south. Actions of rogue factions further contributed to the alienation of the locals, such as setting up checkpoints throughout Beirut and the South, actions which Musa Sadr denounced as unrepresentative of the mainstream PLO. Israel's second invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 succeeded in driving thousands of Palestinian fighters under the command of PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat out of Southern Lebanon and West Beirut. Under international auspices, PLO forces were evacuated to northern Lebanon and re-settled in the port city of Tripoli. By this time, however, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad proceeded to expel Arafat and the Palestinian factions allied to him from Lebanon. Israel's 1982 invasion led to its beginning a 20-year-long occupation of a shallow fringe of southern Lebanon (10 to 15 kilometers) as a security zone for its border, allied with a local force - the South Lebanese Army, which was originally purely Christian but gradually added local Shiites and Druze to its ranks. Meanwhile, with permission from Syria, Iran sent a contingent of Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon, tasked with amalgamating, reorganizing and building up the small Shiite religious factions into a new organization - Hezbollah. Assad sought to control both the PLO and Lebanon. He worried that Palestinian guerrilla activities would invite another Israeli invasion and that his minority Alawite regime in Sunni-majority Syria would be endangered by the advancement of the (mostly Sunni) Palestinians. Initially, the Syrian government encouraged its favoured Palestinian groups to compete for influence, facilitating the entrance of as-Sa'iqa, PFLP-GC, and the pro-Syrian dissident Fatah faction under Colonel Said al-Muragha (Abu Musa). However, Syria's allies were strong only in the areas controlled by the Syrian Army, such as the Beqaa valley. In the areas beyond Syria's control, however, it soon became apparent that Palestinian organizations such as Fatah, PFLP and DFLP had far stronger support. Assad recruited Said al-Muragha to drive Arafat and his loyalist fighters out of Lebanon. Musa, himself a former member of Fatah, used Arafat's public willingness to negotiate with Israel as a pretext for war. In November 1983, Musa's Fatah al-Intifada (Fatah-Uprising) faction fought the Arafatist Fatah for a month at Tripoli, until Arafat once again was on his way to Tunisia by December. Unfortunately for Assad, Arafat's Fatah forces quietly returned to Lebanon over the next two years, ensconcing themselves in the many refugee camps in Beirut and the South. As more Palestinians regrouped in the South, Assad's