Israel "Severs the Arm"

Once again, troops were on the move in the Middle East--and this time, right in the middle of peace negotiations. All one night and through the next day last week, tanks, artillery and ammo carriers rumbled into position along Israel's mountainous border with Lebanon, a jagged 62-mile line that runs from the Mediterranean to the foothills of Mount Herman. Within 48 hours the Israeli forces, some 10,000 in all, were ready to move, and missile boats were poised to strike at Lebanese ports. Then, after a 24-hour delay caused by rain and heavy clouds, the biggest antiterrorist raid ever mounted by Israel began.

The operation that the Israelis chose to code-name Stone of Wisdom appeared to have been carried out with their characteristic precision. Within 18 hours the Israelis had achieved their primary military goal, which was to smash the Palestinian guerrilla strongholds near the border in southern Lebanon and establish a buffer zone, most of it four to six miles wide, along the entire Israeli-Lebanese frontier. But what remained far from clear at week's end, as Israeli forces kept pushing deeper into

Lebanon, was how far they would go. An even more important question, as Israel's Premier Menachem Begin prepared for his latest round of talks with President Carter in Washington this week, was whether the attack that Begin had launched to "sever the arm of iniquity" had also hopelessly complicated the already imperiled peace process in the Middle East. The outraged Arab states demanded immediate Israeli withdrawal, and the U.N. Security Council debated a U.S. proposal for an international peacekeeping force to be sent into Lebanon.

Almost overnight, the Israeli attack --and the Palestinian terrorist slaughter that had triggered it--changed the diplomatic outlook for the Middle East. Ever since Anwar Sadat undertook his "sacred mission" to Jerusalem last November, the focus had been on the pursuit of peace and the chance that, despite all the subsequent setbacks, the Egyptian President's initiative could somehow propel the protagonists toward an unraveling of their ancient grievances. Now, suddenly, the talk of peace was replaced by grave concern about a renewal of the old Middle East "cycle of violence," as U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance called it.

Sadat expressed his fears in almost identical terms. After the Palestinian raid on Israel, in which 34 Israelis were killed and 78 injured as a hijacked bus careened wildly southward along the highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv, Sadat denounced the episode as "tragic and irresponsible," and added sadly. "Let us break this vicious circle of action and reaction, because it will lead to nothing."

On the Israeli side, the Tel Aviv attack and the assault into south Lebanon have once again stirred both anger and militant pride in the Israelis, quieting critics of the government's grudging handling of the peace negotiations and strengthening the positions of Begin and his hardline Likud coalition colleagues. One result: the prognosis for the talks between Begin and Carter in Washington, never promising, seemed even more bleak.

Not only is Begin less likely than ever to make concessions toward a Middle East peace, but he has added a prickly new problem to the list of matters to be discussed. The Administration had been having a tough enough time with the Begin government when the issue was Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. "Now," sighed one Western diplomat, "we can add Lebanon to the list."

The Palestine Liberation Organization, for its part, has elbowed its way back into the negotiations picture. Badly mauled by the Israelis last week in its southern Lebanese sanctuary and likely to be squeezed farther to the north of the Litani River by the Syrian peace-keeping forces, the P.L.O. is almost certain to continue its recent return to terrorism. Last week in Beirut, P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat and his executive committee declared that after 3% years of relative moderation the organization has gone back to a policy of militancy--of guerrilla attacks, kidnapings and executions.

If the Palestinian terrorism and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon did not wreck the Sadat peace initiative entirely, they may have diverted it toward the very thing the Palestinians most fear: a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. Sadat is more isolated from his Arab brothers than ever, and probably angrier too; he was enraged almost beyond reason by the Palestinian murder of his friend Editor Youssef Sebai in Cyprus last month, and he fully recognized the effect of recent P.L.O. terrorism on his peace initiative.

In earlier times of trouble, Egypt has seen itself as the protector of the Arabs against Israel; in fact, it became involved in the 1967 war partly because of a real or imagined threat by Israel against Syria. All that is changed now. Last week, when Israel invaded another Arab state, Lebanon, there was no talk of mobilizing the Egyptian armed forces, and the Egyptian President at first criticized the Israeli action with notable restraint. It all bore out what influential Egyptians have been saying for weeks: "No more Egyptian blood will be shed for Palestinians."

There had never been any doubt that Israel would respond hard to the latest Palestinian terrorism. Premier Begin had vowed as much when he gravely told the Knesset early last week: "We shall do what has to be done. Gone forever are the days when Jewish blood could be shed with impunity. The shedders of innocent blood shall not go unpunished."

Almost unanimously, Israelis seemed to agree. Despite some urgings for restraint from the U.S. and from Sadat, the Israelis were in no mood to turn the other cheek. Leaders of all Israeli political parties agreed to a Knesset statement declaring that terrorist organizations must be attacked and "exterminated." The occasion called forth a volley of extremist oratory; a small nationalist sect headed by Rabbi Meir Kahane, for instance, openly demanded the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel, including the 574,000 who are Israeli citizens.

As might have been expected, the Israeli response vastly exceeded the provocation. While 34 Israelis died in the terrorist raid, many more would surely be killed during the Israeli foray into Lebanon. Indeed, by any accounting of their 30 years of eye-for-an-eye retaliation, the Israelis are far ahead of the Palestinians. Though terrorists have taken 143 Israeli lives since the 1973 war, Israeli retaliatory strikes have killed some 2,000 Arabs.

The Israeli drive into Lebanon was not merely a powerful gesture of revenge. It was a calculated maneuver to strengthen Israeli security in the north, and the P.L.O. raid only gave Israel the excuse it needed to move decisively. As one Western diplomat analyzed it, the Tel Aviv incident was "just what the Israelis had been waiting for, because they have been wanting to take over south Lebanon for a long time." Last week the Israelis proceeded to do just that as they established a buffer strip along the entire border. That leaves the Palestinians precious little breathing room between the Israeli zone and the Litani River, with the Syrian forces on the north bank, and it is by no means clear that the Israelis will not make occasional raids into what remains of the Palestinians' sanctuary.

Once the fighting is over, the Israelis would probably withdraw some combat troops but leave a large enough force to secure the buffer zone in an effort to reduce the number of terrorist raids from the north. Later, they would probably be prepared to give way to Christian Lebanese soldiers (who oppose the Palestinians), or to U.N. peacekeeping forces, or to a combination of the two. But actually, the Israelis have declared de facto control over a strip of southern Lebanon, and it looks as if they intend to retain some kind of presence. As an Egyptian foreign ministry official saw it: "The Israelis probably will withdraw from south Lebanon under certain conditions, but they are establishing their right to return whenever they like. In almost colonial terms, Israel is creating a protectorate over south Lebanon."

Ever since Israel's big raid into southern Lebanon in September 1972, the Israelis had been devising a plan for taking over, if need be, the entire portion of Lebanon south of the Litani River; Operation Stone of Wisdom was an updated version of that plan. Before dawn last Wednesday, Israeli forces entered Lebanon at four points, eventually linking up to form a chain. Central to the Israeli plan was the decision to hold Israeli casualties to a minimum by moving slowly and making heavy use of artillery and armor as well as air strikes. As the sun began to rise over the hilly south Lebanese landscape, tank units rushed in to back up the advancing infantry and paratroops. The Israelis proceeded cautiously. "It was no dash to the canal," cabled TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff after a tour of the front. "One unit took seven hours to pick its way across the mine-littered terrain from Metullah to the guerrilla base at Khiyam, two miles away. By contrast, most of the skirmishes ended quickly; the fight at Khiyam lasted only 20 minutes." At Marun ar Ra's, where a platoon was ordered to take over the local Fatah headquarters, a two-story building, the platoon commander radioed impatiently that he could not find the place; he soon discovered that it had already been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs.

"Our task is to kill as many terrorists as possible," said the Israeli Chief of Staff, Lieut. General Mordechai Gur. Palestinian resistance in a few spots was heavy but no match for the superior Israeli forces. Obviously, many Palestinians had al ready escaped from the area in anticipation of an Israeli strike. For months, Israeli intelligence had estimated guerrilla strength in the region south of the Litani River at 5,000, but General Gur placed the number at 2,000 at the time of the Israeli invasion; the others had presumably fled.

By midday Wednesday, senior Israeli officers were in a jocular mood. When he visited Marjayoun, Gur asked where the Palestinian firing was coming from. The front commander, Major General Avigdor Ben-Gal, replied, "Chief of Staff, this is a war. How am I supposed to know where the shelling is coming from? I would like to get your permission to order artillery and air force to fire and bomb all sources of shelling. This will solve our problem and answer your question." Gur grinned and said, "O.K., order the air force to search for fire sources."

When Gur reached the vicinity of another village, the local Israeli commander proposed using mortars to bomb enemy positions in Qantarah; Gur called the strikes by Phantom jets. To avoid hitting their own troops nearby, Israeli units responded to a call to release smoke grenades, and suddenly the green and yellow mountains were covered with red and blue smoke. As the first Phantom dove toward its target, antiaircraft fire opened up on it from the environs of the Litani River. At Bint Jubayl, the local commander complained that they had not been able to locate the huge bunker that was known to be the main guerrilla headquarters in the area. "I was here in 1972," Gur told them. "If I'm not mistaken, the bunker should be in the center of town near the green building." It was.

In the meantime, commandos were attacking the southern Lebanese coastline. Missile boats strafed the port of Tyre, and air force planes bombed the Palestinian strongholds at Damur, Tyre and Ouzai. Frogmen landed at several points along the coast and attacked Palestinian command posts, killing several officials. In most cases, however, the Palestinian leadership had already left. In Beirut, top P.L.O. leaders had learned of the

Israeli attack a day before it began and had hastily moved to new hideouts.

The Israelis' tactics seemed to be successful in holding down their own casualties. At week's end the death toll stood at 14 Israeli troops, v. some 450 Palestinians. (About 20 Palestinians were taken prisoner; their disposition was still to be settled at week's end.) Yet for all of Washington's urging that the Israelis minimize the impact on the civilian population, the results appeared to be devastating. By the third day of the invasion, TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis reported, "the exodus of Lebanese from the area was both enormous and pitiful. As many as 200,000 people fled their homes, clogging the roads heading north toward Beirut. On the coastal highway, tractors pulled wagons filled with livestock; children could be seen riding in the trunks of crowded automobiles, sitting with the open trunk doors curving over their heads like umbrellas. At Aadloun, a town well north of the Litani River, two Mercedes taxis packed with families fleeing the fighting were ambushed by an Israeli reconnaissance party; men, women and children--14 in all--were slaughtered by machine guns and rockets (a fin from one of them was found, bearing Hebrew letters). The sight was ghastly: flesh hanging out of windows, bullet holes gouged in the doors, a child's charred arm on the road. Palestinians guided traffic while others went about the grisly task of removing the dead.

Farther south in Tyre, all that remained of a population that once numbered 45,000 was a few hundred aged Lebanese civilians and scores of teen-age Palestinian fighters. Smoke rose from the ruins of a building hit by Israeli bombs. Palestinians and Lebanese dug through rubble in search of bodies. The bombardment seemed to have been indiscriminate, both from the air and from ships offshore. Except for one Palestinian antiaircraft gun on the outskirts of town, no military targets had been hit. The port remained undamaged. What had been hit, and hard, was the civilian dwellings. Was this deliberate counterterror on the part of the Israelis? It certainly looked that way."

Yet the invading Israelis were greeted with enthusiasm in towns populated by Christian Lebanese, who hate the Palestinians and view them as occupying forces. At the same time, Israeli intelligence made contact with Christian Lebanese leaders in the north and asked them not to seize the occasion of the fighting in the south to launch new attacks against the Syrian army and Palestinian fighters in Beirut and the north; if they did, it might force Syria to respond to the Israeli invasion. The Syrians were disinclined to do so, since their forces are no match for the Israelis', but at week's end Syria sternly demanded that Israel withdraw from Lebanon. All week long, Israeli missile boats delivered military supplies to Christian forces in northern Lebanon; they returned with Christian soldiers for military training in Israel before joining Christian units in southern Lebanon.

Strangely, the return to militancy created an atmosphere that both the Israelis and the Arabs seemed to find easier to live with than the ambiguity of the period following Sadat's initiative. The Palestinians were returning to their traditional role with undisguised relish. Said a top P.L.O. commander in Lebanon: "There are no rules any more. The only answer left is in our gun barrels."

To Westerners, the Palestinian stance may seem hopelessly wrongheaded and self-destructive. After all, a return to terrorism by the P.L.O. tends to undermine Sadat, even though he has maintained steadfastly that he would make no deal with the Israelis without a provision for some sort of Palestinian homeland on the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians simply do not believe him, apparently, and their present view is born of a rising desperation. "They are running out of space," reports Correspondent Brelis. "Having been expelled from Jordan by King Hussein in the early 1970s, they find themselves no longer welcome in Lebanon. Having been battered by the Lebanese Christians and even their Syrian sponsors in the Lebanese civil war, they now find themselves being pummeled by the Israelis, while Syria's 30,000 troops in the country just lean on their weapons. They face a grim period simply remaining intact in Lebanon. If terror helps them to keep their cause alive, then terror is thought to be justified."

As the Palestinians perceive the situation, by charging into Lebanon the Israelis have lost whatever chance they had of gaining Arab recognition beyond what they have already received from Cairo. If Israeli retaliation against Palestinian terrorism grows more ruthless, the Palestinians argue, Jerusalem will gradually lose its remaining Western support.

A P.L.O. official in Beirut suggests sardonically that the next step will be Israeli settlements in south Lebanon. "Or it may be an archaeological dig," he adds slyly, referring to the illegal Jewish settlement at Shiloh in the West Bank that the Begin government persists in pretending is there for archaeological pursuits.

"But what matters," he continues, "is that such steps as these show the world that Begin remains an expansionist." Some of the same grumbling can be heard in Cairo, where a ranking Egyptian official observes:

"In the old days we were demanding that Israel return to the 1947 partition frontiers. Then we were calling for a return to the 1967 frontiers. Now we have to argue about getting them back to the 1978 frontiers."

TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott talked to dozens of Palestinians in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and found not one who disapproved of the terrorist raid that precipitated the Israeli invasion. "Good, good," declared a hotel doorman. "Three times more, that's what we need."

Said Hanna Naesser, a physicist expelled from the West Bank by Israel four years ago: "This event has done a great deal to restore the faith of the people in the P.L.O." Sociologist Seri Nasser agreed. "I deplore that there are 34 people dead in Israel, just as I deplore that as a result of the Israeli retaliation there will be ten times as many people dead in refugee camps in Lebanon. But how can you blame us? You say this action is not very noble. Name a course we can take that is in fact noble. We have nowhere to go. nothing else to do."

On the other hand, few Israelis seemed to appreciate the extent to which the invasion of Lebanon may have damaged the peace process. "Sadat is unpredictable," said one foreign ministry official. "How can you tell how he will react?" Practically without exception, Israelis approved of the military action. Former Premier Yitzhak Rabin, who has bitterly criticized Menachem Begin's handling of the peace negotiations in the past, said he thought the government had done the only thing it could in response to the terrorist raid. Another Begin critic, former Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, concluded that the invasion took place ''at the right time, in the right place, with the right method." Jerusalem would "try to see to it" that its forces did not long remain in Lebanon, declared Defense Minister Ezer Weizman. But he added: "As long as we find it necessary to impose order and prevent hostile activity, we shall control the area."

The primary reason for the invasion, Begin insisted, was to deny southern Lebanon to the guerrillas, though he added that real freedom from terrorist attacks could come only through a peace settlement. The motive was not revenge, he said, because "there cannot be any retaliation or retribution for the blood of innocent citizens." The newly named Chief of Staff, General Raphael Eitan, echoed the same theme when he quoted a line from Hebrew Poet Chaim Nachman Bialik: "Revenge for the killing of a small child has not yet been invented by Satan."

After the Palestinian raid, the U.S. counseled Israel that whatever response it decided to make should be measured and selective and should be aimed at military rather than civilian targets. The White House was advised of Israel's invasion of Lebanon only minutes before the operation was launched, though it had a pretty clear idea of what was going on. In any event, the White House felt that too much airpower was used, resulting in too many civilian casualties. The U.S. also concluded that the Israeli response was too massive for the situation.

Indeed, in Jerusalem's rhetoric, the peril represented by the Palestinians in southern Lebanon seemed almost deliberately overblown, as if the Begin regime had figured that the very size of Operation Stone of Wisdom might raise doubts in Washington and other capitals about whether this trip was really necessary. Inevitably, there would be suspicion that at least one aim of the excursion was to dramatize Israel's concern about security at a time when the Begin regime is under U.S. pressure to pull out of the occupied territories elsewhere, especially in the West Bank. Israeli military men say that they had to commit such a large force--elements of two divisions, plus considerable airpower--so as to be ready to take on the Syrians if they chose to send some of the 30,000 troops they have in Lebanon into the fray on the Palestinians' side. Nonetheless, the whole operation was open to question on several grounds.

For one thing, until the latest raid, Palestinian terrorist activity inside Israel had not been particularly heavy in recent months. Moreover, since southern Lebanon became a base of Palestinian operations in the early 1970s, the Israelis have clearly had the better of the sporadic cross-border conflict in the area. Also, U.S. officials point out, no "security zone," however it is policed, can offer Israel much additional protection from determined attack by fanatic Palestinian guerrillas. In fact, the attackers who seized the bus on the highway to Tel Aviv struck not across the Lebanese border but from the sea.

By Thursday, the Administration was strongly urging the Israelis to move out of south Lebanon. "We expect Israel to withdraw," the State Department declared flatly. "The Americans are now saying 'Get out, get out,' " complained an Israeli official, "but if we do that without some arrangement, the south will soon be back to where it was before this week." To meet these objections, the U.N., supporting the U.S. plan, appeared ready to vote to send a force to police southern Lebanon so that the Israelis would have no excuse for remaining. It was reported that this force would number 3,000 or 4,000 troops from Norway, Australia and other nations.

The latest hostilities have certainly not improved the prospects for the forthcoming Carter-Begin meeting. Nobody had been particularly hopeful anyway, especially after Begin let it be known three weeks ago that Israel no longer believes that U.N. Resolution 242, which among other things calls for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, applies to the West Bank. Now, as one Administration official puts it, "the main topic may be 'Get out of Lebanon.' " Carter will once more urge Begin to show more flexibility (over 242, for instance, and the question of Jewish settlements) and will undoubtedly express some serious reservations about the size and nature of the Israeli response to the terrorist attack. For his part, Begin will defend the venture in Lebanon as a vital security measure, and he will make a strong pitch to Carter to change his mind and refrain from selling F-15s to Saudi Arabia and F-5Es to Egypt. On that sensitive issue, Begin has been getting powerful (and perhaps decisive) support from Israel's vocal backers in the U.S.

The Administration proposal to sell jet aircraft to the Arabs (as well as to Israel) is a perfect illustration of the degree to which a Middle East peace settlement is in the long-term interests of the U.S. The congressional forces opposing the sale TAR of planes to Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been strengthened by the latest hostilities in the Middle East, and may manage to veto the deal. At the same time, the U.S. is negotiating with the Saudis to expand their petroleum production in the light of the increased fuel needs expected in the 1980s. But such an expansion would require an expenditure of up to $6 billion, and the Saudis are reluctant to make it unless they receive from the U.S. a demonstration of good faith--namely, the sale of the F-15s. If the U.S. withholds the planes, the Saudis are not likely to expand their production capacity, and the U.S. and its allies could run into critical energy shortages by the mid-1980s.

Of most immediate significance, however, is the effect of the recent violence on the Sadat peace initiative.

The pressures on the Egyptian President have seriously increased, even as the chances have diminished that he will be able to fulfill his role as catalyst for a comprehensive settlement embracing all the Arab nations that remain in a state of war with Israel. Some observers are convinced, however, that the P.L.O. raid and the Israeli reprisal are part of an inevitable chain of events that is pulling Sadat toward making a separate peace with Israel.

Reports TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn: "It is true that as of now no Egyptian official will admit that a separate peace is a possibility. Even the most moderate, like Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghali or pro-American Editor Mustafa Amin, maintain that a peace without the other Arabs is impossible. Sadat himself insists that he must have a comprehensive settlement, not an Israeli-Egyptian accord. But the gap between Sadat and the P.L.O. has widened almost to the point that it can never be bridged again, and the Egyptian President ultimately may have to make a choice between the P.L.O. and peace. Given his almost mystical commitment to the peace process and his bitterness toward the P.L.O., his choice almost certainly would be for peace.

"A separate peace is still a long way off, but such an accord would have to be camouflaged so that it would appear to be part of a comprehensive settlement. Until now, the Egyptians have retained the hope that the peace process can be salvaged, that Israel and Egypt may yet agree to a declaration of principles and invite some other Arabs--such as Jordan's King Hussein and some of the moderate Palestinians--to join the talks. But the raid along the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway indicates that in the last analysis the P.L.O. will throw its weight on the side of blocking negotiations rather than supporting them. If Sadat wants peace, and he wants it desperately, he may have to go it alone."

Such a solution would fulfill the wildest dreams of Menachem Begin, but the

Israeli Premier has not been doing much to bring it about. Sadat could not possibly afford to appear to be selling out the other Arabs; to do so would be to lose the vital financial support he receives from Saudi Arabia and the other oil-rich states (to the tune of $2 billion to $4 billion a year). Sadat could take such action only if the P.L.O. and the other Arabs dealt themselves out, but he certainly could not do it at a time when the Israelis, quite apart from refusing to withdraw from the lands they already occupy, are busy roaming over yet another Arab nation's territory. With rising anger, Sadat criticized Israel at week's end for "killing innocent civilians under the pretext of guaranteeing its security. We condemn such acts," he added, "as we have condemned earlier the massacre of Israeli civilians."

On the surface, Sadat's basic position has not changed. He refuses to speculate about what he would do if Egypt and Israel finally agreed to a declaration of principles and the other Arabs still refused to come in. "But it's hard to imagine that he would then shrug his shoulders and give up," continues Correspondent Wynn. "He regards the quest for peace as a sacred mission in the most literal sense--as a kind of special fate that he has accepted. The likelihood is that he would go ahead and make his settlement with Israel, leaving those blank spaces on the treaty for the others to sign if they ultimately come to their senses."

In the Middle East, it is often said "the Arabs cannot make war without the Egyptians, but they cannot make peace without the Palestinians." But perhaps, if all else fails, it would be worth a try.

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