinians, notably with Yasir Arafat, which allowed for Libyan political significance in the Arab community.

[19] In 1982, when a political settlement concerning the PLO's evacuation from Beirut was possible, Libya advised them to "commit suicide rather than accept shame," causing relations with Arafat to deteriorate further.

During the summer of that year, Gaddafi made an announcement that the Libyan Jamahiriya would pay the striking Palestinian employees of the Israel Civil Administration in the West Bank and Gaza $1 million per month.

Having shifted in his post Six-Day War view on Israel, Gaddafi now called for the establishment of a democratic state of both Jews and Palestinians, supervised by the UN.

Gaddafi refused to recognize Israel and rejected any political settlement with them, calling the conflict a matter of Israeli existence rather than a territory dispute.

However, Egypt and Lebanon refused to admit the deportees, leading to many seeking refuge in makeshift camps on the Libyan-Egyptian border or being stranded at sea.

Libya attempted to mitigate the action's failure and negative impact by claiming that the move was voluntary as the Palestinians' desired to return to their homeland.

Libya launched a propaganda filled campaign to repair Gaddafi's image by portraying the Palestinians as grateful to him for helping return them to their land.

The presence of around 1,000 Palestinians in terrible conditions along the Libyan-Egyptian border, continued to harm Gaddafi politically and to effect his image[25] in the Arab world.

[26] In 1999 after the suspension of UN sanctions, the Palestinian cause was not a top priority for Tripoli, and Gaddafi shifted his focus towards improving Libya's diplomatic position in Europe and attracting Western investors.

In order to gain respectability in the West, Gaddafi softened his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and granted the PLO office in Tripoli the status of sole diplomatic representative of Palestinian affairs in Libya.

[24] During the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, Gaddafi anti-Israel rhetoric intensified as he expressed that Israel was seeking to take over Arab countries and control oil supplies in the Gulf with the help of the USA.

However, although Gaddafi agreed to take part, he made his participation conditional upon breaking Israel–Jordan relations should the talks fail and be leaked to the media, which were unacceptable terms to Jordan.

[30] It was later reported by Haaretz that Saif al-Islam had maintained informal dialogue with Israel during the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya on "diplomatic and humanitarian issues".