Mysterious Peace Plan for Lebanon

One other sticky question was discussed by the Reagan and Begin teams during the Prime Minister's visit: What to do about the competing military forces entrenched in various sections of war-shattered Lebanon? TIME has learned that a plan for resolving the Lebanese crisis has been a subject of debate among high officials in Israel. Its authorship is unclear--for quite plausible reasons. So deep are the animosities involved that the Israelis might reject out of hand any proposal made by the Palestine Liberation Organization or its Syrian allies; the Palestinians and Syrians will have no truck with anything that originates in Jerusalem. Israeli sources claimed that the plan had been proposed by Philip Habib, the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East. American diplomats insist that the U.S. has not put forward a comprehensive proposal. As outlined by Israeli officials, perhaps as a trial balloon they hope to shoot down, the plan involves three stages of diplomatic and military movements:

>Saudi Arabia would take the lead in getting an Arab League committee to agree that the plan should be pursued. Then the heavy artillery now manned in southern Lebanon by Palestinian guerrillas, as well as by the Israeli army, would be withdrawn from all points south of the Litani River.

>The Palestinian forces would withdraw from their enclave around the coastal city of Tyre, and also reduce their guerrilla strength from a current level of about 700 to 200 in the region south of the Litani River that is controlled by UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon). At the same time, Israel would remove all of its troops from the area controlled by Major Sa'ad Haddad's Christian militia, which has been working closely with the Israelis. Lebanese government forces would be allowed to take over this area and would absorb Haddad's fighters.

>Finally, Syrian forces would withdraw from all parts of Lebanon except the Bekaa Valley, where Syrian antiaircraft missiles were installed last April. At the same time U.N. troops would supervise the removal of all heavy weapons, including the Syrian missiles, from points south of the Zahrani River, which cuts across southern Lebanon north and west of the Litani. At this point, Israeli and Lebanese officials would begin talks on how to make the recent cease-fire a lasting one and how to prevent border violations.

One right-wing Christian commander, Bashir Gemayel of the Phalangists, secretly visited Israel before Begin departed for the U.S. and then announced that he had officially dissociated himself from Israel. There was no public Israeli complaint. This could be a first step in carrying out one goal of the plan: ending Israel's active support of the Christian forces in their struggle against the Syrians, Palestinians and leftist Lebanese Muslims.

Israeli officials complain that the plan, as they understand it, is flawed, since it does not call for a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and leaves some Palestinian artillery in place north of the Litani. Some U.S. officials in the Middle East, who profess to have no knowledge of the proposals, viewed the leaks from Israel about the plan as a clever disinformation ploy. Moreover, they argued, neither Haddad nor P.L.O. Chief Yasser Arafat would ever agree to such a withdrawal of their forces. There is widespread skepticism, moreover, that the Lebanese government army is effectual enough to be trusted with control of southern Lebanon. And many experts doubt that Syria would agree to pulling back its missiles under any continuing public pressure from Israel.

Still, the plan is no fiction. TIME has also learned that it has been circulated in detail, under tight security wraps, at United Nations headquarters in New York.

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