Begin & preemption:

...While the term "terrorist base" gives the impression of a military compound peopled by fanatic fighters training for suicide missions, in fact, these bases or camps are always sprawling tin and wood shantytowns inhabited by tens of thousands of Palestinian refugee families...

...Since April, the Arab Follow-Up Committee has been struggling to mediate a national reconciliation agreement in Lebanon...

...Like the Beirut bombing, the recent destruction of eleven bridges in south Lebanon and of the pipeline of the Zahrani oil refinery, which supplies gas and fuel for west Beirut, has not so much damaged the strength of the P.L.O...

...as it has caused suffering and inconvenience to the Lebanese...

...Then Fischer says that the ceasefire will lead to "long-term solutions in the region...

...Is this an innocent civilian population...

...This implies that up until now, Israel has resisted bombing areas where Lebanese civilians might be killed as well as Palestinians (leaving aside whether it is tolerable to kill Palestinian civilians in the camps just because they are there...

...David K. Shipler, the New York Times Jerusalem correspondent, has written that Begin's attack on Beirut is also an attempt to pressure the "Lebanese authorities" into curtailing the activities of the P.L.O...

...This remark, like the term "preemptive'' itself, is designed to create a number of false conceptions about the nature and intentions of Israeli policy in Lebanon...

...To the Lebanese, who have not slept soundly for six years, these words must sound amazing...

...With nearly two dozen small militias and four standing armies, war in Lebanon has never been conventional...

...How many gunmen lie dead in the rubble of the Beirut bombing, among the bodies of small boys and girls, old men and women...

...An undefined ceasefire, which only the U.S...

...Consequently, it is only Lebanese civilians who are being pressured by Israeli attacks-those who cannot afford to leave the country...

...terrorism aboard El Al airliners, at the Munich Olympics, and in Israeli border settlements during the 1970s and which still regards the P.L.O...

...Shi'ite-Palestinian relations have been severely strained in recent years as a result of the deprivations and hardships Shi'ites have suffered from Israeli raids...

...What we do know is what Prime Minister Begin has assured us, that Israel will continue her war against "international terrorism...

...This sensibility explains to a large extent the reluctance of the Western press to tell the full story in Lebanon and the limited international outcry that Israeli ac tions in this country have thus far elicited...

...But for the present, let us concentrate on the fallacies of Israel's "preemptive" policy in Lebanon...

...P.L.O...

...The bloody bombing of Beirut in July was only the most recent and dramatic "preemptive'' attack in the present Israeli government's four-year war against the civilian population in Lebanon...

...The objectives are more psychological than military...

...Because of the bombing of Beirut, for a few days, the world suddenly remembers the Lebanese tragedy once again...

...In these crowded camps, "sons are trained as fighters and taught the ideology of the movement, strategy is mapped out for the war against Israel, but mostly, there is village life-with women hanging out the wash while old men smoke tobacco in hookas and play dominoes...

...TERENCE H. WRONG...

...The Israelis would like the Shi'ites to blame the Palestinians, and this tactic has met with increasing success...

...Does he mean a solution to the "Syrian missile crisis," the Palestinian question, the Lebanese civil war, or all of the above...

...As a label put on any Israeli action inside territorial Lebanon, the loosely defined term "preemptive" is meant to justify internationally both the violation of Lebanese sovereignty and the atrocities that are committed there...

...An eleven-day exchange of rocket fire between the P.L.O...

...This policy counts heavily on a collective Western conscience that was outraged by P.L.O...

...is an excuse for Israel to impose her own solutions...

...is not a conventional army relying on fixed supply and communication routes, the Israeli attacks have inflicted "little or no military damage on Palestinian positions...

...How many future gunmen died in their mothers stomachs...

...in Lebanon, the way Egypt and Jordan did during the 1970s...

...There are five hundred thousand Palestinian refugees in Lebanon...

...If it is not, are Israeli citizens, who are mandatorily conscripted and trained in the use of arms, innocent civilians...

...First, it implies that a clear distinction can be made between "a terrorist base" and "a civilian population vicinity...

...With no country and no passport, no mobility to seek jobs, no way out of the camps, these families, walled away in vast ghettoes, give their sons to the movement to recover Palestine...

...Meanwhile in West Beirut, Lebanese Shi'ite, Kurdish, and Palestinian refugees live together in tightly packed high-rise buildings, sometimes three families to an apartment...

...as a largely criminal terrorist movement...

...Kifner, who is on the spot in Lebanon, emphasizes that because the P.L.O...

...We don't know...

...can no longer "purposefully" hide among civilian populations...

...2.Densely populated, residential neighborhoods in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, were brutally bombed by Israeli aircraft for the first time since the "sideshow" in Lebanon was escal ated four years ago...

...is sworn to destroy Israel, all such attacks may be called "preemptive" or even "preventive...

...Civilians," they are antiseptically called...

...In fact, since 1978, when an Israeli invasion of south Lebanon created three hundred thousand Lebanese refugees, Israel has carried out a scorched earth policy against the villages in the south, killing thousands of Lebanese Shi'ites in an attempt to isolate the Palestinians from all Lebanese support...

...A number of other serious distortions are fostered by the Israeli Prime Minister's remark that the P.L.O...

...The Beirut bombing was given widespread press coverage for three main reasons: 1.A large number of people were killed or wounded (300 dead, 800 wounded...

...respects, is negotiated by Habib, whom Reagan then hails in a public relations coup reminiscent of the Nixon-Kissinger era...

...It is a bitter harvest that Begin, who understands full well the web of complex alliances on the Lebanese scene, hopes to reap by attacking the war-weary Lebanese...

...By deliberately bombing the Lebanese civilian community, Begin is not pursuing a short-term military strategy to impede the effectiveness of the P.L.O., but a long-term strategy intended to promote hatred between Palestinians and Lebanese, factionalism among Lebanese, and continued civil strife...

...It was not until Begin's first election victory that Israel began to strike targets in Lebanon on a regular basis as part of a policy of devastation called' 'preemp tive attacks...

...Shipler fails to explain that the Lebanese government, as his Times colleague John Kifner points out, cannot even "enforce traffic regulations" and has been unable to exert pressure on anybody since the country was ripped apart by a civil war that erupted largely over the Palestinian presence in the country and which continues to this day...

...Is terrorism a time bomb going off in a crowded Tel Aviv market place-or bombs that fall from the air on an impoverished and overcrowded West Beirut neighborhood...

...Can children and the elderly be guilty or is everybody simply a victim of insane, uncompromising policies implemented by gutless leaders on both sides in the name of heroism and martyrdom...

...Israeli actions have been nicely timed to interrupt the progress of these efforts,, A divided Lebanon unable to control the P.L.O...

...and Israeli forces is declared a "mini-war" although such exchanges have been periodic for more than three years...

...During the Lebanese civil war in 1975-76 when leftist forces battled Christian rightist militias, the Shi'ite community (the largest and poorest native minority group) was allied with the Palestinians...

...In Washington and Jerusalem, correspondents blithely echo the empty rhetoric of our state department spokesman, Dean Fischer, who predicts that the nonexistent ceasefire negotiated on July 24 will "evolve into a long-term solution to the problems of the region and to enable the Lebanese government to maintain control over all areas of the country that are in dispute or where violence has flared...

...forces quickly constructed makeshift bridges with bulldozers...

...In both cases, it is women, children, and the elderly, not policymakers or even fighters, who will probably die...

...They wonder from what disconnected dream world the Americans are speaking...

...3.Perhaps most significantly, Prime Minister Begin offi cially stated that Israel "will continue to attack terrorist bases and headquarters even if they are purposefully located in the vicinity of or within civilian populations...

...Offi cially, Israeli spokesmen emphasize that the attacks are, di rected only against Palestinian guerrilla bases and that since the P.L.O...