Guns of April

A savage new siege

Down the mean streets of Beirut and across the green mountains to the east, the guns of Lebanon sounded once again last week. In the fiercest fighting since 1978, Syrian peace-keeping forces and Lebanese Christian militiamen squared off for control of Zahle (pop. 200,000), a city in the Bekaa Valley, 25 miles east of Beirut. For eight days the Syrian forces, using field artillery, tank guns and rocket launchers, pounded Christian positions in and around the city, which is located just off the strategic Beirut-Damascus highway. Christian militiamen in the city and nearby hills returned the fire with their own artillery.

The fighting quickly spread to Beirut, where artillery duels broke out across the three-mile Green Line that divides the city's Christian and Muslim sectors. In Southern Lebanon, meanwhile, the Israeli-supported Christian forces of Lebanese Major Sa'ad Haddad shelled Muslim and Palestinian sections of the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon, while Israeli paratroopers launched large-scale attacks against Palestinian strongholds in the area. With concerted international help, Lebanon's President Elias Sarkis managed to obtain a tenuous ceasefire. As International Red Cross convoys rushed into the stricken areas with medical assistance, the country counted the grim toll: at least 265 civilians killed, more than 1,000 wounded.

The most worrisome aspect of the crisis was that the hostilities could touch off a wider Middle East conflict. Israel has thrown its support behind the Lebanese Christians in their conflict first with the Palestinians, more recently with the Syrians. Lebanese leftists and Palestine Liberation Organization leaders charge that Israel is behind a Christian plot to drive the Syrians out of the Bekaa Valley and link up with Major Haddad's Christian contingent in the South. For this reason, the Syrians positioned the bulk of their 22,000 troops in the Lebanon valley.

Ironically, the Syrian army had originally entered Lebanon in November 1976 as the protector of the Christians in their civil war against the leftist Muslims and Palestinians. The troops have remained there under a peace-keeping mandate from the Arab League. By 1978, however, the Christians had turned against the Syrians and after bitter fighting managed to force them to withdraw from Christian areas of Beirut.

At week's end the weak Lebanese security forces took up truce-keeping duties in Zahle. But both sides were already building up their reinforcements with a vengeance. The betting was that it would be only an interlude, too brief, as always before another bloody siege.

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