The Siege of Beirut: Week Six

By Marguerite Johnson

As Israel's patience wears thin, the fighting escalates dangerously

It was the Muslim feast day of Id al Fitr, marking the end of the monthlong Ramadan fast. As the first light of day fell over West Beirut, families gathered in the city's cemeteries to mourn their dead. Some people quietly prayed and read the Koran beside older graves marked by marble slabs and beribboned arbors. Others wept beside the many fresh mounds of dirt, marked only by cinder blocks. Near by lay picks and shovels left by gravediggers the evening before. As a heavyset middle-aged woman dropped leafy sprigs on three fresh graves, she became hysterical and collapsed into the arms of those who rushed to help her. The graves held her husband and two sons.

The mourning of Id al Fitr is traditionally followed by the exchange of sweetmeats, and festive family gatherings. But as the Israeli siege of Beirut went into its sixth week, the mood was tense and somber. In the first aerial bombardment in more than a month, Israeli warplanes three times last week conducted dive-bombing raids against predominantly Muslim West Beirut, where some 6,000 P.L.O. commandos have been sealed off, along with 500,000 residents. The main Israeli targets were P.L.O. Chief Yasser Arafat's headquarters, located in the Fakhani neighborhood south of the center of the city, and P.L.O. positions near the Burj el Barajneh refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut's paralyzed international airport. Some 20 to 30 miles to the east, Israeli air force planes bombed Syrian and Palestinian positions at Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, as well as Syrian armored positions in the center of the valley. On Saturday, Israel lost its second warplane of the conflict, when a Phantom F-4 jet was hit by a Syrian SA-8 missile over Bekaa. It was the first time that the antiaircraft missile had been used in the Lebanon fighting. The Israelis immediately launched heavy raids against other suspected Syrian missile positions.

Israeli military officials insisted that the attacks were retaliatory responses to cease-fire violations by the Syrians and the P.L.O., not a major escalation in the fighting. They blamed the Syrians for the ambush that took the lives of five Israeli soldiers on patrol in the Bekaa Valley on Wednesday. Said a high-ranking official in Tel Aviv's Defense Ministry: "We are sending a message to the Syrians and to the besieged Palestinians: We will not let the situation develop into a war of attrition." Meanwhile, Fadel el Dani, 37, the deputy director of the P.L.O. office in Paris, was assassinated late last week when his car blew up as he was starting it, apparently the result of a bomb. The P.L.O.'s Paris director, Ibrahim Souss, blamed "Israeli terrorism" for Dani's death, but the Israeli embassy denied that Israelis had been responsible.

The focus of the negotiations to end the Beirut stalemate shifted to Washington, where President Reagan met with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal and Syria's Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam. Then Reagan's special Middle East envoy, Philip Habib, set off on a mission to Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in an attempt to find a new home for the P.L.O. guerrillas, who have conditionally promised to leave Lebanon. But the Israeli government was showing increasing signs of impatience with the stalemate. Prime Minister Menachem Begin charged that the P.L.O. was taking advantage of the standoff to advance its own cause. "Arafat is trying to be smart," he told a group of disabled Israeli war veterans. "But it won't take long for us to wipe him out."

If the Israelis decide to launch an all-out assault on West Beirut, they may have a tougher time than if they had invaded the city in early June. The Palestinian and left-wing Lebanese fighters in the city have used the past six weeks to transform West Beirut into a fortress. Western diplomats expect the Palestinians to put up a spirited defense, if only because they have no choice. By surrounding the city, the Israelis have cut off all escape routes. Meanwhile, the perception that a few thousand guerrillas have stood off the Israeli army for more than a month, longer than any Arab army since the 1948 war, has boosted P.L.O. morale.

The P.L.O. cannot hope to keep the Israelis out of West Beirut once a major offensive begins. But the Palestinians' aim is to inflict enough casualties on the Israelis to persuade them that the effort is too costly. Says a P.L.O. commander: "If they attack, everyone will be the loser. Beirut will be destroyed. We will be destroyed, and the Israelis will be destroyed." Another Palestinian officer notes that the Israelis like to fight in the open, where they can make use of their air superiority. Says he: "We will get them in the streets, where we can fight man to man." Armed with anti-tank weapons, machine guns and assault rifles, P.L.O. squads have been assigned to specific positions in apartment buildings. Earthen barricades have been bulldozed all over the city. Many roads are mined; others have holes dug, waiting to receive mines. The Israeli bombardment has helped the effort by creating numerous bomb craters and piles of rubble. Perhaps the best P.L.O. fortification is the city itself, a dense warren of apartment buildings and houses that provides ideal cover for urban guerrilla warfare.

Israeli military and government officials are contemplating the costs of an assault. Still, they insist that Israel is not bluffing when it threatens to destroy West Beirut. At a meeting of air force officers last week, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon recited a list of occasions on which Begin has carried out his threats. Two examples: the decision to send Israeli planes to destroy an Iraqi nuclear reactor outside Baghdad last year, and the Israeli air force's bombing of the Syrian SA-6 missiles in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley during Israel's invasion of Lebanon. One theory last week was that the Israelis might concentrate their attack on P.L.O. strongholds in the southern suburbs of Beirut, instead of risking a bruising head-on battle in the city's center, where they would be at a greater disadvantage.

Even as the siege developed into a grim routine for residents of West Beirut, the hostilities apparently claimed yet another innocent victim: David S. Dodge, 58, acting president of the American University of Beirut. He was kidnaped by four gunmen as he walked from his office to his campus home. Dodge was a rarity in Lebanon's tangled political web: an American with long ties to the country, who was respected and liked by all factions. Hours later, Arafat expressed his concern and ordered his aides to launch a search for the scholar. At week's end Dodge was still missing. --By Marguerite Johnson.

Reported by David Aikman/Jerusalem and Roberto Suro/Beirut

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, Roberto Suro

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