New Era--or No Man's Land

New Era--or No Man's Land

Beleaguered Beirut last week received a gift that a city wracked by 19 months of devastating civil war could truly appreciate. Lebanon's capital, the government promised, would soon have a steady supply of electricity in place of the on-again, off-again rations in effect since the generating plants got caught in the crossfire between the country's Christians and Moslems. Regular power would mean not only the return of such necessities as lights and refrigeration but also the reappearance of more flickers of the growing after-dark life that was once a part of Beirut's free-wheeling style.

With the eight-week-old truce, imposed by an Arab peace-keeping force dominated by Syrians, restaurants have begun serving after dark for the first time in months, and nightclubs like the opulent Casino du Liban are jumping once more. Movie theaters reopened with a run of The Exorcist--which most Beirutis found tame compared with the all-too-real horrors they had experienced during the fighting.

No Substitute. The war did settle one thing: as a regional headquarters for businessmen, diplomats, educators and journalists involved in the Middle East, there is no adequate substitute for Beirut. Neither Cairo nor Athens, Amman nor Tehran has proved able to match prewar Beirut in services, location, accommodations, creature comforts and just plain fun. Nor does any other city offer the combination of political, economic and cultural freedom that was the special Beirut cachet. But can that old Beirut of amiable permissiveness ever be reconstructed?

So far, there is reason for both optimism that it can and despairing fear that it cannot. Physically, at least, the enormous rebuilding task has already begun. The luxurious Vendome, least damaged of the tourist hotels in Beirut's seaside hotel district, managed to get refurbished and reopened in time for New Year's. At the urging of Syrian-backed President Elias Sarkis, a former director of Lebanon's central bank, most of Beirut's banks--there were 73 of them clustered around Riad Solh Street before the war--will officially resume business on Jan. 17. Many are functioning already, including the U.S.'s Citibank, which now offers full-service banking in separate offices in the Christian and Moslem quarters of the city. Some bankers fear a run on reopening day, but on the basis of experience so far among banks that have reopened, more Beirutis are likely to deposit--from such war-time enterprises as looting and protection rackets--than withdraw.

The city's once erratic water supply has been restored, the post office is processing mail, and Beirut airport, closed by shellfire during the fighting, is open--and, in fact, jammed. With refugees streaming home and businessmen flying in to resume operations, the waiting time for inbound flights is two weeks-plus.

All told, the job of rebuilding will run into billions of dollars. Nine of the biggest hotels in the hotel district, including the Beirut Hilton, Phoenicia Inter-Continental and Holiday Inn, were so badly damaged that renovation will take at least a year. The stately St. Georges Hotel, grande dame of the district, will probably have to be razed and rebuilt. The light industries, such as clothing, foodstuffs and plastics, that ringed Beirut have also been shattered. In Mekalles alone, 30 factories were destroyed in the battle over the Tel Zaatar refugee camp (TIME, Aug. 23).

The key to the city's future may be the fate of central Beirut. Before the war, this was the commercial and financial hub of the Middle East. During the fighting, a 30-block patchwork of streets in the center was reduced to rubble; 6,000 shops and offices there were destroyed. Abandoning the central area, many Christian and Moslem businessmen are reopening in their own religious enclaves. Victor Kassir, president of Beirut's merchants' association, fears that "if the central district is left as a ruined no man's land, Beirut may de facto become partitioned permanently." One proposal: to bulldoze the entire 30-block area into the Mediterranean as landfill for a new skyscraper commercial district, leaving the old city center as a vast park with underground space for 6,000 cars.

The no man's land is less of a worry to most Beirutis, however, than the potential loss of prewar political freedoms. At the request of President Sarkis, the Parliament has voted extraordinary emergency powers to Premier Selim Hoss, including authority to impose press censorship, rule through military tribunals and ban public assembly. The Syrian army, acting on its own swaggering gering authority, has shut down eight Beirut publications that were critical of a peace-keeping arrangement in which the Syrians control everything down to mail delivery and traffic. Four of the eight were small pro-Iraq or pro-Libya journals--thus in effect anti-Syrian. But An-Nahar, Lebanon's most prestigious newspaper, and its French-language sister daily, L'Orient-Le Jour, were also closed. Said An-Nahar Editor Michel Abu Jaudeh: "It would appear that what is in store is more ominous than what has already happened."

Liberal Beirutis are angrily determined not to allow anything ominous to happen while they try to revive their city. Christian Philosopher-Politician Charles Malik, onetime United Nations General Assembly president, cites some of the limits to what Lebanon will endure for its Syrian-imposed peace: "We will not give up our individual or our international freedom. We will not have a closed education system like that in some other Oriental countries. We will not be cut off from the West, and we Christians will not become a subservient minority like the Copts of Egypt."

Syrian Fist. At the moment, the Syrian fist is mainly poised over the Palestinian "rejectionists," whom Syrian President Hafez Assad believes may try to impede a Lebanese settlement as a way of blocking peace talks with Israel. Sporadic fighting continues in Palestinian refugee camps. Palestinian leaders angrily charge that the Syrians are using Saiqa, their own Damascus- controlled Palestinian commando group, to provoke trouble so that Syrian soldiers can have an excuse to shoot up the dissident forces. Palestinian leaders are also increasingly convinced that Damascus intends to eliminate them by assassination. Last week a prominent member of the rejectionist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abdel Wahhab Tayyeb, 30, and his wife Khaldiyah were found dead in their West Beirut apartment. In what was clearly a political rubout, the couple--who were discovered by Mrs. Tayyeb's sister, sometime Skyjacker Leila Khaled--had been killed by at least a dozen shots. The Palestinians are trying to move their forces out of the Syrian eye into southern Lebanon, where they immediately face a new threat from local Christian forces and Israelis across the border.

Beirut's immense problems make it unlikely that for two or three years at least, the city will recover its old cosmopolitan style and central commercial position. If the Syrian-tied political binds continue to tighten, however, and the old freedoms that made Beirut a marketplace of ideas as well as gold and dollars vanish, the recovery may never occur.

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