Middle East Emergence of the "Shi'Ite Genie"

By William E. Smith.

Amid joy and cheering from the local populace, Israel completed the first stage of its planned three-phase withdrawal from Lebanon two weeks ago. But in the army's wake came new visitors to raise ominous questions about the region's future. Two days after the last Israeli convoy of some 40 vehicles had left Sidon (pop. 200,000), the largest city in southern Lebanon, there was a brief invasion of another kind. Into Sidon, by bus from Beirut, came a ragtag army of Shi'ite Muslim militants, swearing vengeance against Israel and Lebanon's Christian leadership and vowing to rebuild the country in the image of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's Iran.

Israel's efforts to gain the support of the Shi'ites, who make up 80% of the population of the south, had failed, and a growing resistance movement against the Israeli presence had exacted a mounting toll of casualties. Syria provided moral and logistical support to the Shi'ite resistance, finding this a way to fight Israel at little cost. One of the worst consequences of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as Israel's Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin put it last month, is that it let "the Shi'ite genie out of the bottle."

Israel decided unilaterally in January to pull out of Lebanon because attempts to work out a security agreement with Lebanon had failed. Plans call for a total withdrawal by this summer. Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres believes that the continuing occupation serves only to build the Shi'ite resistance and to increase Israeli losses. Those fatalities now total 621, more than 40% of them since the Palestine Liberation Organization was expelled from Beirut in August 1982.

In the meantime, diplomatic activity in pursuit of a Middle East peace plan has increased sharply. Though little was accomplished, the two-day Soviet- American talks in Vienna last week were the first high-level discussions on the Middle East that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. have held since 1977. A week earlier, King Hussein of Jordan and P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat had agreed on a joint approach to the Palestinian problem. The accord, the text of which Jordan released last Saturday, predictably called for Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupies. But the agreement also offered a conditional acceptance of United Nations Resolution 242, which acknowledges Israel's right ! to exist. In the past, the P.L.O. has adamantly refused to recognize Israel.

Only minutes after the last Israeli tank had pulled back from the Awali River bridge on Feb. 16, the Lebanese Army began to move into Sidon. Car horns blared, and Lebanese flags appeared everywhere. The festivities were interrupted when two Israeli Kfir fighters dived low over the city and released clouds of leaflets promising swift retaliation in the event of hostile action against Israel's withdrawing forces. But about the only violence that day occurred when armed men dragged a pajama-clad man, suspected of collaborating with the Israelis, from his house, bundled him into a car trunk and drove off. All told, half a dozen alleged collaborators are believed to have been killed in Sidon since the pullout. Many others had fled Sidon earlier.

A rare demonstration of unity took place the next day when the city's largely Sunni Muslim population greeted Lebanon's Maronite Christian President Amin Gemayel and Prime Minister Rashid Karami. The two leaders wept as thousands shouted, "Long live Lebanon, long live Gemayel, long live the resistance!" During the demonstration Gemayel declared his support of "the honorable national resistance movement," an indication of his growing ties with Syria, whose government is trying to increase its political influence in Lebanon. Gemayel's remarks were ironic because his family had welcomed the Israeli forces into Lebanon in 1982 as a means of ridding the country of dominance by the P.L.O. Snapped Defense Minister Rabin: "It is a demonstration of arrogance and ill will. He wouldn't be President if it weren't for our involvement."

The illusion of national unity vanished the next day, however, when thousands of armed Shi'ite militiamen held angry antigovernment demonstrations. The gunmen staged marches, chanted "Death to Gemayel!" and called for the establishment of an Islamic republic in Lebanon. Though the demonstrators stayed only for the day, they infuriated the local Sunni Muslims. Said one community leader: "We just got rid of the Israelis, and now we have these people."

Though the first withdrawal phase has been completed, the Israelis are still occupying the heartland of Shi'ite resistance, dozens of hill villages to the northeast of Tyre. So far, two senior Israeli officers and a sergeant have been killed behind the new lines. A pro-Israeli militia, the South Lebanon Army, once estimated to number over 2,000, has lost a third of its members through defections in recent months, and could disintegrate completely once the Israelis have pulled back behind their border. Israel has faced a dismal choice: to stay on in Lebanon, sustaining more casualties and serving as a catalyst for the growth of the Shi'ite resistance, or to withdraw, perhaps leaving its northern settlements vulnerable to attack. Though the majority of the Cabinet voted for withdrawal, regarding it in Rabin's words as "the right solution in a difficult reality," some Cabinet members remain firmly opposed to that action. Says Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the Likud bloc in the national unity government: "We are withdrawing without securing Galilee."

With reporting by John Borrell/Beirut and Robert Slater/Jerusalem