Hostages Stalemate in a Tormented Land

By John Greenwald

The videotape image showed a weary-looking American hostage with a stubbly growth of beard. "This is the last message," wrote Captive Alann Steen the next day. "Once again we announce that we will be executed at midnight." Steen issued his stark pronouncement in an open letter last week that was signed as well by fellow U.S. Hostages Robert Polhill and Jesse Turner. Terrorists were threatening to kill the Americans and Indian National Mithileshwar Singh, also a Beirut University College professor, unless Israel released 400 imprisoned Arabs by the following midnight. But as the deadline expired, the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, which holds the four captives, said it would spare their lives "until further notice."

% The last-minute reprieve was amplified at week's end by another statement from the captors that omitted any new threat of execution. It was one of the few hopeful signs amid what appeared to be a hopeless stalemate in efforts to free any of the 24 foreign hostages in Lebanon. Despite denials, reports persisted that the U.S. and Israel were negotiating through third parties with Shi'ite Muslim terrorists over the release of some or all of the kidnap victims in exchange for the 400 prisoners. As the guessing game continued, pessimism grew about an agreement anytime soon. With rumors shifting almost by the hour, Washington kept the Sixth Fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. The aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy and six other warships were ordered to leave the port of Haifa in Israel after a six-day call, and resumed sea patrol. Meanwhile, anxiety deepened further over the fate of Anglican Envoy Terry Waite, who vanished last month while seeking freedom for the American captives.

At times bloodshed seemed to be war-torn Lebanon's only certainty. A powerful car bomb killed 15 people and injured 80 in a suburb of Muslim West Beirut as the week began. The moderate Shi'ite Amal militia blamed the blast on the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was driven out of Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion, and is now trying to make a comeback. Battles raged throughout the week between Amal militiamen and Palestinian fighters. In Beirut a relentless Amal blockade of Palestinian camps forced thousands of starving residents to adopt extreme measures to feed themselves (see box). In southern Lebanon, Israeli warplanes struck Palestinian guerrilla bases outside the port of Sidon.

The week's most riveting drama focused on the four Beirut University College teachers who were kidnaped in January. As the week began, Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut a six-minute videotape of Steen reading a statement from the captives. Then, hours before the execution deadline, the terrorists released a handwritten text of another letter that ended with moving messages. Steen, a journalism instructor, wrote to his wife, "I don't want to see you cry anymore. Tell them to release the 400. I love you." Wrote Accounting Lecturer Polhill: "Foura, I love you. Sorry I've messed up so much." Referring to himself in the third person, he added, "Life was the only thing he ever finished." As midnight approached, the hostages' wives pleaded on TV for mercy for their husbands.

At precisely midnight the kidnapers cited the family appeals among their reasons for lifting the execution threat. The captors seemed intrigued, however, by remarks of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres concerning the 400 Arab prisoners. While Peres declared, "Israel cannot and will not act according to ultimatums," he added that "if anyone has any offers, he should please turn to Israel in an orderly fashion." That seemed a scarcely veiled reference to an offer by Amal Leader Nabih Berri, who said he would release an Israeli flyer held by Amal if Jerusalem freed the 400 prisoners.

Berri, who helped engineer the 1985 release of 39 American hostages aboard a hijacked TWA jetliner in an apparent exchange for Israeli-held Arab prisoners, proposed a wide-ranging plan. Offering to negotiate with the seven terrorist factions that have taken captives, Berri said he would seek freedom for all 24 foreign hostages kidnaped during the past two years. Doubts were immediately raised, however, about Berri's chances of success. His Syrian-backed Amal militia is a bitter rival of the Iran-supported Shi'ite fundamentalist groups that are believed to hold most of the hostages.

Nonetheless Berri's mention of the captured Israeli navigator, who was shot down last October over southern Lebanon, clearly interested Jerusalem. Israel has released more than 6,000 Arabs in recent years in swaps for nine Israelis in enemy hands. At midweek the Israeli newspaper Davar reported that multinational negotiations to free all foreigners were secretly under way. While calling the story "completely baseless," a government affidavit conceded that efforts were being made to get the Israeli flyer back. That aroused new suspicions about a sweeping hostage deal.

Some Israelis were outraged by all the talk of a new prisoner exchange. The families of seven victims of Palestinian terrorists held a vigil outside the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem and later demanded that the Israeli Supreme Court legally enjoin a trade. Shouted a demonstrator: "The blood of our children has been spilled, and the government plans to free the terrorists who murdered them. If the judges decide to free the terrorists, we personally will kill them."

In Washington, State Department officials studiously avoided any suggestion that a trade was in the works. Spokesman Charles Redman refused to confirm or deny that the U.S. and Israel were preparing a deal. As speculation about secret diplomacy grew last week, Secretary of State George Shultz gave vent to some undiplomatic anger. Speaking to an American Legion delegation, he declared, "We want to raise the cost to those animals that hold the hostages." Yet Shultz, a strong advocate of last April's U.S. bombing of Libya to punish Leader Muammar Gaddafi's support for terrorism, shied away from any hint that Washington would launch military action to free kidnaped Americans in Lebanon or take reprisals against their captors. Said Shultz: "We should not go running around using our capacity for force right and left."

Such remarks were carefully followed, if not always believed, by terrorist groups in Lebanon. At week's end the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement that seemed to end speculation that the four hostages it holds will be part of any prisoner swap. The issue of their fate will remain "suspended," the group said, because of the U.S. Administration's "failure to respond to our demands." The statement called the four captives "criminals" and vowed to punish them, but stopped short of renewing the previous threat to kill them. In the climate of violence and uncertainty that has engulfed Lebanon, freedom for any of the hostages seemed as elusive as ever.

With reporting by David Aikman/Washington and Dean Fischer/Cairo