The Long Road to Disaster

By William E. Smith

After 17 months, the U.S. effort to rebuild Lebanon has failed

In retrospect, it never worked particularly well as a nation-state. But during the late 1950s and 1960s, Lebanon was prosperous, relatively peaceful, more or less democratic, a relaxed oasis of tolerance for the Islamic world. Beneath its patina of tranquillity, however, stirred future troubles: a bewildering mixture of sectarian communities that had fought one another, on and off, for centuries. Two events brought the latent antagonisms to the surface: the decision by the Palestine Liberation Organization in the late 1960s to establish its principal base of operations in Lebanon, and Israel's disastrous invasion of the country in 1982.

At the time Lebanon became independent in 1943, after 23 years of French rule under a League of Nations mandate, political power was largely divided between Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. This demographic equilibrium was jeopardized by the influx of Palestinian refugees following the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967 and Jordan's 1971 crackdown on the P.L.O. The resulting destabilization led to Lebanon's 1975-76 civil war, to the presence of Syrian forces, and to the P.L.O.'s "state within a state."

On several occasions, Israel moved into southern Lebanon in response to sporadic Palestinian shelling of settlements in northern Israel. A U.S.-negotiated cease-fire in 1981 brought those attacks to a halt, but in June 1982 Israel used them--as well as the attempted assassination of its ambassador in London--as a pretext to invade Lebanon. Instead of merely clearing the border area, as Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Defense Minister Ariel Sharon had promised, the army charged ahead to Beirut. The real aims of Israel's Peace for Galilee campaign: to destroy the P.L.O., humiliate the Syrians and reinforce Lebanon's Christian-dominated government.

The U.S. finally brokered an end to Israel's 40-day siege of Beirut, and effected a cease-fire to facilitate the forced evacuation from Lebanon of some 12,000 P.L.O. commandos. It then offered to contribute Marines to a multinational peace-keeping force that would act as a sort of police guard for the departing guerrillas as well as for the Palestinian civilians left behind in refugee camps. But the U.S. pulled out its troops after only two weeks. A traumatic series of events immediately followed: President-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated, Israeli forces occupied Muslim West Beirut, and vengeful Christian militiamen murdered some 700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps. The U.S. brought the Marines back to help restore order.

Then came the period of lost opportunity: the failure to impose a diplomatic solution on a war-weary region. The U.S. offered a peace plan for the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, but did not press it effectively. Even the withdrawal of Israeli and Syrian forces from Lebanon proved unattainable. Secretary of State George Shultz made the mistake of accepting some vague assurances from the Syrians that they would leave Lebanon if the Israelis did too. After months of U.S. diplomatic shuttling around the Middle East, Shultz got his Israeli-Lebanese withdrawal agreement. But the pact was worthless because the Syrians, by now rearmed to the hilt by the Soviet Union, were not about to leave. They felt that the agreement legitimized the 1982 invasion by giving Israel special rights in southern Lebanon.

In September, hoping to reduce their continuing casualties, the Israelis decided to withdraw from the Beirut area and the Chouf Mountains to a new line along the Awali River some 17 miles to the south. During their occupation, however, the Israelis had allowed Phalangist militiamen to move into areas of the Chouf previously controlled by the Druze. Fearing an outbreak of hostilities between the two factions, the U.S. urged the Israelis to delay their redeployment until the newly trained Lebanese Army could fill the vacuum. The Israelis postponed their withdrawal by only a few days. As soon as they pulled out on Sept. 4, fighting broke out.

On one side were the Druze and the Shi'ite Muslim forces, backed and armed by the Syrians. On the other were the Lebanese Army and, unfortunately, the Malines, whose role was now being described by the Reagan Administration as upholding the government of President Amin Gemayel. Increasingly, the U.S. forces fought back as they came under attack, but they were woefully unprepared for the realities of Lebanon, as demonstrated by the Shi'ite terrorist bombing of last Oct. 23, which took the lives of 241 Marines.

Though he often talked about national reconciliation, there is little evidence that the young and inexperienced Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian, made any concerted effort to become President of all the Lebanese. Moreover, the agreement he had signed with Israel last May at Washington's urging drove a wedge between him and the Lebanese Muslims, who wanted no part of a pact with Israel. Nonetheless, Gemayel had one final chance. Last November he managed to assemble at Geneva the leaders of the principal Lebanese factions. The meeting went surprisingly well, but the Muslims and the Druze insisted that before anything else could be done, Gemayel must abrogate his agreement with Israel. So he went off to Washington to seek support from the Reagan Administration. The agreement was not really of any use to anybody, but the Israelis treasured it as their only souvenir of a purposeless war. The Administration did not even consider helping Gemayel in his crisis. It urged him to try a little harder and sent him home.

Last week, as Druze and Shi'ite forces took over West Beirut, the U.S. indicated that in the future it would help defend what was left of the Gemayel government by hurling 16-in. shells into the Chouf Mountains in the general direction of Syria. With Muslim and Druze militias in control everywhere in the region except the Christian enclave of East Beirut, the Marines' mission impossible seemed at an end. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Johanna McGeary/Washington

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Johanna McGeary