Facing Syria's Challenge

By Marguerite Johnson

As rebels keep up the pressure, Arafat searches for support

With its clean palm-lined boulevards and whitewashed houses, the capital of Tunisia is far, both in spirit and geography, from the fratricidal politics of the Middle East. Nonetheless, Tunis was the scene last week of a series of meetings that were being watched closely by leaders throughout the Arab world. Shuttling between a sumptuous seaside villa and an elegant resort hotel were Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, who only a week earlier had been unceremoniously declared persona non grata in Syria, and key members of the P.L.O.'s powerful Executive Committee. At stake was the future of Arafat's leadership and of the organization that he has transformed from a loose and ineffectual association into a powerful force for Palestinian nationalism.

In keeping with the mood, the men met not amid the gilded furniture of the villa's main floor but in a sparse, well-protected basement room with a solitary window. There, around a plain Formica-topped table, the senior P.L.O. leaders addressed the immediate problem: the plight of several thousand commandos loyal to Fatah, the Arafat-led group that accounts for 80% of the P.L.O.'s membership, who were trapped in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. For the past two months, a faction of Fatah guerrillas opposed to Arafat's leadership had, with the backing of Syrian armor, gradually pushed the loyalists from their positions eastward across the valley. The fighting threatened to spread to the town of Baalbek, where some 10,000 Palestinian civilians live. Beyond the immediate military crisis loomed the larger issue of whether the P.L.O. could retain its independence in the face of Syrian President Hafez Assad's determined bid to make the organization subservient to Syrian interests.

Wearing his jaunty army cap, Arafat seemed surprisingly relaxed. He joked and smiled as the Executive Committee got down to the hard task of determining what to do in the face of Syria's challenge. By week's end the committee had decided to send a six-man delegation to Syria to hold talks with Assad and the Fatah rebels. About the same time, word reached Tunis that an informal cease-fire had been arranged in the Bekaa. That agreement called for all guerrilla forces on both sides to withdraw from the area around the Beirut-Damascus highway and to release their respective prisoners. Said P.L.O. Spokesman Abdel Mohsen Abu Maizer, in Tunis: "We will not destroy each other. Our main enemy remains those who deny our national rights." At week's end, however, the truce broke down amid sporadic fighting. Observed a participant in the Tunis talks: "According to Arab tradition, we can have confrontation and then reconciliation, but I don't believe we can this time."

Meanwhile the Saudis and the Algerians also tried to heal the breach. Late last week a joint Saudi-Algerian delegation went to Damascus and reportedly urged that a summit be convened to bring Arafat and Assad together.

Summit or no, the differences will not be easy to patch up. Deep personal animosity between the two leaders has exacerbated a fundamental and longstanding disagreement over how much independence the P.L.O. should have. Said a senior P.L.O. official in Damascus: "Assad's price for good relations with the P.L.O. has been the same for years. Syria must have a large, and if possible, commanding say over the P.L.O.'s political direction."

Arafat's position began to weaken after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon last summer forced him and his P.L.O. fighters to leave Beirut. More than 10,000 Palestinian guerrillas are now in Lebanon, however, including several thousand who have returned. Those near the front line with Israel in the Bekaa are under the control of Syria's 50,000-man armed force. Tensions began to mount in April, when Arafat met with Jordan's King Hussein to discuss the possibility of allowing Hussein, in association with the Palestinians, to negotiate with the U.S. and Israel on President Reagan's Sept. 1 plan to link the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza to Jordan. Syria strongly opposed the Reagan plan, which ignored Syria's ambitions to play a major political role in the region; so did radical elements in the P.L.O., who charged that Arafat was drawing too close to the U.S. They criticized not only Arafat's discussions with Hussein but his advocacy last September of a peace plan, hammered out by 20 Arab leaders in Fez, Morocco, that implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist.

The Fatah mutiny gave Assad an opening to try to exert greater control over the P.L.O. Syria at present has more troops and armor along the Beirut-Damascus highway than it had there in late May, when tensions with Israel were high. While the mutinous Palestinian fighters, under the leadership of Said Mousa, a veteran Fatah colonel, repeatedly attacked posts manned by troops loyal to Arafat, the Syrians sometimes backed them up with tanks. Led by Arafat's chief deputy for military affairs, Abu Jihad, who has been one of his most trusted aides since 1964, the Fatah loyalists were driven from their positions along the highway across the entire width of the Bekaa.

From the start, Arafat's personal leadership was not really at issue. Even Colonel Mousa recognized that the P.L.O. has no other personality with the diplomatic skills and stature of Arafat. But the dispute could force a change in both the style and substance of Arafat's actions and produce a more radical P.L.O.

The strongest support for Arafat's leadership came from Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. A dozen organizations in Nablus expressed their "deep commitment" to Arafat. A poll conducted by an Arab weekly in East Jerusalem reported that 92% of the Palestinians surveyed favored Arafat. Said Mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem: "We have been deeply moved by the recent events. Let it be known to all Arab leaders that only Israel will gain from all of this."

Israeli officials argued that the Fatah fighting showed that the P.L.O. was too badly split to represent the Palestinian people. But for a brief period last week, Israelis were more concerned about what they perceived to be a shift in U.S. policy. Reports from Washington suggested that the U.S. was pressing Israel to set a timetable for a unilateral withdrawal of its 38,000 troops from Lebanon. But both Washington and Jerusalem later confirmed that the proposal had merely been a "trial balloon" put forth by U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib. It was rejected by Israel.

Nonetheless, Israeli public opinion increasingly favors a pullback from Lebanon. Israeli troops continue to suffer casualties. Israelis, moreover, increasingly fear that they will never be able to cope with the quagmire that is Lebanon. One small example of Israel's concern: what to do with at least 5,000 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners they have held for the past year at Ansar in southern Lebanon.

The next move appears to be up to Assad. Syria, bolstered by the buildup of Soviet arms, is increasingly an Arab power that cannot be ignored. Before leaving for Asia two weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz remarked that "Damascus holds the key" to the withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon. As he prepared to return home, Shultz hinted that he might stop over in the Middle East this week, but only if there is "fertile ground" for serious discussions. --By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by Harry Kelly/Jerusalem and William Stewart/Tunis

With reporting by Harry Kelly/Jerusalem, William Stewart/Tunis This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.