Discontent in the "North Bank"

By William E. Smith

Like the U.S., Israel faces pressure to bring the boys home

"I can remember some people throwing perfumed rice at the feet of the Israelis when they arrived in 1982," says a businessman in the Lebanese port city of Sidon. "Now the same people are throwing bombs."

The Israelis acknowledge that they do have a problem. During a quick visit to his troops in southern Lebanon last week, Israel's Chief of Staff, Lieut. General Moshe Levy, was repeatedly asked by soldiers how it would all end.

"How do I know?" Levy responded. "I am no prophet." Then he added, "We are aware of the problem: if we stay here too long, we shall be perceived as occupiers against whom all will rise up." In many ways, the Israelis' dilemma parallels that of the Reagan Administration, which is convinced that it cannot pull the Marines out of Lebanon without destroying the Lebanese government of President Amin Gemayel and damaging Washington's credibility in the bargain. The Israelis actually signed an agreement with Lebanon last May, promising to withdraw their troops if Syria did the same.

When Syria refused, Israel, in an effort to reduce casualties, drew its army back to the Awali River, some 17 miles south of Beirut. Now, with domestic pressure mounting, the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) would gladly pull back to Israel's own border. But to do so, they fear, would be to allow the Syrians to gain control over the region and perhaps enable what is left of the Palestine Liberation Organization to return. And that, in turn, would constitute an admission that the war in Lebanon, in which more than 560 Israeli soldiers were killed and 3,000 wounded, had been fought in vain. When the Israelis first entered southern Lebanon in June 1982, they were generally welcomed because they were driving out the P.L.O., which had alienated many Lebanese by creating a state within a state in the area. By the standards of occupying forces in the Middle East, the Israelis have behaved reasonably well, but they are resented for staying too long. In a wry allusion to the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war, southern Lebanon has come to be known to some Israelis and Lebanese as the "North Bank." Says Mohammed Ghaddar, leader of the Shi'ite Muslim Amal militia in the region: "We thought the Israelis would be here for a few weeks and then would get out. Now that they show no signs of leaving, they are losing the sympathy and understanding of the people." That is putting it mildly. Three weeks ago, after one of their military positions was fired upon, Israeli troops drove to the village of Hallousiyeh (pop. 800). They arrested a number of villagers, including the local spiritual leader, Sheik Abbas Harb, and bulldozed his house into rubble. Every day since then, villagers have gathered at the mosque to pray for the sheik's release. Loudspeakers on minarets call out angry messages: "God is with us. Death to the Israelis. [Ayatullah] Khomeini is the Great Imam."

The religious fervor behind the resistance to the Israeli occupation adds another dimension to the problem. The people of southern Lebanon are predominantly Shi'ite Muslims.

Like Shi'ites elsewhere, they have been influenced by the revolution in Iran. Mullahs in southern Lebanon have exploited the rising tensions and encouraged rebellion.

Says a young man in Hallousiyeh: "If the Israelis don't leave, we will shed our blood to get them out. Even the children of the village have come to hate them." Following the bombing of the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre on Nov. 4, a Shi'ite terrorist action in which 61 people were killed, the Israelis instituted stringent security precautions at the Awali River bridge. The result has been a horrendous traffic bottleneck at the bridge. Trucks, many of them carrying consumer goods between Sidon and Beirut, have sometimes had to wait two days or longer to get across, and almost never less than several hours. This has led to sporadic shortages and to big fluctuations in prices. To ease the situation, the Israelis are building an eight-lane checking station, which should be finished by the end of the month. Everywhere there is a sense of danger.

In January alone, the Israeli forces reported 60 terrorist incidents, including remote-control bombs, booby-trapped cars, land mines and grenade assaults. "I want to get out of here," an Israeli soldier in Sidon told TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Harry Kelly. "I don't want to be killed here. It's crazy. They are crazy. We are crazy." New security precautions are in effect. Foot patrols supported by armored personnel carriers check ditches alongside main roads for bombs. Motorized patrols formerly conducted with open Jeeps are more often undertaken with APCs bristling with machine guns. Centurion tanks stripped of their turrets are used as mobile pillboxes. In many places, the concrete walls bordering citrus orchards have been knocked down to reduce the risk of ambush. How can the Israelis work their way out of the quagmire? "We are trying to reduce our presence here to the minimal level," Chief of Staff Levy said last week. Ideally, the Israelis would like the Lebanese government to extend its writ to the south. But the Lebanese army, bogged down in renewed fighting in Beirut and the nearby Chouf Mountains, is not strong enough to undertake such a task. The Israelis continue to support the 1,000-man Free Lebanon Forces, the militia that was led by Major Saad Haddad until his death last month, and they hope that it will eventually be integrated into the Lebanese army. Still another possibility would be an extension of the role of the 5,600-man U.N. force that is presently deployed south of the Litani River. If the Security Council would authorize it to do so, the U.N. force could extend its area of responsibility to the Awali River.

The continuing occupation is having a profound impact on the Israeli forces. Some high-ranking Israeli officers, including Major General Yossi Peled, argue that this enormous burden has caused the I.D.F. to neglect its training.

Others, including General Levy, have asserted that Israel is simply relying too heavily on its troops to perform occupation duty in the West Bank and now the North Bank.

Says Levy: "Our commanders ought to be dealing only with security matters." Some have even declared that the Israeli army is not ready for the next war, wherever and whenever it may come. That, in the opinion of most Israeli military experts, is probably not true. But the cost in lives and materiel might be high, at least in the early stages of fighting. The I.D.F.'s morale problem stems in part from the unpopularity of the war in Lebanon and the war's ambiguous conclusion. It also comes from the knowledge that there have been occasional charges of corruption within the I.D.F, instances of drug abuse, and about 100 cases in which young Israelis refused to serve in Lebanon. That is troubling for a small state in which the willingness of the citizenry to serve in the armed forces has always been regarded as indispensable to national survival. "Our main source of strength is still our human resources," says General Levy. "Yet I am worried about the flow of the younger generation into the career ranks of our officer corps. The more sophisticated our weapons systems become, the more we have to rely on the human factor to use them skillfully." If only for this reason, he implied, he would like to wrap up the occupation of southern Lebanon and get on with the essential task of repairing the structure and spirit of his defense force.

With reporting by John Borrell, David Halevy