Scorching Lebanon

Israel's air and artillery raids bring widespread condemnation

Speaking sternly before the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young last week issued the harshest denunciation ever expressed by the U.S. Government toward Israel's policy of staging pre-emptive raids on Palestinian outposts in southern Lebanon. This time he was not speaking just for himself. Said Young, who resigned under fire last month but will retain his U.N. post until later this year: "We condemn the policy of artillery shelling and attacks on Lebanese towns, villages and refugee camps ... Let there be no doubt or ambiguity about this. We cannot and do not agree with Israel's military policies in Lebanon. They are wrong and unacceptable to my Government."

Though Young also warned the Palestinians that their aims cannot be achieved through terrorism, his admonition to the Israelis signified a rising concern in Washington that Israel's air and artillery attacks are jeopardizing the delicate peace process. For four months Israel and its Christian Lebanese allies have relentlessly bombarded real or imagined bastions of Palestinian guerrillas in southern Lebanon in what some U.S. officials openly describe as a "scorched earth strategy." In recent weeks these attacks have increased sharply, killing large numbers of Lebanese civilians, destroying hundreds of civilian homes, and in the process further tarnishing Israel's reputation abroad.

Why is Israel engaging in so destructive a policy? Says one U.S. expert on the Middle East: "It's astonishing. The Israelis actually seem to think they are close to giving a knockout blow to the Palestine Liberation Organization. But if anything, P.L.O. morale is higher than before. Their strength has not even been touched." Since the latest wave of Israeli attacks coincided with the current diplomatic offensive of the P.L.O., some Western observers have concluded that Israel's real motive in Lebanon is a devious one: to make it impossible for P.L.O. Chief Yasser Arafat to pursue a moderate course, in opposition to more radical colleagues, and thereby to destroy any chance of a rapprochement between the U.S. and the P.L.O. Concludes one American diplomat: "It's a cynical course of action, but from the Israeli viewpoint, it will probably be quite effective."

One result of the Israeli raids on Lebanon is that they are driving Western Europe even further toward the Arab camp. West Germany and France, in particular, are hoping to secure from the Arab oil states some kind of agreement guaranteeing oil supplies and are impatient with Israeli intransigence. Before leaving for the Middle East last week, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher emphasized his government's support of Palestinian self-determination and its disapproval of the Israeli tactics in Lebanon. Privately the West Germans are furious that the Carter Administration has backtracked on its recent hints that there should be U.S. contacts with the P.L.O., which the Europeans regard as an essential step toward a Middle East peace. Snapped a West German diplomat of Washington's recent performance: "It's chaos, not governing."

Certainly the Israeli raids have made Washington's predicament more difficult. The Administration hedged on its tentative approaches to the P.L.O. after the shower of protests from the Israelis and Israel's backers in the U.S. But the Administration was openly angry at the Israelis for their most recent raids on Lebanon, particularly since Washington suspects the Israelis are continuing to use American-supplied equipment in violation of a previous agreement with the U.S. But the State Department was not particularly anxious to pursue that point just now. A spokesman emphasized that the Administration was not contemplating a reduction in the $2.7 billion in military aid already committed to Israel as a way to browbeat Jerusalem into ceasing its artillery attacks in Lebanon. Said one State Department official: "We don't want to be the ones to carry an arms reduction proposal up to Capitol Hill."

The Israelis themselves are clearly worried about the effects of the recent raids. Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan questioned whether the policy was worth the price in terms of world opinion, but the Israeli Cabinet decided that the strikes should continue. Some Cabinet members also criticized Dayan for engaging in a bit of private fact-finding reminiscent of Andy Young: an unauthorized meeting with P.L.O. sympathizers in Gaza. Unlike Young, Dayan kept his job. The Israelis say their aims in southern Lebanon are threefold: to force the Palestinian guerrillas to leave the area, to help the enclave of Lebanese Christians and Shi'ites survive in a buffer zone along the border, and to strengthen Israel's bargaining position in any future negotiations with Syria concerning the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israelis claim that Palestinian terrorists attempted 27 raids on Israeli territory from Lebanon in the past four months, and that each time the Palestinians were fought back or headed off. So the Israelis feel justified in bombing and strafing the border area at will, aiding the Lebanese Christian militia and maintaining three sophisticated observation posts in Lebanese territory.

The view from the Lebanese side is strikingly different, as TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Dean Brelis discovered when he visited the area last week with Beirut Reporter Abu Said Abu Rish. Brelis' report:

All over the south of Lebanon now there is emptiness. No one works the fields; the shepherds are gone, and so are their flocks. Two hundred thousand people have fled the south. Until last week's Israeli raids, according to Lebanese observers, 190 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians had been killed, and 350 had been wounded during the four-month period.

In last week's attacks, when the shells and bombs came in at the rate of 100 an hour over a 24-hour period, said Lebanese witnesses, another 100 civilians were killed.

One conclusion is evident to anyone who visits the area: the civilians have taken a ruthless beating.

In Tyre, once a lovely city of 60,000 people, with magnificent ruins dating back to the days of Alexander the Great, many homes and other buildings have been hammered into rubble by the Israeli attacks. Quite obviously these structures had no military significance. One can imagine an occasional mistake in wartime; but not when at least 100 civilian homes are destroyed in 24 hours, as happened last weekend. The bombs even hit a hospital to which 70 casualties of the bombings had already been brought. Of those 70 people, not one was a soldier.

One victim of the latest bombing was Therese Assale, 35, who had fled with her family at the start of the Israeli bombardment. A few days later she returned to the ruin of her home to salvage a blanket, some sweaters and a silver medallion of the Virgin Mary. Three of her friends had been buried alive in the rubble.

Another survivor was Zakia Fahoury, 88. She was lucky to be able to take refuge in a deep cellar where she keeps a supply of canned food and bottled water. Like many of her neighbors, she was determined to remain in Tyre, even though there was no electricity or running water and the Israeli raids could begin again at any time. "If we leave," she reasoned, "we will become like the Palestinians. We will lose our homes and our land." sb

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