Risks and Opportunities

By Thomas A. Sancton

The Israeli circle of steel swung shut around Beirut. Caught in the ancient city, the forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization braced for the final assault. But far more than the P.L.O.'s fate hung in the balance. Israel's blitz had thoroughly scrambled the pieces of the Middle East puzzle, posing enormous risks and offering unexpected opportunities to work for peace in that embattled and strategically vital corner of the world. If the P.L.O. were neutralized and the Syrians persuaded to depart the country, there would be a chance that a strong, stable Lebanese government could be shaped from the various Christian and Muslim factions that shared power before the 1975-76 civil war. The battering of the P.L.O. military forces also raised faint hopes that such moderate states as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, freed from the threat of Palestinian reprisals, might join Egypt in the Camp David peace process. On the other hand, there was a grave danger that radicalized remnants of the P.L.O. might launch a new wave of international terror. If the situation in Lebanon flared out of control, moderate Arab states might give up any immediate hope of working for peace in the region and again join the radicals in a united front bitterly and militantly opposed to Israel.

President Ronald Reagan planned to discuss these compelling issues this week in Washington with Prime Minister Menachem Begin. As the crisis deepened, Washington labored last week to satisfy its recalcitrant Israeli ally while seeking to salvage its ties with Arab moderates. The Soviets watched from the sidelines, denouncing Israel and the U.S., as their own Middle East clients, the P.L.O. and the Syrians, took a humiliating drubbing on the battlefield. Although Moscow warned that its national interests were threatened by Israel's invasion, U.S. officials privately noted with relief the mildness of the Soviet reaction.

Seeking to head off a bloody showdown in Beirut, U.S. officials scrambled to restore the short-lived Israeli-P.L.O. cease-fire that had broken down on June 13. U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib, studiously keeping out of the public eye, worked tirelessly all week in Beirut. He met with Lebanese President Elias Sarkis and other members of the proposed National Salvation Committee in the hope of devising a coalition government representing all major Lebanese factions. Habib's goal: to encourage a united stand for negotiating an Israeli withdrawal and dealing with the P.L.O. and the Syrians.

At Habib's request, Secretary of State Alexander Haig telephoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Moshe Arens on Wednesday to ask for a strict 48-hour truce. Habib needed the time to persuade the P.L.O. to submit to Lebanese government authority. Arens made no formal reply, but Israeli guns finally fell silent 24 hours later than Haig had requested. However, an aide traveling with Begin in the U.S. last week told TIME that Israel would not commit itself to a formal cease-fire but would consider arrangements to allow the P.L.O. to depart from the capital peacefully. Said the aide: "We don't mind at all if the P.L.O. evacuates Beirut. We won't fire at anyone who does not fire at us."

While seeking to get the P.L.O. to put itself under Lebanese control, Washington held to a key premise of U.S. policy in the Middle East: the refusal to talk to the P.L.O. directly until the organization recognizes Israel's right to exist. Instead, the Administration was using an elaborate chain of intermediaries to contact the P.L.O. Begin would talk to Haig, who would talk to Habib, who would talk to the Lebanese, who, finally, would talk to the P.L.O. The responses of the P.L.O. would work their way back to Begin and Haig through the same elaborate route. Said one top U.S. official: "It is just too early to predict the outcome--or even to judge which way things are going." The U.S. feared there was little time to get the P.L.O. to surrender its arms before the Israelis, contrary to pledges they had made from the start, took matters into their own hands and attacked Beirut. Said another Washington official: "They tell us that having gone this far, having lost so many lives, they are not going to quit without victory one way or the other."

The Begin government would like to see a new and neutralized Lebanon emerge from the rubble: a country with no P.L.O., no Syrians, no internecine fighting and no quarrel with Israel. As Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir put it in an Israeli radio interview, "It is our wish to make peace with a Lebanese government that wants to make peace with us, and that would be capable of doing so. And this will happen as soon as it no longer faces pressure and threats from foreign elements that endanger Lebanese interests."

The Israelis want a new Lebanese government dominated by the faction with which they feel most comfortable: the right-wing Christian Phalange, led by the Gemayel family. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, the hard-liner who planned and directed the sweep into Lebanon, has even envisaged turning the country into a Phalangist-controlled state. Other Israeli officials, however, are more flexible and see the necessity for forming a broad coalition of all significant Lebanese political groups--including the Muslim leftists led by Walid Jumblatt, head of the so-called National Movement, which has been loosely allied with the P.L.O.

On the eve of Begin's departure for the U.S. last week, his seven-member Cabinet committee presented Habib with a communique titled "A Basic Proposal Regarding the Arrangements for the Future." Among other things, it called for an Israeli-Lebanese peace treaty, an end to the use of Lebanon as a terrorist base, Lebanese government responsibility for demilitarization and related agreements, the removal of all foreign forces from Lebanese soil, and a 25-mile-wide buffer zone on Israel's northern border to be policed by some form of international peacekeeping force.

Since the Administration agreed with these basic goals, the Israelis were counting heavily on the U.S. not only to play the leading role in working out a settlement of the complex diplomatic problems in Lebanon but also to help create the international peace-keeping force. Said a top U.S. official: "We still believe Begin means it when he says he wants to hold not a centimeter of Lebanese soil. But we also know damn well that the Israelis will never withdraw until they are satisfied with the force that fills the vacuum."

Ideally, the Begin government would like U.S. troops to join the force. Its reasoning: the presence of Americans would inhibit any attempt by a revived P.L.O. to attack Israel's northern settlements. But the Administration is far from ready to agree to contributing troops for such a purpose. Not only would that decision be explosive politically at home, but there is the serious danger that moderate Arab nations would be convinced that the Administration was simply conforming to the desires of Israel.

Still, Haig saw the Israelis' need for U.S. help in establishing any kind of international force as a chance to exert some leverage on the Begin government. His hope: to make Israel more amenable to trying to solve the basic problem in the Middle East--working out some kind of satisfactory arrangement for the Palestinians.

Although the U.S. had opposed the invasion, Haig saw its consequences as an opportunity that should be exploited: the P.L.O. was crippled as a military force; the formation of a strong Lebanese government could induce the Syrians to leave the country; and the establishment of a solid buffer zone in the south might ease the Israelis' fears about their security and thus make them more willing to come to terms with the Palestinians.

With the stakes so high, the Administration last week struggled with the problem of how to influence the Israelis in general and, specifically, how to persuade them not to invade Beirut. An attack on the remaining P.L.O. strongholds would inevitably cause heavy casualties, infuriate the Arabs throughout the Middle East and compound the difficulties of reshaping Lebanon.

The Administration was split over how much pressure to put on Begin. Haig insisted that the best way to influence the Israelis was to work quietly behind the scenes. But Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Vice President George Bush argued that a business-as-usual attitude toward Israeli aggression would cost the U.S. even more credibility among the moderate Arab states, which, despite Administration efforts to dissuade them, were convinced that Israel had been given the implicit backing of Washington for the invasion.

In addition, the President's closest advisers in the White House--Edwin Meese, James Baker and Michael Deaver--wanted the Administration to criticize the Israelis openly for more personal reasons: they felt Begin had insulted President Reagan, first by not telling the whole truth when he said it was Israel's intention to limit its invasion of Lebanon to an area within 40 kilometers of the border, and then by ignoring Reagan's initial plea for a cease-fire as the tanks rumbled on to Beirut.

The trio of Meese, Baker and Deaver was also still smarting from the fact that the Israeli invasion had undercut Reagan's trip to Europe, where he was trying to demonstrate U.S. leadership in the world. Says one bitter Reagan adviser: "We begged Begin to hold off on anything until after Reagan returned to Washington, and he didn't even give us the time of day."

At a meeting of the National Security Council on Monday that was chaired by Reagan, N.S.C. Adviser William Clark agreed with Weinberger and Bush that the U.S. should express some criticism of Israel. When Reagan approved, the N.S.C. decided to defer the formal notification to Congress of U.S. intentions to sell 75 F-16 fighters to Israel. But the slowdown, which has no time limit, will have little impact, since the aircraft are not to be delivered until 1985. To ease the wrist tap even further, the announcement of the deferral was made quietly.

Next the hard-liners on Israel persuaded the President, over Haig's objection, to have the White House say that Begin's scheduled visit with Reagan this week was "tentative." The condition: Israel should not attack Beirut. But the announcement had little impact. State Department diplomats promptly phoned the Israeli embassy in Washington to say that the meeting was really still on, and Begin, who was already in New York City, ostentatiously called his Cabinet to order his colleagues to make decisions about Beirut "regardless" of the U.S. threats. As one Administration official told TIME Correspondent Johanna McGeary, "You indulge in a lot of breast beating and public criticism, and Israel will do what it wants anyway. Haig's bottom line is what is practical."

In the days before his trip to Washington to meet with Reagan, Begin made it even clearer that he would not bow to U.S. demands. Still suffering from a painful hip injury sustained last year, the Prime Minister hobbled to the rostrum at the Pierre Hotel, received a thunderous ovation and then told a United Jewish Appeal gathering that "the Israelis are going to behave as the Czechs in 1938 did not. We shall not succumb to friendly pressure if anyone tries to exercise it on us." Speaking earlier to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Begin proclaimed that Israel had acted militarily to make sure that "not one Katyusha [rocket] will ever again fall on our people."

When Haig joined Begin for breakfast on Friday morning in the Prime Minister's 29th-floor suite in Manhattan's Waldorf Towers, each of the blunt-spoken men knew precisely where the other stood. The previous day, Begin had spoken to Haig on the telephone, telling him that he deeply resented the feeble attempt by the Administration to bully him. For 45 minutes, after their aides had been dismissed, the two men munched Danish pastry, sipped coffee and spoke their minds.

Haig said that the U.S. would oppose the creation of any Lebanese nation that would be a puppet of Israel. The Secretary of State also said that the Administration would not tolerate any deal that allowed the Christian Phalangist militia, acting as Jerusalem's proxies, to destroy the P.L.O. in Beirut. That, Haig said, would make unification of Lebanon impossible. As the talk went on, Haig got the feeling that Israel would accept any Lebanese government that Habib could patch together, as long as it was stable, friendly to Israel and determined to prevent the return of the P.L.O. as a military force.

Begin presumably set forth the Israeli position. According to aides in his party, Israel could not be held responsible for any action that the Christian Phalange might take against the P.L.O. While the Israeli government had honored the 48-hour truce, it was not interested in a formal cease-fire without any movement toward the disarming of the P.L.O. by Lebanese authorities. The reason: fears that the P.L.O. would use a pause to regroup. Still, the Israelis were interested in any method that would get the P.L.O. out of Lebanon. If the forces stayed in the country, they could join the Syrians and fight on. To resolve the chaotic affairs of Lebanon, Israel wanted a diplomatic solution, signed by itself, the Syrians and the Lebanese, that would eliminate all foreign troops from the country, including the P.L.O. Once the Lebanese ruled Lebanon and a suitable peace-keeping force had been installed in the south, the Israelis would pull out.

If the P.L.O. were forced out of Lebanon by a political settlement, where would it go? Most Arab countries would refuse to take in the organization because of its radicalizing political tendencies. Last week diplomats speculated that some of the 6,000 P.L.O. members in West Beirut might go to Syria. Yet even Syria, for all its bitterly anti-Israeli policies, has refused to allow the P.L.O. to operate out of its country against Israel. Indeed, fearing an unstable Lebanon on its border, Syria welcomed Lebanon's invitation to intervene in that country's civil war in 1976 and actually fought the P.L.O.

Reflecting on the plight of the P.L.O., Mordechai Abir, professor of Middle East studies at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said scornfully last week, "Ten days ago, the P.L.O. had a pirate state in Lebanon, with artillery and other weapons, with control over the Beirut airport, Lebanon and Arab politics. They were also menacing Israel's northern settlements. All of a sudden they're a bunch of nothings."

Nothings they were not--despite the grievous damage they had sustained. "The P.L.O. is not an office or a camp," declared P.L.O. Spokesman Bassam Abu Sharif last week. "It is a cause. Even if Beirut becomes a graveyard for us all, it will be enough for me to have just one of our officers survive. Because come what may, the struggle will continue."

Just how the P.L.O. would continue its struggle is a question mark. Any Arab state that would accept the P.L.O. is highly unlikely to allow it to run its own private army, as was the case in Lebanon, or use its territory as a base for terrorist operations against Israel. One clear sign of how badly the P.L.O. was damaged by the Israeli attack was that the organization turned to the Egyptians to try to negotiate a ceasefire. Egypt had been an anathema to most of the Arab world because it had made a separate peace with Israel. Another example of shifting Middle East politics last week was Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's warm welcome in Saudi Arabia. Mubarak had gone there to pay his respects to the new ruler, King Fahd.

Vice President George Bush and a high-level U.S. delegation also flew into Riyadh last week. After keeping the Americans waiting for three hours, the King told them bluntly that the invasion was an outrage and that the U.S. must do everything it could to get the Israelis out of Lebanon. While not accusing Washington of direct complicity in the attack, Fahd blamed the Reagan Administration for acquiescing in the Israeli action. Still, the pragmatic Fahd was thought by some analysts to be secretly pleased at the weakening of the P.L.O. Like Iran's revolutionary fervor, the P.L.O.'s radicalism represents a potential threat to the stability of the Arab world. Fahd was also known to be unhappy about the P.L.O.'s failure to support publicly the eight-point Middle East peace plan he proposed last year.

As fortunes changed in the Middle East, the Syrians were losing both equipment and face. Humiliated on the battlefield by the Israelis, they were criticized by every Arab state for their failure to fight wholeheartedly for the Palestinians and their willingness to make a separate ceasefire. The situation in Syria has been complicated by the arrival in Damascus last week of some 2,000 Iranian volunteers, wearing green headbands and holding aloft pictures of Ayatullah Khomeini. Their mission: to help Syria wage war on Israel--despite the arms aid that Israel provided the Khomeini regime in its war against Iraq. There were reports that a total of 50,000 Iranians was expected in Syria. Iran's U.N. Ambassador Said Rajaie-Khorasani last week charged that "the U.S. encouraged Israel's bloody adventure in order to save [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein, strengthen the hand of the reactionary regimes in the region, weaken progressive forces and indulge Israel's expansionist designs." He also charged Egypt and Saudi Arabia with being "pillars of U.S. expansionism."

Another Arab country potentially affected by the Lebanese crisis was Jordan, whose 70% Palestinian population is ruled by the minority Hashemite dynasty of King Hussein. Having violently ousted the P.L.O. in 1971, Hussein had no desire to see his country invaded again by guerrillas fleeing Lebanon. Already there is an air of instability and rising tension in the country. The cause: the arrest of 60 anti-government Sunni fundamentalists. If any lasting agreement can be reached in Lebanon, Hussein might become a key man in efforts to work out a settlement for the Palestinians. His formula for solving the problem is to form a demilitarized state or entity on the West Bank that would be fed crated with Jordan.

The Israeli invasion has sparked a vigorous debate among foreign policy analysts in the U.S. and abroad over the prospects for Middle East peace and the role Washington should play in promoting a settlement. Haig's view of the situation as a golden opportunity was forcefully supported last week by his onetime mentor, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose experience in negotiating the 1974 and 1975 Sinai disengagements helped prepare the way for the historic Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty four years later. Writing in the Washington Post, Kissinger maintained that the invasion could help overcome the "fragmentation" of U.S. policy and lead to a comprehensive solution of the three major Middle East problems: 1) the Lebanese crisis, 2) the talks on autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and 3) the threat to Western interests in the gulf.

Kissinger's approach was largely based on the assumption that the P.L.O. was destroyed militarily and had been abandoned by the Arab states. That, plus the chance to eliminate the Syrian presence in Lebanon, opened the way to establishing a strong central Lebanese government. Thus, argued Kissinger, the results of the Israeli invasion "were congruent with the interest of the peace process in the Middle East, of all moderate governments in the area and of the United States."

To get the Palestinian autonomy talks going again, Kissinger urged the U.S. to "nudge" the Israelis closer to the Egyptian view that the negotiations should produce a self-governing entity that could eventually lead to a Palestinian state. At that point, Jordan might enter the negotiations, which in turn could lead other moderate Arab states to support the process. As for Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states, whose greatest fears are the spread of Iranian revolutionary agitation and Muslim fundamentalism, the U.S. could lay the basis for a limited "strategic consensus" by guaranteeing the countries' "territorial integrity" and supporting their "present domestic institutions"--presumably meaning their current regimes.

Other analysts, while differing on details, shared the basic optimism behind Kissinger's formula. Joseph Churba, president of the Center for International Security, a Washington-based think tank, echoed the Israeli argument that its military victory meant "the West Bank Arabs could now negotiate autonomy along the lines of the Camp David peace agreement, without fear of retribution from the P.L.O." Joseph Sisco, former Under Secretary of State and a major figure in the 1974-75 negotiations, said that the Administration must get involved not only in working out the conditions for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon but in the process of bringing together the many factions in the country. "If the Christians are willing to try for a serious reconciliation on the basis of the principle of political, economic and social equality with the Muslims, then there is some hope," said Sisco.

But a large number of experts attacked the notion that the invasion might offer any long-term solutions to the Middle East crisis. George Ball, former Under Secretary of State, was one of the harshest critics of the U.S. policy that was evolving last week. Said he: "The Administration is indulging in an act of self-deception to think that the invasion will improve chances for a negotiated solution to the Palestinian problem in the occupied areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All this has done is to make real negotiations impossible because it strengthens the hands of the most radical elements. What it has done is make martyrs out of the P.L.O. It certainly doesn't mean an end to P.L.O. activity."

Others stressed the long-range diplomatic and strategic risks engendered by the Israeli move. Said Richard Falk, a foreign policy analyst at Princeton University: "In the short term, the invasion appears to strengthen the position of Israel and create a generally favorable diplomatic situation for the U.S. But it also has as a side effect the greater isolation of both Israel and the U.S. on a global level, and that has important implications for the quality of U.S. leadership in the world."

In the eyes of many analysts, the present crisis was a result of insufficient attention by the Reagan Administration to Middle East problems and repeated Administration weakness in the face of Israeli intransigence. Said Harold Saunders, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East: "The Reagan Administration warned Israel in no uncertain terms not to move into Lebanon. Not only did Israel proceed to invade, but it did so at the worst of all possible times from a U.S. standpoint. What does that tell you about Israel's respect for the U.S.?"

Saunders warned that Begin is probably prepared to occupy Lebanon for as long as it takes to see that his terms are met. If so, said Saunders, "the U.S. should be tough with the Israelis. They should be told that if they don't withdraw after a reasonable transition period, we will not support them. At all. Period. At the same time, we should work to see that the U.N. peace-keeping force is a credible one and that the factions in Lebanon come together."

But Princeton's Falk and others doubt that the Reagan Administration, or any other, for that matter, would be willing to take the domestic political consequences of opposing Israel in a showdown. Predicted Ball: "I think what Haig and Reagan will do is have a conversation with Begin and then send him some more airplanes."

Certainly there is urgent need for progress on the West Bank autonomy talks. Saunders believes that the U.S. should now work to get the moderate Arab states to join in the Camp David peace process. Said he: "Now is the time for the Administration to add the next link in the chain after Camp David." One way to do that, suggested former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, would be the appointment by the U.S. of "a high-level negotiator to take charge and ensure that the West Bank process gets back on track, so that we can do something about settling the Palestinian problem. Vital strategic interests are at stake." Others, including Anthony Lewis, the liberal political columnist for the New York Times, suggested that Kissinger himself was the man to negotiate a settlement.

Ultimately, the U.S. will have to induce the Israelis to offer the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians a far more independent life than Jerusalem is so far proposing. Said a senior British diplomat: "The U.S. must now grasp the nettle of Israeli intransigence and force its client state--because that's what the relationship is in reality--to accept that the Palestinians have as much right as the Jews themselves to an independent homeland."

If there was one point of agreement among the Middle East analysts who were optimistically or worriedly considering the situation in Lebanon, it was that the Israeli blitz had essentially settled nothing. The effort may be tardy, and it may be doomed to failure because of the complexity of the challenge, but the Reagan Administration was clearly moving in the right direction last week as it tried to find a political solution for Lebanon that might in time help answer the enduring and fundamental question: What is to become of the Palestinians? --By Thomas A. Sancton. Reported by David Aikman with Begin and William Stewart/Beirut

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, William Stewart

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.