A Shaky Compromise in Lebanon

After months of fruitless effort to bring peace to strife-ridden Lebanon, Syria last week upped the ante with a massive military intervention in an all-out attempt to enforce a long-elusive Pax Syriana. Instead of calming the situation, the move at first brought Damascus into bloody conflict with its erstwhile ally, the Palestinian guerrilla movement, and forced it into an unwanted, possibly only temporary, compromise in which other Arab states are sending token forces into Lebanon.

By week's end the Syrian initiative seemed to have brought the conflict to a new stage. As Arab troops from several countries began to arrive in Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) announced that a ceasefire had been arranged in Beirut and that Syria would begin a phased withdrawal of its forces. By week's end, Damascus had not confirmed any agreement to a ceasefire, and no observers in the Middle East thought that the Syrians were about to pull out more than a token number of their forces. Nonetheless, reports from Beirut indicated that the fighting was diminishing as the Pan-Arab contingents began separating Syrian from Palestinian and leftist Moslem forces. Once again, faint hopes for peace stirred in the prostrate country.

Cease-Fire. In many ways, however, Syrian President Hafez Assad's decision to force a solution in Lebanon gave the conflict a potentially more dangerous dimension than it had had during the 14 months of fighting between Lebanese leftists, who are allied with the Palestinians, and Christian rightists. The Syrian incursion openly brought several Arab regimes into an arena in which they had all along been playing covert and opposing roles. There was thus the danger that Lebanon would remain a theater of quarrels between the moderate and radical Arab states now directly intervening in the country. The rightist Christians in Lebanon, meanwhile, were distrustful of the Pan-Arab peace-keeping force. Moreover, with the Palestinian-Moslem leftist alliance worried about a sellout of its interests and the Israelis ever watchful of threats to their security, the emerging new balance remained at best fragile, the most recent ceasefire as shaky and uncertain as all those that preceded it.

The latest developments really originated in the occupation by Assad's forces of the center of Lebanon's strategic Bekaa Valley earlier this month (TIME, June 14). That move, at first conducted with limited forces, firmly convinced the Lebanese left that Syria's sympathies lay with Lebanon's hard-pressed Christian rightists. For the bulk of Yasser Arafat's P.L.O., it seemed incontrovertible proof that Damascus was intent on emasculating the fedayeen in their last haven in the Arab world, as part of a more subtle movement toward an eventual wider settlement with Israel. As the Palestinians saw it, a "final confrontation" was brewing, the equivalent of King Hussein's bloody Black September suppression of the fedayeen in Jordan six years ago.

Even as Syrian troops consolidated their positions in the Bekaa, across the 9,000-ft. Lebanon range from Beirut, bitter skirmishes erupted in the besieged capital, not so much between old Moslem and Christian antagonists, but instead between the mainstream of the P.L.O. and elements of Saiqa, the one Palestinian group under Syrian tutelage. In some of the heaviest fighting in weeks, Saiqa troopers, many of them regular Syrian soldiers in Saiqa uniforms, were driven from the city itself. They did, however, hold on to strategic positions around Beirut airport, from which they shelled leftist-controlled sectors of the capital. Already emaciated by months of bitter urban warfare, Beirut was on its knees when the truce came, its hospitals filled to overflowing, its power supply cut, and gasoline in short supply. The Syrian hold on the airport, reinforced by airdrops of troops, blocked the main access routes to Beirut from the south and east. Not surprisingly, reconciliation talks between the warring Lebanese factions, which had just got under way, collapsed.

Tough Going. If Assad needed further persuasion to intervene, the inter-Palestinian violence provided it. Spearheaded by armor, Syrian troops rolled out of the Bekaa toward Beirut, grinding up into the mountains in long columns. The going was unexpectedly tough. The tanks easily dissolved the first defensive position established by the joint forces of the Lebanese left and Palestinian commandos, near the pass where the curving Damascus-Beirut highway crosses the Lebanon range. Then the push ran into trouble: at the small hill resort of Sofar, some 15 miles from Beirut, concentrated anti-tank fire knocked out at least three tanks. The Syrians punched through, however, and dug in strong tank and infantry formations just outside another hill resort, Bhamdoun, only twelve miles from Beirut.

On a second axis, Syrian armor clanked south and west toward the port city of Sidon. One column penetrated the city, only to lose eight vehicles in a short. sharp fight. In the far north, Syrian forces were said to be holding outside the city of Tripoli; according to one report, Syrian gunboats shelled the leftist-held Lebanese airbase at Qlayat, on the coast between Tripoli and the Syrian border.

At the height of the Syrian military thrust, the number of Syrian army regulars on Lebanese soil rose to roughly 14,000, supported by up to 500 tanks and vast supply columns that poured across the border. The road to Beirut was clogged with massive tank transports hauling Soviet-built T-55s and T-62s. The entire 3rd Syrian armored division, with an estimated 450 tanks, had entered Lebanon; in addition, the Damascus high command appeared to be drawing on elements of a second division. "We will send our army anywhere necessary to achieve our objectives," one high-ranking Syrian official told TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn.

At the same time, however, the Syrians had second thoughts about their political isolation from most of the Arab world over the Lebanon adventure. High Libyan and Algerian officials had arrived in Damascus to help mediate a way out of the bitter crisis that pitted Arab against Arab. Addressing a conference of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo, Yasser Arafat lambasted the Syrians, accusing them of planning a "massacre" in Lebanon. The session approved a resolution for the formation of an inter-Arab security force to replace the Syrian army in Lebanon.

After that, the leaders of Syria's National Progressive Front, the coalition of leftist parties that runs the country, agreed to invite token forces from other Arab states to join the Syrian army in Lebanon. It was a sharp switch in policy: all along, Damascus had insisted on going it alone in a part of the Middle East that it considers to be within its own sphere of influence. In a bit of rare personal diplomacy, Assad telephoned two Arab leaders on the radical side of the fence, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Algeria's Houari Boumedienne, to enlist backing. Both promised to send troops--symbolic units, as Damascus quickly pointed out--to join the Syrians. Confronted by that fait accompli, the Arab League pitched in, announcing with an obvious bow to Arab moderates that two other countries, Saudi Arabia and the Sudan, would also contribute forces.

It was a neat compromise: the Syrians agreed to demands from other Arabs for "Arabization" of the crisis, while remaining the pre-eminent force. Although the prospect of a Pan-Arab peace-keeping force did not please Lebanese Christian-leaders, the presence of troops from Algeria and Libya, both hard-line members of the Arab "rejection front," would provide the Lebanese left and the Palestinians with insurance against a Syrian force play; the inclusion of Saudi and Sudanese units would bolster the moderates.

Throughout a week of fast-moving developments, Israel kept close tabs on events north of its often troubled border with Lebanon. "It is not our business," Assistant Defense Minister Israel Tal said somewhat unconvincingly. "We have nothing to do with this war." Yet the Israelis had difficulty disguising their delight over the initial Syrian crunch against the Palestinians--as well as a slight case of nerves at the prospect of potential Syrian control of all of Lebanon.

Now, with the possibility of at least a partial Syrian withdrawal, some Israeli fears might be assuaged. But there will no doubt be new ones with the presence of "rejection front" troops in a neighboring country. Indeed, if the Arabs begin to build up their forces, there will certainly be pressures within Israel for a mobilization. In view of the new situation, the U.S. and Israel consulted more actively than usual, and Washington was in regular contact with Damascus, complete with occasional "impressions" of Israel's views. "We are in touch with the Israelis and the Syrians, and we are trying to broker this thing," one top security official explained.

If that smelled of the kind of anti-Palestinian plot of which the fedayeen have been accusing Syria, Israel and the U.S., Washington sources were quick to deny any complicity. "We could not have figured this one out if we had tried to, and we have people working day and night," said a top U.S. analyst. "The Arabs did it all by themselves." Washington officials said that Syria had not consulted the U.S. about its intentions, nor did the U.S. have anything to do with Syria's decision to increase its forces. State Department sources claimed that U.S. leverage was limited in an intra-Arab struggle, that Washington could "only nudge here and there." Said one analyst: "We are making clear our general concern, but we have not given anyone a green light."

Something Drastic. Yet the need for restraint remained tempered by a complex series of dilemmas. Even as U.S. warships steamed in the eastern Mediterranean to evacuate Americans from Lebanon if necessary, U.S. officials admitted that the U.S. role in the crisis had been eclipsed by the latest Arab initiatives. For the Lebanese, a political solution remained in the distance. Even with the latest attempt to establish a ceasefire, the basic issues between Lebanon's Moslems and Christians, so far from being resolved, have been intensified by the terrible bloodshed of recent weeks.

For Syria, at the same time, there are still some grave problems. By agreeing to and upholding the ceasefire, the Syrians would reduce the chances of a confrontation with both the Palestinians and such radical Arab states as its hostile neighbor Iraq, where suspicious movement of troops last week caused Syria to shift some of its own troops to its eastern border. But Damascus will assuredly not give up its goal of preventing the Arab radicals and the P.L.O. from gaining a free hand in Lebanon and provoking a confrontation with Israel. If there seems any strong danger of that, the Syrians could renew their military effort of last week. That, if successful, might finally succeed in imposing some kind of order in Lebanon. But it might also set the stage for, as one U.S. analyst put it, "something drastic happening": a further escalation in the fighting and the total disintegration of prospects for a political solution.

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