Begin Besieged

...The task promises to be trying and treacherous...

...Instead, President Reagan unveiled his Middle East peace initiative, calling for a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation that would include the occupied territories...

...Meanwhile, defeated PLO leader Yasir Arafat was being given a hero's welcome in various capitals as well as at the Vatican...

...After the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was beaten and scattered at the end of August, the Prime Minister expected a quiet nod of approval from his American allies and a substantially clearer path to his goal of annexing the West Bank and Gaza...

...Yet with the inauguration of his more diplomatic elder brother Amin as President, there are signs that the assassination might yet turn out to have been a blessing in disguise...

...and to establish a genuinely sovereign Lebanese government that would sign a formal peace treaty with Israel...

...To evaluate what really happened to the PLO, the Lebanese incursion must be divided into two phases-first, the advance on West Beirut...

...The new President faces formidable problems...

...Furthermore, according to leaks from his entourage, he was loathe to court the sort of ostracism in the Arab world that Egypt suffered after Camp David...

...For in Begin's scenario, once the PLO infrastructure in south Lebanon was destroyed and its leadership driven from Beirut, the terrorists would no longer be able to intimidate West Bankers...

...An "unexpectedly" passionate reaction to any plan considered objectionable often puts the proponent on the defensive and obviates the need for rational debate...

...Weary Jordan showed its firm hand in Black September, 1970, when the Arab Legion killed several times as many PLO partisans as the Israelis did in Lebanon...

...Besides the always arduous and almost constant horsetrading that his office entails, he must overcome the violent legacy of the seven-year PLO and Syrian residence...

...This complex balance requires behind the scenes agreement among scores of eminent personages...

...To the Syrians, they say, maintaining a presence in Lebanon -and keeping Israel bogged down there to boot-is worth having their capital within enemy artillery range...

...With the help of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, he convinced himself that Israeli and American interests in the Middle East were identical...

...By contrast, 80 MPs were on hand for Amin's election on September 21, and he was swept in with 77 votes on the first ballot...

...The IDF was stalemated by a concern for its own potential losses in street fighting, worry over the likelihood of huge civilian casualties and the attendant negative impact on Israel's image, and an underestimation of the PLO's effectiveness in drawing support...

...Official Jerusalem????initially, at any rate????was not averse to the most exaggerated expressions of anger...

...The sense of en famille, fostered by letters headed "Dear Menachem" and "Dear Ron" and by Be-gin's compulsive confusion of form and substance, reached its peak during the Lebanese war...

...The Prime Minister believed that Israel was doing the United States an enormous service in expelling the PLO and ravaging Syria's arsenal of supposedly fearsome Soviet-made tanks, planes and missiles...

...Secondly, for years the Prime Minister and his associates have derided Labor Opposition Leader Shimon Peres' "Jordanian option," assuring the public that neither the Palestinians, the Americans, nor even the chief beneficiaries, the Jordanians, would be receptive to the idea...

...Many Moslem and Druze legislators braved threats against their life and property to be present...

...Eliahu Salpeter, who regularly reports for The New Leader from Israel, is a correspondent for the daily...

...The Prime Minister's deep disillusionment at Reagan's rush to draft guidelines for linking the occupied territories to Jordan was voiced by one of his Cabinet members...

...All of these reservations about concluding a formal peace with Israel surely are harbored by Amin Gemayel, too...

...As for Begin's objectives in Lebanon itself, it remains to be seen whether these will be thwarted too...

...One reason for the Jerusalem government's miscalculation is that ever since Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, Begin has acted????and probably felt????as if his Likud party won the U.S...

...InsistenceontheWestBankV'close association with Jordan" now (actually Reagan's sole original point) wipes out the five-year translation period stipulated at Camp David and conflicts with America's role of "honest broker" between Israel and the Arabs...

...Bashir Gemayel himself was backing away from such a pact in his final days, realizing the necessity of placating the armed Leftists and other anti-Israeli Moslems...

...Yet the legend may not prove very useful now that the PLO has lost its "state within a state...

...Begin and Sharon also assumed?wrongly????that America would be grateful and reward Israel accordingly...

...Even so, their number was a hardly comfortable 39.2 per cent...

...But even before anyone knew the full extent of the Christian Phalangists' slaughter of innocent Palestinians in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps following the return of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to West Beirut, it was apparent that nothing was going quite as Menachem Begin had anticipated when he launched "Operation Peace for Galilee" last June...

...Since many of the President's ideas are close to those of Labor, an instinctive positive reaction was understandable...

...Thus the signals coming from Washington at the end of August failed to register in Jerusalem, and Reagan's letter on the Palestinian question hit the Israeli government like a bombshell...

...Indeed, many already feel that retaining an occupying army in eastern Lebanon is preferable to expelling the Syrians by force...

...it remains carved into semifeudal fiefdoms, controlled by families who represent about 4 per cent of the population .Since independence from France in 1943, unwritten law has decreed that the President be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Moslem and the Chairman of the Parliament a Shi'ite Moslem...

...Control of such a territory allowed them to construct bases, training camps and ammunition depots...

...Finally, the Jordanian link would of course eliminate the possibility of Israeli annexation????begin's stated ideological and political aim since the Six Day War, if not earlier...

...And despite the current atmosphere of reconciliation, it is far too early to say that the bloody grudges of the civil war period have been settled...

...Perhaps the worst augury for Begin's hard line came from a public opinion poll taken right after the last PLO left Beirut...

...In indicating that it would prefer Syria to exit peacefully, Jerusalem's implication is clearly, "or else...

...In Yemen and South Yemen PLO training camps are situated deep within uninhabited desert????difficult to reach, but easy to reconnoiter...

...Dispersal into a half score far-flung nations has changed all this...

...Israel should accept the good things and bargain over the bad...

...It is no secret that Lebanese Christian forces have for several years been receiving Israeli aid, and Jerusalem had already accorded Gemayel a crucial role in nudging out the Syrians and assuring that the PLO would not reinfiltrate...

...And they have now been compounded by the bitter memory of the carnage in the refugee camps...

...Amin also took advantage of the session for public rapprochements with two of Bashir's most influential enemies????Moslem former Prime Minister Saeb Salam and Christian former President Camille Chamoun...

...Those unwilling to cede an inch dropped from 58.3 per cent to 46.8 per cent...

...BASHm Gemayel's untimely passing on September 14 seemed at first like a most unlucky stroke for Israel...

...But even in the government there is a strong aversion to any fresh Sharonist adventures, and in the wake of Sabra and Shatila this sentiment is likely to become overwhelming...

...This has enabled the PLO to hurriedly transform its ultimate defeat into "the myth of Beirut," a tale of "heroic resistance" that Arafat alternately compares to Stalingrad and to Acre's refusal to surrender to Napoleon...

...Now, suddenly, Reagan was backing a very similar solution, tentatively joined by King Hussein in Amman...

...The Israel Defense Forces marched beyond their originally announced 25-mile limit with three principal goals: To cripple the PLO militarily and politically...

...The Reagan proposals are worse than the Rogers plan...

...second, the siege...

...The late Mrs...

...The percentage of Israelis willing to give up some part of the West Bank in exchange for peace increased by more than half in the three months of war: from 36.6 per cent in May to 51.2 per cent in August...

...But Begin tried to scare the Opposition with hints of "treason...

...to force all other "foreign"????that is, Syrian????troops out of Lebanon...

...In the case of Syria, Begin hopes that withdrawal of its forces from the Bekaa Valley and northeast Lebanon can be achieved by joint Lebanese-American-Saudi pressure—reinforced by his own unambiguous stance that the IDF will not budge until the Syrians begin to leave, accompanied by the PLO forces remaining behind their lines...

...Ostensibly, Begin's wrath was aroused on three counts: Washington did not discuss its scheme with Israel in advance, yet did consult Saudi Arabia and Jordan, who are not parties to the Camp David agreements...

...More is being weighed than the moral limits of military might...

...Moremoderatelocal leaders would then emerge who were willing to consider an acceptable form of autonomy...

...They drafted recruits, levied taxes, organized a police force, and engaged in lucrative businesses????from bona fide industry to trading in slaves and narcotics...

...Begin could take some comfort from the finding that about half as many Likud supporters as Labor adherents would consider retreat...

...Whatever happens, Begin's hope of swiftly concluding a Lebanese-Israeli peace treaty seems fond...

...In the genesis of legends, truth is often of secondary importance...

...Labor has not backed down, though????so far...

...Secretary of State George P. Shultz reportedly described Begin's reaction asa"volcanic eruption...

...Altering the situation in the West Bank was one of the less loudly proclaimed, but unquestionably most important ends of the Lebanon invasion...

...elections...

...Ha'aretz...

...The Labor Party's persistently favorable response to the Reagan initiative has been another unpleasant surprise for the Prime Minister...

...While Amin seems as firmly committed as his late brother to getting foreign armies out of the country, Israel was not involved in his ascendancy...

...In addition, though most of these countries might lean toward allowing their "guests" to launch new attacks against Israel, they have to consider that the Israeli government will certainly hold the host nations responsible: If the Jewish State is not immune from terror, they will not be immune from retaliation...

...Still, 62 is only one more than a quorum in the 92-member Lebanese Parliament...

...Bashir Gemayel's August 23 election on the second ballot by 57 of 62 attending members of Parliament was, under the embattled circumstances, impressive...

...This is probably the first time that a majority has been open to territorial concessions since the years immediately following the Six Day War of 1967...

...To begin with, hyperbolic protests are an old Begin tactic...

...We handed Lebanon to Washington on a silver plate," he said, "and it wants to take the West Bank away from us...

...This government will not be traitors...

...Lastly????but definitely not least to the Lebanese eye-he in no way wished to do anything that might head off the anticipated infusion of billions of petrodollars when Beirut regains its status as the Zurich of the Levant...

...Not only is Lebanon a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups...

...The President's proposal, by reiterating the view that Arabs living in East Jerusalem should participate in electing the Administrative Council that will oversee the West Bank under autonomy, negates the nonnegotiable concept of a united Jerusalem as Israel's eternal capital...

...Tunisia welcomed the commandos under the condition that that they not bear arms, and Algeria is expected to keep its allotment under close surveillance...

...In phase two, the picture was very different...

...LEBANON FALLOUT Begin Besieged by eliahu salpeter TelAvtv The new Jewish year 5743, ushered in the evening of September 17, the second night of the Lebanese massacre, has been marked here by the sort of agonized introspection that has only rarely taken place in modern Israel's history...

...This benefits Amin, who does not have to bear the stigma of being seen as a puppet leader...

...The Christians must hold at least a 51 per cent majority in the legislative body...

...Although the Israeli Army confiscated considerable caches from the Moslem Leftist militias in West Beirut after Bashir's murder, the business of demobilizing these bands????who may continue to be backed by any number of external patrons????has barely begun...

...it is probably also best for the Israelis, who are now absolved of responsibility for the future deeds of the Phalangist militia...

...Phase one demonstrated that tens of thousands of guerrillas and Moslem Leftist cohorts could not credibly counter the superbly trained and equipped Israelis...

...The society's religious and secular philosophical underpinnings, the danger of becoming brutalized by the ever-present threat of extinction????these and many other fundamental issues continue to be debated in an atmosphere of pain and shock...

...Peres and other party leaders assert that Reagan's plan has merits and shortcomings...

...Some Israeli Arabists worry that the threat will boomerang...

...Another dilemma stems from some of the PLO's abundant supply of weaponry having fallen into the hands of gangs outside the command of the traditional power structures...

...In Iraq and Syria, two bloody dictatorships, the guerrillas are being monitored by the watchful eyes of the police state...

...Paradoxically, this undermined Begin's justification of the attack as pre-empting an authentic military threat...

...Two weeks later, both Reagan and Begin were confounded by the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, just as the Phalangist strongman seemed to be patching together a workable coalition...

...Beirut offered all the amenities of an Arab capital????an international airport, major banking center, foreign embassies, access to the international media????Plus convenient proximity to Israel, Europe and the wealthy Arab states...

...In reality, however, there are several more important aspects to Begin's violent rejection of the Reagan initiative...

...Before June 6, the Palestinians actually governed nearly half of Lebanon...

...Golda Meir," the Prime Minister pronounced, "said that acceptance of the [former Secretary of State William P.] Rogers plan would be treason...