A Dangerous Vulnerability

By Jordan Bonfante

Israeli raids and internal feuds raise fears of a new blowup

Israeli Phantom jets screeched over the Litani River, pummeling Palestinian artillery positions with bombs and rockets. Strike troops assaulted 18 different guerrilla positions. In a dramatic foray against Beaufort Castle, once a Crusaders' stronghold, Israeli attackers and Palestinian defenders engaged in vicious hand-to-hand combat. One artillery barrage alone, against Palestinian encampments in the town of Nabatiye, dropped an estimated 2,500 shells. Said a survivor: "They came down on us like rain."

The five-hour strike, which the Israeli government called a "preventive measure," was the most severe assault against Palestinian positions in southern Lebanon in more than two years. As if to emphasize the significance of the attack, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who is Israel's Acting Defense Minister, spent part of the night at command headquarters for the operation in the border town of Metulla. Coincidentally, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, was directing the defense both in the field and from his headquarters in Beirut. At the end of the raid, Israeli forces withdrew, claiming that they had killed at least 60 P.L.O. commandos and had destroyed twelve artillery pieces and five gun-carrying vehicles. The attackers' losses: a reported three dead, twelve wounded.

Hostilities continued for three more days as Israel and P.L.O. forces engaged in a prolonged artillery-vs. -aircraft duel. From its southern Lebanon positions, the P.L.O. fired a series of its Soviet-made Katyusha rockets onto an Israeli settlement in the Galilee panhandle. In response, Israeli planes launched another series of bombing runs against P.L.O. bases in Lebanon.

Coming on top of the Knesset's resolution formally annexing East Jerusalem, the Israeli raid roused a new wave of Arab anger and seemed to deliver another setback to the stalled negotiations on Palestinian autonomy. At the U.N. last week the Security Council, by a vote of 14 to 0 with the U.S. abstaining, approved a much revised resolution condemning Israel for seeking to change the status of the Holy City. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, explaining the American abstention, chided the U.N. for making "useless pronouncements" and said: "We are absolutely and firmly committed to the success of the process begun at Camp David and its ultimate goal of a just and lasting peace throughout the region."

For its part, Israel responded with an anger that was directed at the U.S. as well as the U.N. A foreign ministry statement said that Israel "categorically rejects the resolution," which it termed not only unjust but further "proof that the U.N. has been turned into an instrument of Israel's enemies." Then Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir summoned U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis to express Israel's "disappointment" over U.S. failure to veto the resolution.

The Israeli strikes into "Fatahland" also dramatized the dangerous vulnerability of Lebanon, which is as helpless to fend off such external attacks as it is to control its own endemic sectarian strife. Beirut has been sliding deeper into its gloomiest mood since the civil war of 1975-76. Sniping attacks between armed rival gangs, unexplained explosions, mysterious abductions--the common currency of a city on the edge of anarchy--are on the increase. Shops close shortly after sundown, and the streets are nearly empty by early evening. Wealthy Lebanese have again sent their wives and children out of Beirut for safety. Says a leading businessman: "We are all waiting and wondering when the explosion will come."

The detonation that is widely expected is a fratricidal attack by Christian militiamen in east Beirut against Palestinian commandos in west Beirut. If the two armed camps come to blows, the Syrians might once again step in on behalf of the Palestinians, and Israel might act to help the Christians by sending troops or blockading parts of southern Lebanon.

The danger for wider conflict lies in the tragic reality that Lebanon--in the best of times an uneasy pastiche of disparate religious and political groups--is a cockpit of regional, not just local, antagonisms. The key rival forces:

> The Christians, mainly Arabic-speaking Maronites, who make up about 42% of Lebanon's 3 million population, control the eastern sector of Beirut and some 400 miles of northern hinterland. The Christians in Beirut are themselves divided, along feudal family lines, into two main warring factions--the strongly rightist Phalange, headed by 75-year-old Pierre Gemayel, and the slightly more moderate National Liberal Party of former President Camille Chamoun.

>The Israelis, who have been actively backing the Christian militias in Beirut with arms and training since the start of the civil war, apparently aim to keep the country divided and neutralized. Through a surrogate force headed by a maverick Christian officer, Saad Haddad, the Israelis also effectively control a buffer zone just inside Lebanon's southern border (see box).

> The Palestinians, who are pitted against the Christian militia, represent the fighting edge of a leftist, largely Muslim coalition that calls itself the National Movement. The Muslims, who probably constitute a majority of Lebanon's population--no one can be sure since there has been no census in 48 years--have been strongly influenced by the P.L.O. ever since the end of the civil war, when the Palestinians emerged as a powerful state within a state, controlling most of southern Lebanon.

> The Syrians, who have always tak en a proprietary interest in neighboring Lebanon, still have 22,000 peace-keeping troops in the country. Most of the Syrian soldiers are in predominantly Muslim sectors, and Damascus has tended to support the Muslim-Palestinian cause. Syria also arms and trains one of the main P.L.O. guerrilla groups, Saiqa.

The new tensions stem from the aftermath of what the Lebanese have come to call the July 7 coup. In a decisive, three-day military showdown between the two main Christian groups, Gemayel's

Phalangists virtually wiped out the army of Chamoun's National Liberal Party. More than 100 people were reported to have been killed in the savage fighting, in which tanks as well as artillery were used. As a result, the Phalangists emerged as the dominant Christian military force. Now there are fears that the aggressive Phalangists will try to parlay their conquest with an offensive against the Palestinians, whom they have always wanted to crush or expel from Lebanon.

Openly admitting that they are preparing for a "war of liberation," the Phalangists have been building up their well-armed militia core of 15,000, and claim they could field a total Christian force of 40,000, complete with artillery and 40 U.S.-made Sherman tanks supplied by Israel. For its part, the P.L.O., which also claims it can deploy a force of 40,000 men, has quietly moved 1,000 of its frontline commandos, supported by at least a dozen Soviet T-34 tanks, from southern Lebanon into west Beirut.

Phalangist Military Commander Bashir Gemayel, 33, who led the attack on Chamoun's Christian faction, is swaggeringly belligerent. "What happened on July 7 was an action [to prepare] to fight the [real] enemy, the Palestinians," says the cocksure son of Phalangist Patriarch Gemayel, who is known as Sheikh Bashir. "The Palestinians have two-thirds of the country. We cannot free Lebanon of their domination while we engage in [our own] stupid quarrels. There can be only one military command, only one army for the Christians."

In a Palestinian-controlled sector of west Beirut, a leading official of the hardline Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Bassam Abu Sherif, counters with some contemptuous belligerence of his own. "We would love a confrontation with Bashir," says Abu Sherif. "If the Christian camp moves against the Palestinians and the progressives, their forces will certainly be beaten." He also cautions against the evident dangers of escalation. "We are sure Bashir is coordinating with the Israelis," he says. "It is very serious. In the coming months, the Israelis may feel they have a free hand."

Lebanon's own leadership, meanwhile, appears to be hopelessly unequipped to deal with a deteriorating situation. The 22,000-man Lebanese army has neither the training, the equipment nor the unity to step in decisively. President Elias Sarkis has been unable to find a Prime Minister capable of recruiting an effective Cabinet. Early this month, veteran Politician Takieddin Solh, 71, gave up the mandate to form a government. That left Selim Hoss, 50, a respected, long-suffering conciliator who has held the thankless post since 1976, still in charge as caretaker Prime Minister a month after his resignation. "The dimensions of our problem go beyond Lebanon, but we are forced to deal with it with local tools," Hoss recently lamented. "There is no solution for Lebanon unless there is a solution for the Palestinian problem--and that is not within our control." --By Jordan Bonfante. Reported by William Stewart/Beirut and lavid Aikman/Jerusalem

With reporting by William Stewart, DAVID AIKMAN

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