Placing the Blame in Israel

...in the more or less overt petitions circulating among the officer corps, asking that Sharon step down...

...Navon's demand was seconded over the State-financed broadcast media by influential and diverse professional groups...

...His continued popularity, it is felt, will probably depend on developments in several critical areas...

...The Prime Minister explicitly promised Israelis a treaty with the Lebanese government by the end of this year...

...So far, the exact opposite is happening on every count...

...Most observers believe the Prime Minister still has more advocates than enemies...

...As patent contradictions began to appear in the explanations of different government officials, however, outrage spread throughout the population...

...Men from Damur appear to have formed the core of the militias that carried out the slaughter in the refugee camps...

...This was shattering news for Israelis, who know that their very life depends on the military...

...They backed Bashir's elder brother Amin, abstained from any charges against the Phalangists, and joined everyone else in cursing the monstrous "Zionists...

...The indignation initially engulfed primarily supporters of the Opposition...

...The three-man investigatory commission, fully empowered to subpoena documents and compel witnesses to testify under oath, is chaired by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Yitzchak Ka-han...

...Lebanese civil war, the main highway connecting the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) headquarters in the capital to its strongholds in the south ran through Damur, and local militiamen attempted to block it...

...Foreign criticism is always a domestic issue in this country, and especially among the better educated it can foster dissent...

...The Israelis' extreme sensitivity to world opinion is another factor at play—but it is a double-edged one...

...and, worst of all in the Defense Minister's televised admission that the call-up of a reserve brigade was canceled because of uncertainty about its willingness to fight...

...At least equally significant is the dissatisfaction within the Army—by now an open secret...

...THE INQUIRY BEGINS Placing the Blame in Israel BY ELIAHU SALPETER Tel Aviv In the first paroxysms of self-ac-cusation that followed the massacre in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, many here sounded as if the crime were not committed by Lebanese Christian militiamen but by Israeli soldiers—who, apparently, did fail to prevent it...

...To begin with, the questions that must be posed on the specific grievous mistakes and misjudgments leading to Israel's seeming complicity in the massacre will be embarrassing to the government...

...Having hated and feared Bashir Gemayel, they seized the opportunity to put his successor in their debt...

...Jerusalem also was eager for Gemayel to disarm the Moslem Leftist militias that had—in another breach of the accord arranged by U.S...

...The PLO stormed the town, killing hundreds of civilians in the sort of fighting that became the terrible trademark of both sides in that seven-year struggle...

...This enabled Sharon to convince Begin that the Israeli soldiers had to return to West Beirut...

...special envoy Philip C. Habib—inherited much of the PLO's heavy weaponry...

...Did anybody in the government seriously consider the admonitions of the press and the Opposition that by expelling the PLO from Lebanon, Israel would open a Pandora's box of world sentiment in favor of a Palestinian state...

...When the Prime Minister failed to satisfy him, he went on television to call for a " full, independent and respected" inquiry...

...He withdrew his request once Begin agreed to the judicial panel on September 28...

...Henceforth, the region would center on a "Cairo-Jerusalem-Beirut triangle of peace...

...Ostensibly, their objective was to maintain public order in the face of possible Christian-Moslem disturbances...

...Within days it was established that Sharon, Foreign Minister Yitzchak Shamir (the second ranking Cabinet officer, after Menachem Begin), Communications Minister Mor-dechai Zipori, and local commanders in Beirut all had word of the killings sometime on Friday at the latest...

...In reality, the Israelis moved back because they had lost their hope of Gemayel sending in his own troops to clean out the hundreds, or thousands, of PLO fighters left behind by Yasir Arafat in violation of the U.S.-sponsored evacuation agreement...

...Did Sharon mislead Begin as to the aims of the military operations in Lebanon, including the sweep into West Beirut...

...Begin demurred, but Israeli democracy was already at work...

...At the same time, well-known Army reserve officers were demanding Sharon's resignation, and Brigadier General Amram Mitzna, commander of the National Staff College, asked to be relieved of his duties...

...Begin and Sharon, for example, presented the Lebanon invasion as a major turning point in Israel's history, the inauguration of a totally new strategic relationship with the United States that would bring about a basic change in the diplomatic map of the Middle East...

...During the Euahu Salpeter...

...Thus, should foreign governments and media continue to heap all the onus for Sabra and Sha-tila on Israel—and deny the Jewish State credit for its genuine moral shock and its resolve to thoroughly investigate its own deeds—Begin could come out of the Lebanon affair considerably strengthened...

...Israelis are again showing signs of rallying together against the one-sided condemnation of the world at large...

...Now that the inquiry is getting under way, the hysteria has abated...

...The mood is conveyed in interviews with soldiers...

...Then President Yitzchak Navon, abandoning his traditional posture of nonintervention, summoned Begin for an explanation...

...If so, how long did Begin remain deceived...

...Moslems reacted in the typical fashion of Lebanese politics...

...For the hatred that produced the Pha-langist murders in Sabra and Shatila was planted more than five years ago in Damur, a Maronite Christian town on the coast south of Beirut...

...who regularly reports for The New Leader from Israel, is a correspondent for the daily, Ha'aretz...

...On the other hand, when anti-Israeli sentiment becomes blatantly extreme and unreasonable, even opponents of the government feel constrained to tone down and close ranks...

...Is it true (as the Opposition has stated) that Begin and Sharon together misled the other Cabinet members at key points in the campaign, so that the ministers failed to understand what they were really approving...

...But they will inevitably focus attention on deeper political matters likely to be even more damaging to the Prime Minister...

...Nor can one say how the Beirut tragedy will affect Israeli politics in the future...

...Was it only Bashir Gemayel's death that scuttled the prospects for a Lebanese-Israeli peace pact, or was the whole idea ill-conceived and always destined to fail...

...When the invasion was launched, it was assumed that once the IDF broke the guerrillas' major resistance, the Christian forces would do much of the "mopping up...

...At the moment, though, theover-riding feeling is of a growing polarization between Begin's backers and those whose distaste for him is turning into strong animosity...

...If Haddad in fact ends up being Jerusalem's sole lever, many Begin adherents may join the Opposition in asking why the entire enterprise in the north was necessary...

...Of course, no clear answers are yet at hand...

...Once the murdering was over, all the feuding Lebanese factions were able to agree on letting Israel be blamed...

...The government's claim that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) command only discovered the atrocities on the morning of Saturday, September 18, and took prompt action to stop them, crumbled beneath the merciless pounding of reporters like Zeev Schiff of Ha'aretz, Hirsch Goodman of the Jerusalem Post and Ron Ben Yishai of Israel Television...

...At every stage, though, the Phalangists found some excuse to drag their feet while simultaneously urging the IDF to advance—to the mounting dismay of the Israeli populace...

...To Begin and Sharon, Lebanese participation in combating the Palestinians was vital...

...The judicial inquiry here, expected to last several months, is bound to have a snowball effect...

...This reflected the fear they had harbored for months that something would misfire in the Lebanese adventure, and their intense dislike for Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, considered the operation's "evil genius...

...The immediate tragic sequence of events was triggered by the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel...

...Major Sa'ad Had-dad and his Christian Militia in south Lebanon remain Israel's trump card visa-vis President Amin Gemayel, whose pro-Syrian attitudes have replaced Bashir's pro-Israeli ones...

...With several of his Cabinet members in revolt, Begin finally relented—a victory for public opinion...

...Flushing the remaining PLO from their last redoubt in the West Beirut camps was the final chance at having the Phalange collaborate in an important maneuver...

...He appointed the other two members, Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak and Reserve Major General Yona Efrat...

...He repeatedly implied, too, that once the PLO was crushed in Beirut, Palestinians in the West Bank would accede to a watered-down autonomy plan...

...The pressure culminated in a demonstration of 400,000 strong in Tel Aviv, the largest in Israel's history...