Time to Choose: Compromise or More War

In the on-and-off Lebanese civil war, it was the worst week ever. The bitter fighting between Christian and Moslem communities, which for nine months had been largely confined to Beirut and a few scattered towns and villages, last week spread with explosive intensity; the death toll since April was pushed to more than 9,000. "A state of total anarchy," was the way a horrified Beirut television announcer described the killings, kidnapings, looting, arson and destruction. The disastrous round of fighting triggered two abortive cease-fire efforts in 24 hours, as well as the proffered resignation--not accepted--of Premier Rashid Karami, a moderate Sunni Moslem, who had been frustrated in his seven-month effort to make peace.

Cease-Fire. What made last week's events especially ominous was the entry of massed regular units of the Palestine Liberation Army into the fighting. Until then, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization--the P.L.A. is its military arm--had played a moderating role. But as the P.L.A. troops poured in from neighboring Syria, there were widespread fears of a new and broader war. To prevent such a catastrophe, all sides at midweek agreed to another hastily arranged cease-fire--the 23rd in the past four months. At week's end the truce appeared to be taking hold gradually; there was some sporadic gunfire, but the military situation had calmed considerably.

Several previous truce agreements, although usually negotiated in good faith by leaders of the warring factions, collapsed because they were unable to control the loosely organized and undisciplined militia nominally under their command. After the mid-January ceasefire negotiated by Karami (TIME, Jan. 26), for example, rightist forces in the capital, composed mostly of Phalangists, the "Tigers" of the National Liberal Party and neighborhood militiamen, attacked two Moslem slum areas, Karantina and Maslakh. Supported by mortars, recoilless rifles and rockets, the rightists pushed out the defenders last week and then leveled the remaining shanties with bulldozers. Scores of Moslems were killed and at least 6,000 were left homeless. Survivors claimed that there had been a massacre and countless atrocities. "We shall skin them for this," vowed Kamal Jumblatt, head of the leftist Progressive Socialist Party and leader of the country's Druze community.

Infuriated by the attack, Moslem forces struck at Christian communities throughout the country. Amid rightist charges of massacre, they captured the coastal towns of Damur (see box) and Jiye, driving out thousands of Christians.

In northern Lebanon, the leftists overran isolated Christian villages, seizing town halls and looting police stations of arms and ammunition. East of the capital, an estimated 2,000 soldiers of the P.L.A. crossed from Syria into Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Helping the local militia and other Palestinian units already in the country, they captured Chtaura, a strategic town of 5,000 Christians on the Beirut-Damascus highway, and tightened the seige around Zahle, the major city in the Bekaa.

As the fighting spread, Interior Minister Camille Chamoun, a leading rightist who was President during the 1958 civil war that saw U.S. Marines land in Lebanon, demanded "an immediate international intervention." He and Phalangist leaders also called for the total mobilization of the Christian community. At the same time, the leftists sent sound trucks through the Moslem sections of Beirut, urging the residents to take up arms.

The fighting sent out shock waves throughout the Middle East. Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres conspicuously inspected his forces south of the Lebanese border and warned that his country was "unwilling but ready to take care of her own interests" if Syrian troops intervened in Lebanon. Otherwise, the Israelis carefully refrained from words or acts that might have seemed belligerent. Damascus clearly did not want to call Jerusalem's bluff. At the same time, the Syrians felt that they could afford neither 1) to let the leftists and Palestinians in Lebanon be defeated or stalemated by the rightists, nor 2) allow a partition of that country between Christians and Moslems.

Refugee Camps. By allowing the Syrian-trained P.L.A. to enter the fight, Damascus avoided getting directly involved in the civil war but still made it clear to the rightists that the Moslems would not be checkmated on the battlefield, and that the conflict would have to be resolved politically. Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam, accompanied by his country's top military officers, then flew to Beirut to discuss a cease-fire scheme with Lebanese President Suleiman Franjieh, a Maronite Christian who not only had made little effort to end the war, but has been accused of siding with the Christian rightists.

Apparently fearful that the country was disintegrating and that his co-religionists might be badly hurt in further fighting, Franjieh agreed to the Syrian proposal. Under it, the new cease-fire will be supervised by a higher military committee, composed of representatives of the Lebanese and Syrian armies and the fedayeen. The President promised to restrain the rightists; the Syrians vowed to see that the leftists also respect the peace and that the Palestinian commandos living in 16 refugee camps in Lebanon abide by their earlier pledges of restraint. A major cause of rightist dissatisfaction has been the feeling that the Palestinians have become an uncontrollable "state within a state."

The Syrian package also suggested reforms long sought by Moslems and many Christian leftists, who have felt that the country's complex political system, devised in 1943, no longer reflects reality and unfairly favors the Christians. The system clearly has favored the Christians, who thus generally oppose basic changes. Under the proposed Syrian reforms, seats in Parliament would be divided equally between Christians and Moslems, instead of in the current 6-to-5 ratio favoring the Christians. No census has been taken since 1932, but it is believed that the Christian community at most comprises half of Lebanon's nearly 3 million population. To placate the Christians, however, the presidency would remain in the hands of a Maronite Christian. The reforms would also increase the authority of the Premier, a Sunni Moslem by tradition; he would be chosen by Parliament rather than by the President.

Way of Life. High hopes have accompanied the proclamation of previous ceasefires, only to be quickly dashed. A number of observers in Beirut fear that too many Lebanese have been infected by an "Ulster mentality"--a bitter resignation to continued violence and a desire for revenge in which fighting becomes a way of life. Yet last week's widespread violence may have finally forced enough Lebanese to conclude that compromise is preferable. If the current cease-fire does not hold, Lebanon may not have another chance.

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