A House Divided

By James Kelly

Hope grows dimmer for unifying Lebanon

On a map, the river is marked by a snaking blue line, somehow suggesting a broad rush of water. In reality, the Awali River of southern Lebanon is little more than a stream, no more than a dozen feet wide along much of its meandering course from Mount Barouk to the Mediterranean Sea. What makes the river significant, however, is not its size but the fact that its banks will mark a new military line once the Israeli army completes its partial withdrawal this fall. As such, the Awali has become the latest symbol of the fragmentation of Lebanon.

To prepare for the withdrawal, the Israelis were busy building fortifications along the southern banks of the Awali last week. They angered the country's Christian Phalangists by ordering their militia to close at least one of its barracks near Sidon, south of the Awali. In response, thousands of Christians in southern Lebanon protested by closing their shops and building roadblocks of smoldering tires and barbed wire. With the Syrians still showing no signs that they are prepared to remove any of their 60,000 troops from Lebanese soil, the country once again faced the prospect of increasing violence, together with a de facto partition.

Fearful that the Israeli pullback would take the pressure off the Syrians to withdraw their forces, the Reagan Administration attempted to put the best face possible on Israel's decision. Thus the White House played host to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Washington last week. The officials were rilling in for Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who one week earlier had unexpectedly canceled his own trip to the U.S. After more than 15 hours of talks at the State Department, Arens and Shamir met briefly with Ronald Reagan to offer publicly the assurance that had been worked out privately: the Israeli pullback to the Awali River would be the first stage in a complete withdrawal of Israel's 36,000 troops and not just a redeployment.

Essentially, the U.S.-Israeli talks boiled down to a series of reassurances. Aware that the Begin government would not back away from its decision, the Administration did not attempt to persuade the Israelis to forgo or postpone their plans. In return, Arens and Shamir agreed to redeploy Israeli troops in an orderly manner, coordinating with the Lebanese army so that it could move into the newly evacuated areas. Said a State Department official: "The Israelis assured us that they have no territorial ambitions in Lebanon and that the projected redeployment is in no way intended to contribute to divisions in Lebanon."

Those words were meant to assuage Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, who on a visit to the White House two weeks ago had expressed the fear that a partial Israeli withdrawal would give the Syrians an excuse to stay in the country indefinitely. In fact, the Israeli promise amounts to little more than words. The U.S. failed to secure a timetable for future withdrawals and did not discuss how Israel planned to patrol southern Lebanon once the redeployment was completed. When Gemayel finished his talks in Washington, according to a top State Department official, the U.S. promised "to do the best possible with the given circumstances." What was accomplished last week is not likely to satisfy Gemayel, but as a U.S. diplomat candidly admitted, "there was no alternative."

Nonetheless, Washington still hopes that by depicting the partial pullback as the first step in a complete Israeli withdrawal, it may be able to prevail upon Syria to remove some of its soldiers as well. As Reagan explained at his White House press conference last week, "It certainly will give us a better case for breaking the roadblock that has been established by Syria and persuading them to keep their original promise that when others withdrew, they would withdraw." That is the essence of the message U.S. Special Envoy Robert McFarlane is expected to carry to Syria on his first swing through the region this week, meeting with Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, among others. There is no indication, however, that the argument will change Syrian President Hafez Assad's mind.

Gemayel had other things to worry about last week. A new Syrian-backed coalition, the National Salvation Front, threatened to split Lebanon's 4 million people far more effectively than any foreign forces could. The front's three leaders represent the major religious opponents of Gemayel's Christian Phalange. As leader of the Druze, an esoteric, secretive religious sect that emerged in the 11th century as an offshoot of Islam, Walid Jumblatt, 34, speaks for about 250,000 Lebanese. Rashid Karami, 62, who served as Prime Minister during the 1960s and still retains a power base in Tripoli, is a Sunni Muslim, as are a million Lebanese. Though Suleiman Franjieh, 73, who served as President from 1970 to 1976, is a Maronite Christian like Gemayel, he has waged a long and bitter feud with Gemayel's family; Franjieh still holds the Phalangists responsible for the 1978 assassination of his eldest son Tony.

The new alliance hopes to administer the parts of northern and eastern Lebanon that are now under the control of the Syrian army. Gemayel responded to the new challenge by calling the opposition front a "soap bubble" and accusing the Druze chieftain of selling out to the Syrians. Franjieh, on the other hand, hinted that the front would be willing to negotiate with the government. "If the regime resorts to democracy in dealing with us, we shall do the same," he declared. "But if it resorts to nondemocratic methods, then the future is in God's hands."

The creation of the front is but the latest chapter in Lebanon's long-running history of sectarian strife. As early as the 12th century, Maronite Christians dwelled in what is now northern Lebanon, while the Druze occupied the Chouf Mountains and parts of southern Lebanon. When France gave Lebanon its full independence in 1943, the country's factions agreed to abide by an unwritten National Pact under which the top jobs would be parceled out on the basis of religion. The President had to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim.

Lebanon, nonetheless, remained what it had been during four centuries of Ottoman rule: a fractious collection of feudal baronies and religious enclaves, not a nation. The current crisis can be traced to the early 1970s, when the Palestine Liberation Organization moved its operations to southern Lebanon after being expelled from Jordan. When the Christian-dominated Lebanese government sought to rein in the P.L.O., the Palestinians threw their muscle behind the Muslims and the Druze, who harbored their own ancient animosities against the Christians. By 1975 the combined tensions had erupted into civil war. In June 1976 the Syrian army entered the fray to prevent a Christian defeat. Since then the Lebanese political scene has been marked by constantly shifting alliances and the violent unwillingness of Muslims and Christians to work together under a central government.

Since last summer's Israeli invasion, the fiercest internecine fighting has centered in the Chouf Mountains, a range of steep hillsides and gorges stretching about 20 miles southeast of Beirut. Most of the towns in the Chouf are either Christian or Druze; though Jumblatt's sect holds only a slim majority in the region, the Druze consider all of the Chouf to be their turf. When the Lebanese Forces, the Phalange-dominated militia, moved into the Chouf with the Israelis last summer, the Druze viewed the maneuver as a Christian grab for their terrain. Within weeks of the Israel-P.L.O. ceasefire, artillery duels between the Druze and the Christians began.

Now that the Israeli army is preparing to withdraw from the Chouf, the fighting promises to intensify. Last month Jumblatt announced that his Druze followers would block the Lebanese army from taking the place of the Israelis in the Chouf unless the National Pact of 1943 was renegotiated to give the Druze a bigger slice of power.

Jumblatt has been encouraged by Syria, which has made no secret of its role in helping set up the new National Salvation Front. Under Syrian tutelage, the front could evolve from an opposition group to another instrument in Assad's complex strategy to become the pre-eminent powerbroker in the Middle East. Indeed, the union between the front and Assad promises to complicate Syria's relations with Washington and Beirut. "The situation is much more difficult now," a senior Lebanese government official acknowledges. "Syria could try to exercise a veto over our domestic political process." As if to remind Gemayel's government of its weakness, Syria withdrew 1,000 troops from the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli last week, immediately setting off a bloody struggle between pro-and anti-Syrian factions. The maneuver appeared to be a dare to Gemayel to try extending his control to a city as chaotic as Tripoli.

The greatest danger of de facto partition is that a prolonged Israeli-Syrian face-off in Lebanon will eventually deteriorate into all-out war. That is reason enough for the U.S. to send Special Envoy McFarlane to Syria this week to pursue a goal that both his predecessor Philip Habib and Secretary of State Shultz have failed to achieve: the mutual withdrawal of Israeli and Syrian troops. A rookie in Middle East affairs, McFarlane might want to ponder the wisdom of the sign that hangs in the office of the United Nations peace-keeping force in the Lebanese town of Naqura. "If you're not confused by Lebanon," says the sign, "you don't understand it."

--By James Kelly.

Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington and Roberto Suro/Beirut

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, Roberto Suro This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.