Major Turn in a Mini War

Israeli troops make a dangerous incursion

The message from Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat to Egypt's President Anwar Sadat was shrill and urgent: "Our forces are under heavy Israeli attack. Enemy warplanes are overhead. We need help desperately." Visiting southern Lebanon to persuade Palestinian fighters there to accept a peace arrangement with Lebanese Christians, the Palestine Liberation Organization leader suddenly found himself under fire. Arafat and his men were besieged at Beaufort Castle--a historic Crusader fort in the shadow of Mount Hermon--not only by Christian gunners but also by Israeli artillery. Under cover of those guns, Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled across their border into Lebanon. The mini war that has raged off and on in southern Lebanon for nearly a year thus took a sharp, dangerous turn.

The Israeli incursion raised fears that a battlefield miscalculation could accidentally trigger a fifth Middle East war. Officials in Damascus complained bitterly that the Israelis were deliberately trying to provoke the Syrian troops in Lebanon. Since the official end of the major civil war in Lebanon last October, to avoid any such confrontation, the Israelis have stayed south of the Litani River --Israel's so-called red line (see map). There was also speculation in Damascus that the Israelis might use any response as an excuse for a pre-emptive strike against Syria. Even if they were not spoiling for a fight--and Jerusalem insisted they were not--Arabs also conjectured that Israel intended to occupy Lebanon south of the Litani River to keep the Palestinians out of the area. Washington, which had no advance notice from Jerusalem of the move, was almost as alarmed as the Arabs. President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance expressed their concern to Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan during his Washington visit; Dayan merely bucked the American protest to Jerusalem.

At week's end the Israelis remained in southern Lebanon. Best estimates were that the Israeli forces consisted of a battalion of infantry, supported by artillery and armor. They were also protected by heavy air cover and a flotilla of patrol boats off the Lebanese ports of Tyre and Sidon to cut off supplies for the Palestinians. Under protection of Israeli artillery, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman even toured the area in an unmarked automobile, accompanied by Chief of Staff Mordecai Gur and Major General Yanush Ben-Gal, commander of Israel's northern sector.

Israeli officials insisted that they had no territorial claims on Lebanon and that their troops would pull back to the border if and when a new cease-fire is signed. Israel's goal was to beef up the Christian forces south of the Litani and prevent the Palestinians from moving in. "We won't let the terrorists back to the border area," said Weizman. The Christians and other minority groups in the area (mostly Druze and Shi'a Muslims) are outnumbered by the Palestinians--about 2,500 combat troops to 3,000. But the Christians have plenty of U.S.-made weapons (supplied, of course, by Israel) and the Palestinians have suffered heavy losses. At least 25 were reported killed last week in a battle for the town of Khiyam, but the Palestinians said they had inflicted casualties themselves on both the Christians and the Israelis. U.N. observers who are stationed in the area to check on cease-fire violations have also been hit. U.N. vehicles have been destroyed by mines, and last week a two-man team, one French officer and one American, was pinned down by Israeli artillery fire because its observation post was close to Beaufort Castle.

Since the battle in southern Lebanon began last year, about 100,000 people have been forced to flee their villages, and the landscape has been devastated. The direct cause of the fighting in the south was the end of the 19-month civil war, which was fought mainly in northern Lebanon. Humbled by the Syrian army, which finally moved into Lebanon in force to separate sides and end the shooting, the Palestinians were determined to recapture their old positions in the south, from which they launched guerrilla raids and mortar attacks against the Israelis. Hoping to create a buffer zone between its border and the Palestinian camps, Israel befriended, trained and armed the Christians. Their forces were backed by Israeli artillery, which fired up to a thousand rounds a day at Palestinian positions.

Alarmed by the potential danger of a Christian-Palestinian clash, Syria earlier this year arranged a peace meeting. The Palestinians reluctantly agreed to reduce their forces in the south to a token 250 men and to observe a demilitarized zone stretching 9 1/2 miles from the Israeli border. The Christians also agreed to demobilize and allow the area to be patrolled by the Lebanese army, which President Elias Sarkis is attempting to rebuild as a peace-keeping force inside his shattered country. The agreement appeared so promising that U.S. diplomats took an active part in the discussions and undertook to sell the plan to Israel. The settlement collapsed because Israel would not accept it.

The Israelis, clearly, have their own ideas about how to keep peace in the area. Last week's incursion was an unmistakable message to Damascus and Beirut that not even a token force of Palestinians is permissible in southern Lebanon. In the midst of last week's fighting, the Israeli government pointed out, Palestinian Katyusha rockets from across the border hit the Israeli towns of Safad and Qiryat Shemona--scene of a notorious fedayeen raid in 1974, in which 18 Israelis and three Palestinians died, and 15 people were wounded. If Washington cannot persuade the Israelis to back off, however, the U.S. is bound to lose a bit of credibility among the Arabs. Explained an American diplomat involved in the situation: "If we can't get them out of there, the Arabs are bound to think, 'Well, Washington's got no clout with this government. If the Americans can't get a couple of tanks and soldiers out of southern Lebanon, how are they ever going to get them off the West Bank?' " How indeed?

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