Israeli Exit

Waiting until President Nixon's departure, Israeli jets last week swarmed over southern Lebanon to avenge an earlier terrorist attack on a border kibbutz in which three women died. In three days of air raids on Palestinian refugee camps and fedayeen bases, 30 people were reported killed and 122 wounded. On their way to Lebanon, ironically, the planes could be heard from Golan Heights positions that Israeli ground forces were abandoning under the terms of Henry Kissinger's ceasefire. TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin watched the withdrawal and sent this report:

The Israeli fort on Tel Shams commands a broad valley that runs eastward toward Damascus. From the hills, when the morning haze lifts, strong glasses bring the capital into view. In the past, Israeli cannon around Tel Shams had shattered Damascus windowpanes. But now, turning their backs on Syria, the last Israeli troops were ready to head west out of the territory they had seized in October's costly counteroffensive.

On top of Tel Shams an Israeli sergeant had trouble getting the flag down off the pole. Under the gaze of Northern Command General Raphael ("Ra-ful") Eitan he shimmied up to the top of the mast while the armor, paratroop and infantry formation stood at attention, fixed the tangled halyard, and then, to the roll of a drum, brought down the Star of David. Murmured an Israeli liaison officer, "Seems we can put up flags faster than we can take them down." During the brief withdrawal ceremony, Eitan addressed the men. "This hill is a symbol both for us and for the Syrians. At this place, the closest we reached to Damascus, we overcame the enemy. We have no illusions, but we hope that by handing it over we bring peace closer. We leave here with pride. If there is need, we will return." With that a parade of armored personnel carriers, Jeeps and Centurion tanks headed down the hill, leaving behind only smashed bunkers, broken cartridge boxes and garbage. The last tank to leave was numbered 141. In October it had been the first to reach the summit of the hill.

On a ridge by themselves sat two soldiers, Lieut. Colonel Yair and his driver. "He took this place back in October," a soldier explained of the colonel. "He can't get used to leaving. Too many of his men fell here." Yair himself recalled that it had taken three days and nights to gain the hill. "A lot of blood was spilled here. But if we have to give it back, we have to give it back." He remained seated, staring out over the bleak landscape.

Down the road, meanwhile, the U.N. troops were folding up tents in which Israeli and Syrian officers had worked out the details of the cease-fire and disengagement. "They didn't play Ping Pong here, no sir," an Irish colonel said, indicating inside the largest tent a Ping Pong table used by U.N. officers as a conference board. "They didn't even talk to each other." Instead, a Syrian officer would stand at the entrance at one end of the tent and an Israeli officer would stand at the entrance at the other end. A U.N. officer would walk the 75 feet--back and forth--carrying messages between them.

Sticks of Flame. Between the tents and Khaneh Arneba, the next encampment eight miles away, fires started by detonated mines and exploding demolition charges were eating up miles of brown, sun-withered grain and turning telephone poles into sticks of flame. A column of Israeli tanks rolled by, flags flying. The crews waved perfunctorily, unlike the withdrawal from the Suez, where the soldiers had smiled, sung and even danced as they left. In Egypt, moreover, nobody spoke of having to return.

In Quneitra, Israeli engineers using acetylene torches were taking down Syrian-installed electric poles and carting them away. Except for a few buildings in the center of town, the church and three mosques, nearly everything else had been flattened in the fighting or gutted by the withdrawing Israelis. When Syrians return to take control of the 70-year-old provincial capital of the Golan this week, they will find no more than a pile of rubble and refuse.

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