In 1970, Sabbagh met Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, at the house of a mutual friend, Abdul Majid Shoman, in Beirut. Since that time, he developed a close relationship with Arafat and other members of the PLO leadership. Sabbagh, Basel Aql, and Walid Khalidi became intermediaries between the PLO and the Lebanese government, trying to inform and explain the complexity of Lebanese confessional politics to Arafat and his colleagues and interceding on behalf of Palestinian refugees with the Lebanese authorities. It was the Lebanese civil war, however, that made Sabbagh an activist — an activist for peace and reconciliation between the various Lebanese parties and between the Palestinians and the Lebanese.