A Cautious Withdrawal Begins

As refugees come home, the Israelis yield positions to U. N. forces

Kilometer by kilometer, village by village, Israeli soldiers last week began turning over their positions to Norwegian, Nepalese and Iranian contingents of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The Israelis were moving slowly, however, obviously determined to see whether the U.N. forces would hold their positions under fire and whether Palestinian commandos would rush back into the area. Meanwhile, the Lebanese government began to send convoys of refugees back to the villages from which an estimated 265,000 people had fled during last month's Israeli invasion.

Of the 4,000 U.N. troops expected to join the force in Lebanon, about half were in place last week. Their ambitious mission is to restore "peace and security and ensure the return of the effective authority in the area to the government of Lebanon." The aim, in other words, is to give the Lebanese government of President Elias Sarkis a chance to build up its own army, which has only 3,000 men today v. 17,000 before Lebanon's civil war broke out three years ago. If U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim has his way, UNIFIL will gradually be disbanded, and a rebuilt Lebanese army will re-establish Beirut's sovereignty over the area south of the Litani River, where pro-Israeli Christian villagers have long been at odds with Palestinians in neighboring camps.

UNIFIL already faces plenty of problems. It has no overall commander in Lebanon, so major decisions must be referred to the Jerusalem headquarters of Major General Emmanuel Erskine, a Ghanaian. So far, the backbone of the U.N. force is composed of 627 French paratroopers based in Tyre and 690 Norwegians stationed in the eastern sector of the ceasefire line. The French are tough soldiers, the Norwegians well trained and professional. But neither unit is familiar with the Arab world or has had much fighting experience. "The only combat most of them have seen," remarks one Western military observer, "is in the movies."

The U.N. troops' orders are to shoot if shot at, but they do not always do so. The Norwegians aroused Israeli suspicions by abandoning at least one village to the Palestine Liberation Organization after being fired on by P.L.O. mortars. "The situation is tense," explained a Norwegian officer. 'We are not going to make it any worse." The anomalous nature of the U.N. role is pointed up by the fact that, for patrol missions, the French have brought in eleven armored personnel carriers loaded with mortar launchers--not so much for fighting as for intimidating any combatants who happen to be in the area.

Luckily, Palestinian commandos have not sought serious trouble with U.N. forces. Rather they, like the Israelis, have been watching carefully to see what the other side would do next. Abu Jihad, the P.L.O. commander in the south, visited one location last week within sight of Israeli tanks. "So far as we can see," he said, "the Israelis have not moved one inch."

Most Israeli officers remain skeptical about UNIFIL's ability to perform its mission. "If the Palestinians are clever," a top Israeli official told TIME Correspondent David Halevy, "they will move back into the southern area but hold their fire for two to three months. After that, they could use the area as their primary base for terrorist operations against Israel. And we will be stuck with an international force in southern Lebanon that will limit our freedom of operation there."

Officially, the Israeli government defends the wisdom of its invasion of southern Lebanon. Premier Menachem Begin called the operation "a big political success" and declared that UNIFIL will become "a buffer force between Israel and the terrorists, and will force the terrorists to restrict their operations." Some of his colleagues disagree. At last week's Cabinet meeting, several ministers asked angry questions about Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon in violation of a 1976 commitment to the U.S. that the weapons would be used only against armies in the event of full-scale war. Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, whose political position has been weakened by his handling of the operation, replied lamely: "I gave the air force orders to use the bombs. But you have to believe me that I was not aware of the agreement [with Washington]. The Chief of Staff [Mordechai Gur] forgot to inform me of it." That statement was greeted with a pregnant silence.

Partly because of Washington's displeasure over Begin's rigidity during the recent peace negotiations, there are sign that Jerusalem may be moving toward a more flexible position. Six weeks ago, Begin shocked the Carter Administration by declaring that U.N. Resolution 242--which, among other things, calls for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories--did not apply to the West Bank. At week's end Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan announced that his government now "regards 242 as the only basis for negotiations" leading to a peace treaty with its neighbors, including Jordan. The Israelis were clearly implying that a subtle change in policy had taken place, but U.S. officials were not convinced that the new formulation was sufficiently different to get the peace negotiations going again.

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