Last Rights for a Mortally Wounded City

From the top of the unfinished 30-story Murr Tower, Beirut's tallest building, leftist Moslems fired a lethal .50-cal. Chinese machine gun at anything that moved in the center of the city. Some five blocks north, in the gilded Corniche area on the Mediterranean, right-wing Christian Phalangist forces occupied the Holiday Inn and other hotels and began firing from the luxury bedrooms in a desperate effort to hold ground. Answering rocket blasts tore apart the Inn's top two floors. Banks, shops and business offices were shuttered, few besides gunmen ventured onto the streets and about the only traffic along the once thronged boulevards consisted of armored cars and ambulances. After seven months of continual outbursts of violence across Lebanon, Beirut last week was a dying city.

Real Panic. Once sleek and salacious, the "Paris of the Middle East" is a wasteland. Since April, 75% of the national carnage has been in Beirut; at least 3,000 people have been killed, 6,000 wounded, in a city of 1,500,000. Those who managed to reach hospitals last week could rarely find an empty bed. They may have been better off on the floors, since continual sniper fire raked some wards. Water, food, medical supplies, gasoline and electricity were running low. Estimated property damage and revenue loss passed the $2 billion mark. Most international businesses and banks whose headquarters are in Beirut have now left to settle elsewhere. By the end of last week 4,000 of the 5,000 Americans living in the city had made their way to the airport in armed caravans and filled outgoing flights to anywhere. U.S. Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley ordered all families of American officials to leave. U.S. embassy Marines shifted to battle fatigues; stray small-arms fire ripped the building.

Stubbornly, Beirutis had continued to hope that somehow the madness would pass, that maybe the next ceasefire would not be shot down by the armed fanatics whose number seemed to be growing. Last week, reports TIME Correspondent William Marmon, "real panic gripped the city for the first time as the pattern of fighting changed abruptly and the remaining hopes were shattered. Previously, rival factions shot and shelled each other from fixed positions. The result was stalemate. Now leftist Moslem forces, spearheaded by a group called the Independent Nasserites, have launched an offensive to win a clear victory. Moving out of their base area in southwest Beirut, the Nasserites intend to cut through the city up to the sea, thereby flanking some Phalangist positions and driving other rightist forces into the eastern part of the city."

The battle was fought house by house and street by street. One car filled with Moslems managed to reach the Parliament building in Christian-controlled territory. "You do not represent the people. You do not represent anyone," they shouted over a loudspeaker, then opened fire, killing one of the bodyguards of Phalangist Leader Pierre Gemayel. When retreating Phalangists took up positions in the hotel district, the conflict took on an added symbolic intensity. "I'm going to sleep in the Holiday Inn tonight," pledged one strutting Moslem fighter as he prepared for an assault on the Christian outpost. By week's end the Phalangists still held what became known as the "hotel front."

No Census. The Moslem strike into the bastion of moneyed power has roots that go back at least to the creation of independent Lebanon. As France was quitting the area in 1943, an unwritten but carefully wrought National Covenant was adopted by Lebanese leaders in an effort to accommodate the new country's volatile religious mix of Christians and Moslems. With Christians in a slight majority according to a 1932 census, the Covenant provided that the country's

President and the armed forces commander would always be from the dominant Maronite Christian sect, the Prime Minister always a Sunni Moslem and the legislative assembly always in a 6-5 balance favoring Christians. This slight but significant power edge reflected not only the population figures but also the fact that Christians controlled the professions and business. Despite simmering eruptions, notably in 1958 when the U.S. sent in troops to prevent a leftist take over, Lebanon thrived for decades as a result of its compromise--and of a Swiss-style neutrality that helped to make it the trading, banking and communications hub of the Arab world.

In recent years a higher birth rate has pushed the Moslem portion of Lebanon's population to an estimated 60% of the 3.2 million total. Christians responded by making it all but an article of faith to block any census that might change the original 1932 figures. Such friction might well have been enough to spark violence, but the present explosion has defied control because of still other complicating factors. Christians and Moslems alike are subdivided into sects, each headed by bosses (zu'ama) who have used patronage to build iron loyalty, as well as personal militias.

Outside Forces. The arrival since 1948 of 320,000 Palestinian refugees has added immeasurably to Christian-Moslem tensions. At first the Palestinians stayed out of the current fighting; Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat continues to call for a peaceful solution. But last week Palestinians from Arafat's Fatah and the Syrian-backed Saiqa were clearly aiding the leftists with arms, equipment and artillery support. Indeed the real strategic commander of the Moslem offensive in Beirut was rumored to be the infamous fedayeen leader Abu Daoud, who nearly succeeded in assassinating Jordan's King Hussein in 1970. Last week at his command headquarters in the center of Beirut, he boasted with a confident smile, "We are doing well."

The open role of the Palestinians quickly caught the attention of neighboring Syria and Israel. Damascus is now known to be aiding the leftist Moslem forces there through its Saiqa fedayeen. Should Syrian assistance--or, less likely, outright intervention--threaten to tip the balance toward a Lebanon dominated by radical Arabs, the Israelis might respond with force because, said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, such a situation would be "a real threat to Israel's security."

Though the country was coming apart, Lebanon's political leaders seemed utterly incapable of finding a solution. In fact they were part of the problem. Many are zu'ama who solemnly discuss cease-fires even as their troops are shooting away. President Suleiman Franjieh, whose base is a virtually feudal Christian hill village outside Tripoli, so thoroughly detests Premier Rashid Karami, a Sunni Moslem, that they can barely work together. Though Karami began seeking a solution in Parliament last week, so many of its 99 deputies refused to venture out in the line of fire that a 50-member quorum was never mustered. Karami then invited nine key factional leaders to join him in his office and lock themselves in until something had been hammered out. Only two accepted the invitation; in desperation Karami threatened to resign, was talked out of it and began calling in leaders for private sessions.

These sessions may prove to be last rites. Beirut, already ruined as a financial center, seems doomed to continuing violence. The rest of Lebanon can only wonder what the outcome will be. At one of the private meetings held by Karami late last week, Ibrahim Koleilat, who heads the Nasserites, explained his intentions politely but forcefully. His Moslem fighters will press on until they have defeated the Phalangists once and for all, said Koleilat. "We have had ten cease-fires and ten violations. Let's get this over with and have one cease-fire that means something."

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