"Arafat Is Finished"

By William E. Smith

A leader pinned against the sea, and eye-for-an-eye air strikes

"How can you ask me that question?" demanded Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat after a reporter had inquired whether this was Arafat's last stand in the Middle East. "We are 5 million Palestinians.* We are not the red Indians. We know that we are the sole representatives of the Palestinian people." As he addressed a news conference in the Lebanese port city of Tripoli to show that he was alive and still fighting, Arafat smiled broadly and spoke as boldly as ever. When reporters asked him about his bandaged hand, he said that he had injured it slightly when he fell down some steps. But despite the brave performance, the P.L.O. chairman's prospects were dour indeed. Baddawi, the last of the Palestinian refugee camps loyal to Arafat, had been overrun by P.L.O. rebels backed by Syrian troops, tanks and artillery; the end of Arafat's long rule as head of a more or less united P.L.O. was at hand.

Throughout Lebanon last week, the search for peace suffered a series of setbacks. A five-day truce between P.L.O. factions ended abruptly on Tuesday when rebel forces attacked and seized the Baddawi camp, causing hundreds of deaths and forcing Arafat and some 4,000 troops still loyal to him to seek refuge in the heart of Tripoli. In Beirut, 45 miles to the south, an eight-week truce was frequently violated as "phantom artillerymen," presumably Druze, shelled predominantly Christian East Beirut and sporadically hit parts of the Muslim western quarters as well. The continuing peace negotiations among Lebanon's warring factions were hampered by bickering over some of the decisions made at the all-Lebanon conference in Geneva three weeks before. Lebanese President Amin Gemayel had planned to fly to Damascus to see Syrian President Hafez Assad, who is clearly the strongest factor in the continued fighting in Lebanon. But that trip had to be delayed when Assad underwent an appendectomy. In the meantime, Israeli and later French warplanes bombed and strafed positions in eastern Lebanon held by pro-Iranian Shi'ite Muslims believed to be responsible for the recent suicide bombings of American, French and Israeli headquarters in Lebanon. Theoretically, the "truce" in Beirut was still holding, but the pressures to resume all-out fighting were rising again like a thunderstorm over the Chouf.

In Tripoli, Arafat was surrounded on three sides by Syrian and rebel Palestinian forces and on the fourth by the Mediterranean. As he had done at Beirut in the summer of 1982, when he was fighting the Israelis instead of the Syrians, he delayed and postured as long as possible in the hope that some Arab states, and perhaps even the superpowers, would come to his rescue. The Soviet Union had already stressed to its Syrian clients the need to "overcome strife and restore unity" within the P.L.O., but the effect on the Syrians had been negligible. By the end of the week, even as Arafat's loyalists made a valiant effort to recapture the Baddawi camp, there were reports that the P.L.O. chairman would be rescued from Tripoli by Italian or French naval vessels.

On Wednesday, Captain Ahmed Jebril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command, a small radical P.L.O. group with close ties to Libya and Syria, held a press conference in Baddawi, soon after the camp's capture by the anti-Arafat forces. Declared Jebril: "We stand today in Arafat's headquarters and command post. We have seen how he ran. Arafat is finished, and he has no alternative but to turn himself in to the revolution inside the P.L.O. so he may receive the punishment he deserves."

Arafat has been losing his power base ever since his forced evacuation from Beirut last year. Then, last May, a Syrian-backed rebellion broke out within the P.L.O.'s ranks. The rebels were angry with Arafat for having left Beirut and for taking what they regarded as too moderate a line on future negotiations with Israel. They resented his talks with King Hussein of Jordan a short time earlier and his growing quarrel with Assad.

By midsummer, Arafat loyalists had been pushed out of the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon and into the Tripoli area, where Arafat joined them in September. Now, assuming he can manage an escape from Tripoli, he might try to resume the negotiations with King Hussein. But whether Hussein or anyone else would still be interested in talking to a P.L.O. leader who has lost his army is uncertain.

The irony is that Arafat retains much of his former popularity with the Palestinian people. Late last week an angry throng of 2,000 Arafat supporters gathered near Tripoli, but rebels fired on the crowd, killing 25. Arafat remains the symbol of the Palestinian cause, and he still has the support of a clear majority in the Palestine National Council, the P.L.O.'s de facto parliament. But because of his indecisiveness, excessive caution and, most important, the heavy hand of Syria's Assad, Arafat has lost control of his fighting force.

So far, the rebels do not appear to have considered very seriously how much the ouster of Arafat could cost the P.L.O. in diplomatic and political prestige. Nor have they acknowledged how vulnerable their organization would become if it were operating solely at the whim of the Syrians. The Israelis, on the other hand, would welcome such a change. Said David Kimche, director general of the Israeli foreign ministry: "As long as the P.L.O. is independent, we have difficulty pinning down the responsibility for terrorism. But if the P.L.O. becomes a Syrian tool, then at least we will always have an address."

While the struggle within the P.L.O. was being played out in Tripoli, a long-awaited act of revenge was taking place in the Bekaa Valley. On Wednesday, the Israelis staged a reprisal raid against the pro-Iranian Shi'ite Muslim splinter group, known as Islamic Amal, which is believed responsible for the suicide attacks that killed 28 Israeli soldiers on Nov. 4, as well as 239 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers on Oct. 23. Four Israeli warplanes, ejecting thermal balloons in their wake in order to confound heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, attacked a training camp and an ammunition dump belonging to the Islamic Amal militia.

That night in Paris, French President Franc,ois Mitterrand told his countrymen in a television interview: "You can be sure that the crime of Oct. 23 will not go unpunished." Scarcely 17 hours later, 14 French Super Etendard fighter-bombers from the aircraft carrier Clemenceau staged a 35-minute attack on the same region of the Bekaa Valley, leveling barracks and training bases of the Shi'ite extremists. Among the targets was the ancient city of Baalbek's Khawwam Hotel, the command headquarters of the estimated 1,000 Iranian Islamic revolutionary guards who have been operating in the Bekaa Valley for the past 18 months (see box). The next step could be a retaliatory strike by the U.S., though officials in Washington were undecided about whether the U.S. had more to gain by demonstrating its vengefulness in the face of a terrorist act or by acting with restraint. Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass was quoted by a Lebanese magazine as threatening "kamikaze attacks" on U.S. warships in the event of an American raid on Syrian positions.

In the meantime, random firing of rockets and artillery broke out again around Beirut. Shells were falling in the neighborhood of the presidential palace as Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam arrived for a talk with President Gemayel. The immediate problem is Syria's insistence that Lebanon's withdrawal agreement with Israel be abrogated or at least radically modified. Summarizing the impasse, a former Lebanese Cabinet minister declared bitterly: "The Syrian position is clear: simple intransigence. All this shelling is simply a means of keeping up the pressure on Gemayel."

--By William E. Smith.

Reported by Barry Hillenbrand/Tripoli and Roberto Suro/ Beirut

* Most experts put the figure at about 4 million.

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Tripoli, Roberto Suro/Beirut This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.