The Marines Have Landed

By William E. Smith

And the situation is well in hand as the P.L.O. 's exodus proceeds apace

The ships were just offshore, riding at anchor, gray silhouettes of power in a classic setting of blue sky, bright sunshine and white clouds. At daybreak on Wednesday morning last week, precisely on time, 800 U.S. Marines landed at Beirut Port. Their mission: to assist, with 800 French and 500 Italian troops, in the task of evacuating 7,000 Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas from the Lebanese capital. After the Marines landed, they soon had the situation well in hand. Said White House Spokesman Larry Speakes the next morning: "Everything is going according to plan."

Speakes was referring not only to the arrival of the American forces but to the whole elaborate process of removing the P.L.O. fighters from Beirut. By Saturday at least 6,000 of the Palestinians had been evacuated by sea or land to other Arab countries, and the rest of them were expected to leave by the end of this week.

The Lebanese crisis was by no means over. The country still contained an estimated 60,000 Israeli soldiers and perhaps half as many Syrian troops, and the two armies might yet wage a full-scale war with each other on Lebanese soil. Last week, in fact, sporadic fighting broke out between the Syrians and both the Israelis and the Christian Phalange forces, which are closely aligned with the Israelis. The Lebanese Parliament had elected a new national president, the leader of the Christian Phalangist forces, Bashir Gemayel, who was despised by many Lebanese Muslims as an "Israeli stooge." But the Israeli siege of West Beirut was over, and the domination of Lebanon by the P.L.O. was at an end.

The Marines who disembarked in Beirut quickly took over the port area from the French units that had been there since the previous Saturday. First ashore was the flag-bearer, Lance Corporal James Dunaway, of Hattiesburg, Miss., followed by 200 men of Company E of the 32nd Marine Amphibious Unit. A Marine emblem pinned to his shirt, U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib, who had negotiated the agreement between Israel and the P.L.O. that led to the Palestinians' withdrawal, stepped forward to greet Marine Colonel James Mead, commander of the volunteer force.

Mead's men were armed with M-16 rifles, M-60 machine guns, mortars, antitank rockets and antitank missiles. But Mead, 47, a strapping 6-ft. 6-in. Bostonian, assured reporters that he was "not anticipating any use of weapons, because we are here as peace keepers." He added, "Obviously, we'll use whatever we have in the unlikely event that we must defend ourselves. I must defend myself and my men." Mead was also greeted by Colonel Souhail Darghouth, commander of the Lebanese army units in the port area. "Ahlan wa sahlan, "said the Lebanese colonel. Habib, who has known a smattering of Arabic since his childhood, told Mead, "It means you are welcome here."

The Reagan Administration went to considerable lengths to assure both Congress and the American public that U.S. troops were in no real danger. Reagan explained that the Marines would play "a crucial role in achieving the peace that is so desperately needed in this long-tortured city." The President alluded to the fact that, 24 years ago, a force of 14,000 Marines had been sent to Lebanon by Dwight Eisenhower to support a beleaguered government, and that they had suffered a few casualties. This time, declared the President, "I want to emphasize that there is no intention or expectation that U.S. armed forces will become involved in hostilities," except perhaps for what he called "isolated acts of violence." To the Marines involved in the mission, the President radioed a rousing message: "You are about to embark on a mission of great importance to our nation and the free world ... You are asked to be, once again, what Marines have been for more than 200 years: peacemakers."

By the end of the week, the President had reason to be pleased with the progress of the evacuation. To be sure, there were some hitches. The Israelis complained that, in violation of the agreement, the first group of P.L.O. evacuees had been allowed to take their jeeps with them. The Lebanese protested that the Israelis were objecting to the placement of French peace-keeping forces in central Beirut. More serious was the fighting between Syrian and Israeli forces near the Beirut-Damascus highway in central Lebanon. This caused the P.L.O. to postpone a withdrawal over that route.

To solve the problem, Envoy Habib flew to Tel Aviv for a talk with Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who has directed the Israeli military operation in Lebanon. At the meeting, Sharon, who refuses to describe the removal of the P.L.O. guerrillas from West Beirut as an "evacuation," asked Habib bluntly, "How is the expulsion going?" Replied Habib: "The evacuation is proceeding according to plan." Habib then asked Sharon to make sure that the

Israeli and Christian forces allow the P.L.O. convoys to pass safely along the highway to Damascus. As a result of the meeting, the overland evacuation of the P.L.O. to Syria began on Friday when a convoy of trucks carrying celebrating guerrillas made the 70-mile trip to the outskirts of the Syrian capital.

For the departing Palestinians, it was a time of brave words and wrenching farewells. In hundreds of cases, men left for unknown destinations, leaving wives and families behind. P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat called the long siege of Beirut and the evacuation "a victory for the resistance." The P.L.O. did manage to sustain the sense of an honorable retreat, with flags flying and the endless cannonades and thunderous volleys of rockets. The departing guerrillas and the friends who saw them off fired their automatic rifles and machine guns so furiously that a U.S. Marine said he felt as though he were on a firing range. Stray bullets killed 17 and wounded at least 42 more.

Nonetheless, the celebrations continued. When a shipload of guerrillas reached the Syrian port of Tartus, they were greeted by shouts of "Victory!" and "Palestine!" Five sheep were slaughtered on the dock and skinned to provide a carpet for the visitors to walk upon as they came ashore. When a four-year-old Palestinian boy in Beirut asked his father, "Why is everybody shooting?" he was told, "To celebrate a great victory." To which the boy replied, "But if the soldiers won, why are they going?" The answer, only partly obscured by the fanfare of the occasion, was that they had no choice; the Israelis had forced them out.

Day after day, the exiled P.L.O. left Beirut for Syria, for Jordan, Sudan, Tunisia, North and South Yemen. Some 185 wounded guerrillas embarked on a Red Cross vessel bound for Cyprus and Greece. Conspicuous among the countries that had not agreed to accept a significant number of P.L.O. evacuees was Egypt, which had been asked by the U.S. to take a group of 3,000 Palestinians. The government of President Hosni Mubarak refused, saying that the removal of the P.L.O. from Lebanon should be linked with diplomatic steps toward a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian problem. Explained an Egyptian official: "When we signed the Camp David peace treaty, we were accused by other Arabs of only being concerned about a partial solution," that is, of getting the occupied Sinai back from Israel. "We do not want the same accusations to be leveled against us again." In the end, the Egyptians agreed merely to provide medical care for some of the Palestinian wounded and to pay canal tolls for the five ships scheduled to carry P.L.O. guerrillas to the Sudan and the Yemens.

In Tunisia, President Habib Bourguiba welcomed a contingent of 1,100 Palestinians who arrived Saturday by sea. The Tunisians had been busy last week erecting a tent village near Beja, 60 miles from Tunis, for the guerrillas. They were also refurbishing the Salwa Hotel at Borj Cedria, 16 miles southeast of the Tunisian capital, so that the tourist resort might serve as either a temporary or permanent headquarters for Yasser Arafat and 100 or more of his colleagues. The hotel contains a luxury suite for Arafat, a not altogether appropriate residence for a man of spartan taste who sometimes prefers to sleep on the floor. Arafat's movements last week were something of a mystery. The Lebanese radio announced Saturday that he had sailed with some of his men that morning for Cyprus and from there would continue to Tunis, but his actual departure from Beirut was not confirmed. Once the evacuation is completed, some diplomats speculated, the P.L.O.'s fighting units would be based in Damascus, while Arafat would make his own headquarters in Tunisia.

In the devastation of Beirut, there were some signs of an easing of tensions. Barricades were beginning to come down. The Italian forces, wearing white helmets adorned with black feathers, were a highly visible and almost festive presence.

In Israel, there were indications that the almost universal condemnation the Israeli government has received abroad for its siege of West Beirut had made it more truculent than ever. A case in point was the Israeli reaction to the Reagan Administration's plan to reassess the Camp David accords in the hope of reaching a settlement on the problem of Palestinian autonomy. A high Israeli official last week blustered that, if the U.S. were to try to "amend" Camp David, Israel would simply annex the West Bank, as it had wanted to do all along. That drastic step would create havoc in the Middle East, and the U.S. had no intention of letting it happen.

But in the meantime, Washington policy makers had a more immediate problem to think about: how to negotiate the withdrawal of Syrian and Israeli forces from Lebanon before open warfare breaks out between them.

-- By William E. Smith.

Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington and William Stewart/Beirut

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, William Stewart

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