Throughout the war, Sabbagh acted as intermediary and mediator, trying to find solutions to the conflict that was destroying the country. He passed messages from the PLO to the United States administration and back to the PLO (although he was not the only channel that Arafat used to communicate with the United States). In 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Sabbagh accompanied by Munib al-Masri and Abdul Majid Shoman, went to Saudi Arabia to ask King Khalid to intercede with the United States in an effort to stop Israel's bombing of Beirut, to allow the PLO to leave the city. When the bombing stopped, Sabbagh was instrumental in passing information from the PLO to the United States about the PLO's conditions for its peaceful departure from Beirut.
