Tough Postures

Angry Marines, firm Israelis

The tension that flared over the Middle East last week involved not the usual combatants, Arabs and Jews, but two forces that are supposed to be friendly: the U.S. Marine Corps and the Israeli Defense Forces. In a scathing letter to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, which was later released by the Pentagon, U.S. Marine Commandant General Robert Barrow complained that Israeli forces in Lebanon have consistently "harassed, endangered and degraded" U.S. troops. He asserted that the Israelis "persist in creating serious incidents" and suggested that these episodes had been "timed, orchestrated and executed for obtuse Israeli political purposes."

Barrow's timing was a bit odd. Marines were indeed attacked last week, as were French and Italian members of the 5,200-man multinational force in Beirut, but not by Israelis. Most of the examples of Israeli harassment occurred when Ariel Sharon was still Defense Minister. His apparent motive: to ensure that Israeli rather than American or other foreign troops would guard the Lebanese side of the border once a troop-withdrawal agreement had been signed. Such confrontations have diminished since Sharon's replacement as Defense Minister by Moshe Arens. Many of the events Barrow referred to involved not the Marines of the multinational force but American officers of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, which has been in the region since 1949.

Officials in Israel were stung by Barrow's accusations and the manner in which they were released. Prime Minister Menachem Begin's government issued a detailed rebuttal of Barrow's charges. It claimed that all the incidents took place within areas controlled by Israeli forces, not by the Marines, and attributed the strains partly to the fact that U.S. officers, unlike their French, Italian and British colleagues, are instructed not to confer with their Israeli colleagues. Privately, the Israelis blamed Weinberger, whom they regard as their nemesis in the Reagan Administration.

General Barrow drafted his angry letter just as Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his Lebanese counterpart, Elie Salem, visited Washington for intensive negotiations with Secretary of State George Shultz. The purpose: to break the logjam in talks on withdrawing Israeli troops from Lebanon. The U.S. offered a variety of suggestions under which the security of southern Lebanon would be the responsibility of the Lebanese army and perhaps of special Lebanese units trained and equipped by the U.S. Major Saad Haddad's 1,200-man militia, which enjoys close links with the Israelis, could be integrated into this special force. As the meetings progressed, Shamir seemed to back off from a demand for Israeli-manned early-warning stations in the border area. Instead, he discussed other alternatives, including the possibility that Israeli liaison officers would be permitted to make inspection trips into Lebanon. But such flexibility may be illusory: when Shamir returned to Jerusalem, he told reporters that the U.S. ideas are "not yet satisfactory."

Whether the Israelis are haggling for more concessions or are genuinely opposed to the latest U.S. proposals is not known. In any case, the delay in withdrawing troops from Lebanon steadily diminishes the chances of success for Ronald Reagan's plan to solve the Palestinian problem by linking the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to Jordan. For this reason, perhaps, the President gave U.S. Negotiators Philip Habib and Morris Draper terse instructions as they returned to the Middle East last week: "Wrap it up." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.