Time Magazine
Articles on Lebanon 1975-2000
A series of eighteen articles from Time are presented below.
November 10, 1975
Last Rites for a Mortally Wounded City
From the top of the unfinished 30-story Murr Tower, Beirut's tallest building, leftist Moslems fired a lethal .50 cal. Chinese machine gun at anything that moved in the center of the city. Some five blocks north, in the gilded Corniche area on the Mediterranean, right-wing Christian Phalangist forces occupied the Holiday Inn and other hotels and began firing from the luxury bedrooms in a desperate effort to hold ground. Answering rocket blasts tore apart the Inn's top two floors. Banks, shops and business offices were shuttered, few besides gunmen ventured onto the streets and about the only traffic along the once thronged boulevards consisted of armored cars and ambulances. After seven months of continual outbursts of violence across Lebanon, Beirut last week was a dying city.
Real Panic
Once sleek and salacious, the "Paris of the Middle East" is a wasteland. Since April, 75% of the national carnage has been in Beirut; at least 3,000 people have been killed, 6,000 wounded, in a city of 1,500,000. Those who managed to reach hospitals last week could rarely find an empty bed. They may have been better off on the floors, since continual sniper fire raked some wards. Water, food, medical supplies, gasoline and electricity were running low. Estimated property damage and revenue loss passed the $2 billion mark. Most international businesses and banks whose headquarters are in Beirut have now left to settle elsewhere. By the end of last week 4,000 of the 5,000 Americans living in the city had made their way to the airport in armed caravans and filled outgoing flights to anywhere. U.S. Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley ordered all families of American officials to leave. U.S. embassy Marines shifted to battle fatigues; stray small -arms fire ripped the building.
Stubbornly, Beirutis had continued to hope that somehow the madness would pass, that maybe the next ceasefire would not be shot down by the armed fanatics whose number seemed to be growing. Last week, reports TIME Correspondent William Marmon, "real panic gripped the city for the first time as the pattern of fighting changed abruptly and the remaining hopes were shattered. Previously, rival factions shot and shelled each other from fixed positions. The result was stalemate. Now leftist Moslem forces, spearheaded by a group called the Independent Nasserites, have launched an offensive to win a clear victory. Moving out of their base area in southwest Beirut, the Nasserites intend to cut through the city up to the sea, thereby flanking some Phalangist positions and driving other rightist forces into the eastern part of the city."
The battle was fought house by house and street by street. One car filled with Moslems managed to reach the Parliament building in Christian-controlled territory. "You do not represent the people. You do not represent anyone," they shouted over a loudspeaker, then opened fire, killing one of the bodyguards of Phalangist Leader Pierre Gemayel. When retreating Phalangists took up positions in the hotel district, the conflict took on an added symbolic intensity."I'm going to sleep in the Holiday Inn tonight," pledged one strutting Moslem fighter as he prepared for an assault on the Christian outpost. By week's end the Phalangists still held what became known as the "hotel front."
No Census
The Moslem strike into the bastion of moneyed power has roots that go back at least to the creation of independent Lebanon. As France was quitting the area in 1943, an unwritten but carefully wrought National Covenant was adopted by Lebanese leaders in an effort to accommodate the new country's's volatile religious mix of Christians and Moslems. With Christians in a slight majority according to a 1932 census, the Covenant provided that the country's President and the armed forces commander would always be from the dominant Maronite Christian sect, the Prime Minister always a Sunni Moslem and the legislative assembly always in a 6-5 balance favoring Christians. This slight but significant power edge reflected not only the population figures but also the fact that Christians controlled the professions and business. Despite simmering eruptions, notably in 1958 when the U.S. sent in troops to prevent a leftist takeover, Lebanon thrived for decades as a result of its compromise -- and of a Swiss-style neutrality that helped to make it the trading, banking and communications hub of the Arab world.
In recent years a higher birth rate has pushed the Moslem portion of Lebanon's population to an estimated 60% of the 3.2 million total. Christians responded by making it all but an article of faith to block any census that might change the original 1932 figures. Such friction might well have been enough to spark violence, but the present explosion has defied control because of still other complicating factors. Christians and Moslems alike are subdivided into sects, each headed by bosses (zu'ama) who have used patronage to build iron loyalty, as well as personal militias.
Outside Forces
The arrival since 1948 of 320,000 Palestinian refugees has added immeasurably to Christian-Moslem tensions. At first the Palestinians stayed out of the current fighting; Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat continues to call for a peaceful solution. But last week Palestinians from Arafat's Fatah and the Syrian-backed Saiqa were clearly aiding the leftists with arms, equipment and artillery support. Indeed the real strategic commander of the Moslem offensive in Beirut was rumored to be the infamous fedayeen leader Abu Daoud, who nearly succeeded in assassinating Jordan's King Hussein in 1970. Last week at his command headquarters in the center of Beirut, he boasted with a confident smile, "We are doing well.'
The open role of the Palestinians quickly caught the attention of neighboring Syria and Israel. Damascus is now known to be aiding the leftist Moslem forces there through its Saiqa fedayeen. Should Syrian assistance -- or, less likely, outright intervention -- threaten to tip the balance toward a Lebanon dominated by radical Arabs, the Israelis might respond with force because, said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, such a situation would be "a real threat to Israel's security."
Though the country was coming apart, Lebanon's political leaders seemed utterly incapable of finding a solution. In fact they were part of the problem . Many are zu'ama who solemnly discuss cease-fires even as their troops are shooting away. President Suleiman Franjieh, whose base is a virtually feudal Christian hill village outside Tripoli, so thoroughly detests Premier Rashid Karami, a Sunni Moslem, that they can barely work together. Though Karami began seeking a solution in Parliament last week, so many of its 99 deputies refused to venture out in the line of fire that a 50-member quorum was never mustered. Karami then invited nine key factional leaders to join him in his office and lock themselves in until something had been hammered out. Only two accepted the invitation; in desperation Karami threatened to resign, was talked out of it and began calling in leaders for private sessions.
These sessions may prove to be last rites. Beirut, already ruined as a commercial center, seems doomed to continuing violence. The rest of Lebanon can only wonder what the outcome will be. At one of the private meetings held by Karami late last week, Ibrahim Koleilat, who heads the Nasserites, explained his intentions politely but forcefully. His Moslem fighters will press on until they have defeated the Phalangists once and~ for all, said Koleilat. "We have had ten cease-fires and ten violations. Let's get this over with and have one cease-fire that means something."
June 21, 1982
Israel Strikes at The P.L.O.
But the attack may make peace more remote
They all knew it was coming. The only question was when. For months, the attackers had looked forward to the day with a kind of grim relish, and the defenders with a growing sense of defiance. Israel had actually massed its invasion forces four times near its northern border with Lebanon, then each time aborted a strike. But when the Israeli Cabinet finally gave Defense Minister Ariel Sharon the go-ahead for the attack at 11 a.m., on a sunny Sunday morning in Galilee, the impact was stunning, and the portents were both uncertain and ominous.
Suddenly, the explosive Middle East, the cockpit of global tensions, was embroiled once again in a spreading war with no definable limits, with no predictable outcome and with potentially tragic consequences. The attack, undertaken despite the strong opposition of the Reagan Administration, starkly revealed anew how little influence the U.S. has over its ally, Israel. The assault also raised the specter of a U.S.-Soviet confrontation in the Middle East.
The Israeli onslaught — in effect a blitz — was interrupted at week's end by an uneasy cease-fire. By then at least 60,000 troops, led by more than 500 tanks, had swept across the 63-mile-long Lebanese border, then snaked steadily north on tortuous dirt roads. Their goal to crush the strongholds of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
Within 48 hours, many of the P.L.O's fixed positions and much of its long-range Soviet-built artillery had been eliminated from southern Lebanon. But the P.L.O. put up fierce resistance and remained an organized military force, confronting the Israelis in Sidon and Tyre while blocking their advance at Damur. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin flew by helicopter into 800-year-old Beaufort Castle, a stone-walled mountain top fortress from which the P.L.O. had often directed fire at northern Israel.
As the Israelis pushed north, they began first to skirmish and then to fight with Syrian troops that were deployed in northern Lebanon in 1976 as part of the Arab Deterrent Force to separate warring left and right-wing Lebanese factions. The Israelis were determined to end Syria's ability to assist the P.L.O. and attacked Syrian positions after publicly warning Damascus not to get involved in the fighting. A bitter confrontation ensued.
In one of the biggest air battles ever in the Middle East, more than 150 Israeli and Syrian et fighters clashed in the skies over Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The Israeli aircraft destroyed all of the SA-6 ground-to air missiles that Israel had repeatedly threatened to obliterate. Israeli ground forces rolled to within two miles of the vital Damascus-to-Beirut highway, threatening to sever Syria's supply lifeline to its estimated 30,000 troops in the Bekaa Valley and in Beirut.
Then, after its rapid advances, the Israeli drive stalled. Syria rushed some 35,000 reinforcements into Lebanon. P.L.O. guerrillas, operating in and around the coastal towns of Tyre, Sidon and Damur, mounted a stubborn defense. Armed Palestinians and left-wing militia were holed up in thousands of apartments in west Beirut, vowing to resist to the death. Warned P.L.O. Spokesman Bassam Abu Sherif: "They can raid and shell Beirut until they destroy this city, but the Israelis will never enter Beirut, We will fight street to street, house to house, and we will defeat Begin in Beirut," Indeed, the P.L.O. had put up stiffer resistance at many points than the Israelis may have expected, and the closer Israeli columns got to Beirut the bloodier the fighting became. This pressure, plus the success in its major goals and increasing international protests, may have been what led Israel to call for a cease-fire with the Palestinian guerrillas as the week ended,
What had led Israel to defy the U.S., chance the intervention of the Soviet Union and launch an expedition that may make it harder for Jerusalem to work out a lasting political settlement with the PaIestinians? The Begin government decided to take the risk because of a deep seated desire to try to eliminate the P.L.O. as a power in neighboring Lebanon.
In 1978. after being repeatedly shelled by P.L.O. artillery and infiltrated by P.L.O. commandos, Israel had crossed into southern Lebanon and chased the P.L.O. forces north of the Litani River, 18 miles beyond the Israeli border. Despite the presence of some 7,000 U.N. peace-keeping forces (UNIFIL) sent into southern Lebanon in 1978 to help preserve a fragile peace, the P.L.O. was able to set up a stronghold in Tyre, outside UNIFIL's jurisdiction, from which it could shell northern Israel. A year ago, a top Begin aide boasted that one day Israel would so cripple the P.L.O. that its leaders would be comparable to "the White Russians who sat in Paris cafés after the Bolshevik revolution."
Sharon had long wanted to destroy the P.L.O.'s bases, weapons and supplies. He thought, perhaps wishfully, that the P.L.O. would unite with other Palestinians in Jordan (more than 60% of the country's 2.2 million inhabitants are Palestinian) to overthrow King Hussein and create a Palestinian state less threatening to Israel. The Sharon plan also envisioned uniting the forces of Major Sa'ad Haddad, Israel's Lebanese surrogate who is encamped with his forces in a 600-sq.-mi. buffer zone along the Israeli border in southern Lebanon, with the Christian Phalangists in the north. The combined Christian forces, in Sharon's scheme, would take over the central government and restore what Sharon calls "a free Lebanon." This government would presumably get the Syrians to withdraw.
For months, Sharon had been restrained by the Israeli Cabinet from launching an attack into Lebanon. But then came the incident that provided the pretext for the invasion. Radical anti-P.L.O. Palestinian hitmen gravely wounded Israel's Ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, in London on Thursday, June 3. The Israeli air force promptly retaliated by bombing P.L.O. strongholds in Beirut inflicting some 500 casualties. The P.L.O. artillery and rocketeers blasted back, hurling at least 500 rounds of explosives into 23 towns and villages in the Galilee area of northern Israel. Astonishingly, only one person died: an elderly man who had a heart attack.
On Friday night, the Israeli Cabinet met secretly in Begin's office in Jerusalem. Another Cabinet session Saturday night completed the decision. Sharon would have his war. Despite the Israeli massing of troops weapons and vehicles in staging areas carved into the hills and valleys of northern Galilee, the timing of the attack into Lebanon was a well-kept secret. Lieut.General William Callaghan, commander of UNIFIL, was astonished when he walked into the forward headquarters of the Israeli Northern Command in Zefat on Sunday morning. He had come to discuss a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an end to the P.L.O.-Israeli barrages across the border. But there hi found Lieut. General Rafael Eitan, the Israeli Chief of Staff. Eitan had a disconcerting announcement: Israel would invade Lebanon in 28 minutes. Callaghan argued futilely against the decision.
rom before noon until after dark, the long columns of Israeli armor and trucks rumbled past Misgav Am, Kefar Giladi, Kefar Yuval and Metullah. There was an epic, almost cinematic, quality to the procession: huge Centurion tanks, armored personnel carriers, jeeps armed with machine guns, halftracks carrying antiaircraft guns, all bedecked with red bunting to make them easy for Israeli warplanes to identify. Behind them came communications vans, supply trucks and ambulances. Finally, giant self-propelled 175-mm artillery pieces, which could destroy targets 23 miles ahead of the advancing caravans, lumbered along the narrow dirt roads, kicking up clouds of choking dust. The invading forces split into three separate attacking columns. One headed west, then north along the sea toward the P.L.O. strongholds of Rashidiyah and Tyre. The central column rolled toward the P.L.O. vantage point of Beaufort Castle, with the goal of pushing north along the western entrance to the Bekaa Valley and of blocking any attempt by the Syrians to move out of their occupied territory. The third column opened an eastern front, intending to clear the P.L.O. out of the 144-sq-mi. zone in southern Lebanon that the Israelis call "Fatahland" because it is dominated by Al-Fatah, the military arm of the P.L.O.
One potential problem for the invaders was whether UNIFIL's troops would try to stop them. Israeli soldiers were under orders not to shoot at the peace keepers. Callaghan had instructed his contingents, according to a U.N. report, "to block advancing forces, take defense measures and stay in their positions until their safety was seriously imperiled." Most of his soldiers apparently had no difficulty deciding that they were immediately "imperiled." The Israelis moving toward Beaufort Castle passed UNIFIL posts fortified only with ironic signs: U.N. ZONE: ARMED PERSONNEL DO NOT ENTER.
Still, UNIFIL managed to delay a few of the Israeli units. A small group of Nepalese troops stubbornly refused to clear Khardala Bridge on the Litani River so that Israeli tanks detouring from the main central advance could pass. Drivers of some 100 Israeli tanks were finally ordered simply to overrun the blockade, pushing the Nepalese aside. On the coastal road, another UNIFIL unit set up roadblocks. The unit watched helplessly as the Israeli tanks pointed their barrels menacingly at them without firing, then bulldozed ahead.
The bulk of the easternmost column rolled steadily ahead through the hilly country, encountering no early P.L.O. resistance. Crossing the Litani River at Akia Bridge, the Israelis moved past a P.L.O. guardhouse abandoned so recently that a coffeepot was still warm.
Ahead of the central column, Israeli jets had been bombing the town of Nabatiyah for several hours. A Skyhawk fighter, hit by a P.L.O. SA-7 missile, burst into an orange ball of flame. The pilot, Captain Aharon Achiaz, parachuted to earth, where he was attacked by a group of villagers. Then he was taken by P.L.O. guerrillas and rushed off to Beirut. There he appeared at a press conference, where he smilingly declared: "I have been treated very well. I am not afraid." He was the first Israeli pilot shot down in combat since the 1973 war.
The coastal assault began swiftly as the invading column, including some 100 tanks and an equal number of personnel carriers, closed in on the port of Tyre. At the same time, Israeli landing craft and helicopters surprised the defenders by placing troops and even tanks as far north as the Zahrani River, 30 miles north of the border. P.L.O. guerrillas held their positions as long as they could and then dispersed. Some stayed in Tyre, while others went to refugee camps or into the hills to do battle as small guerrilla units.
At home in Israel, civilians set up kiosks along the main roads leading to the border to give traveling soldiers food and drink. But the police soon regretfully closed down the kiosks: they were causing too many auto accidents. In Jerusalem, radio stations broke regular programming to play pre-1948 Zionist folk songs and stayed on the air round the clock. Residents walked the streets with transistor radios clutched to their ears. On the hour, passengers in buses and shoppers in stores fell silent, listening to the news summaries. Most of the news was good.
On Monday, the clearing operation moved swiftly on the eastern flank. For the first time, however, Israeli forces met Syrian patrols in minor skirmishes. In both Tyre and Sidon, the Israelis dropped leaflets warning residents to avoid the ground and air attacks by assembling on the beaches. International Red Cross workers and U.N. officials in Beirut were hardly equipped to care for the thousands of new refugees.
The Israeli air force resumed bombing runs on P.L.O. enclaves in Beirut. When Syrian jets tried to intercept the Israeli aircraft, they had no success. One of their MiG-23s was shot down. The Palestinian news agency WAFA complained bitterly that "with overwhelming military superiority and unlimited U.S. backing, Israel has the capability to reach almost any territorial objective it desires." The agency blamed "the prevailing Arab impotence and international indifference or complicity" for the Israelis' "freedom of action."
On Tuesday, the Israeli Knesset took its first vote on Begin's invasion decision. For months the legislators had bickered about how to deal with the P.L.O. But with the military news encouraging and the nation rallying with patriotic fervor, a no-confidence resolution on the war introduced by the three member Communist faction lost, 94 to 3. Addressing the Knesset the Prime Minister spoke more slowly than usual and with evident sadness. Begin declared that Israel did not want "one square millimeter of Lebanese territory" and would not harm the Syrian forces unless they attacked Israeli troops. He also vowed that the fighting would stop once Israel had secured a 23-mile buffer zone in southern Lebanon. "All we want is that our citizens in Galilee shall no longer have to suffocate in bomb shelters day and night and shall be free from the terror of sudden death by Katyushas [Soviet-made rockets]," he said. When Begin asserted that "terrorism must be rooted out," one of the Communists yelled, "Your terror should be rooted out. As the session went on, a voice over a Knesset loudspeaker urged anyone wishing to give blood for Israeli soldiers fighting in Lebanon to go to a fifth-floor office.
Meanwhile, the central column moving up the interior threatened to dislodge Syrian troops from their control of the Beirut-to-Damascus road. Israeli armored columns on the coast fought their way through Sidon and Damur, claiming to have gained control of both P.L.O.-dominated towns. They were within ten miles of beleaguered Beirut. But behind them, P.L.O. combatants continued to harass Israeli troops assigned difficult mopping-up Operations.
From a distance, Beirut was still startlingly beautiful, although by now the city was truly embattled. There was a rumble of gunfire from Damur, the occasional scream of jets overhead and shouts of militiamen in the streets. But there was also a stillness about the city that comes with the approach of momentous events, The electricity was off in many areas of the city. Some quarters were without water. The telephone system had almost collapsed. Bread was scarce. At the few gas stations still open, drivers anxiously watched the skies as they waited in line. Slowly, quietly, the Syrians were slipping away. They no longer manned the ubiquitous checkpoints that had monitored the city's life for the past six years. One Syrian official who traveled about town in a black Cadillac left in ignominious retreat. Along with him went the young Syrian guards who only a few days before had swaggered in the yard below his apartment. "The Israeli knife is not just for us," said Abu Ziad, a Palestinian commando. "It is for the Syrians too. Let them go. I fight for my self-respect." Young Palestinian guerrillas and their allies took up their positions. Their mounted machine guns and antiaircraft artillery pointed defiantly out over the Mediterranean. They scanned the skies and waited.
The Syrian stronghold in the Bekaa Valley remained the most serious problem for the Israelis. Their intelligence reports indicated that the Syrians had moved six more SA-6 batteries into the valley during the previous night. TIME Correspondent Roberto Suro came across a Syrian convoy and saw protruding from a canvas cover missile warheads glistening in the soft light of a full moon. A new armored division was also moving up to reinforce one already in position. On Wednesday at 1.30 a.m., Sharon woke Prime Minister Begin in Jerusalem to warn him of these events. Recalled Sharon later in a TIME interview: "If we would have tolerated that development, the Syrian armored forces would have consisted of 600 tanks protected by an extensive missile umbrella. Their missile batteries fired at our planes. We had no choice other than to approve a military operation to destroy the missile buildup."
That operation exploded with full fury on Wednesday afternoon. The Israelis attacked the Syrian missile sites and tank positions in two massive air strikes, using against Syria's Soviet-built MiGs advanced U.S-built F-15s and F-16s and A-4 Skyhawks. By Syrian count, more than 90 Israeli aircraft and 60 Syrian jets whirled above the valley in supersonic dogfights. So many fighter planes were crisscrossing the sky that Syrian antiaircraft gunners often had to hold fire out of fear of hitting their own jets. Israel claimed that it had put all of the SA-6 sites out of action and downed 29 Syrian aircraft while losing none of its own jets. Syria, in contrast, claimed that it lost only 16 planes, while knocking out 19 Israeli fighters. When the battle was over, Sharon called it "the turning point" in the invasion.
On that same day, TIME Correspondent David Halevy accompanied Sharon as he boarded a helicopter to fly to Damur, which his troops claimed to have taken but which was far from secure. A big coded map lay across Sharon's knees, and he followed the path of the flight with a stubby finger. As the aircraft approached Damur, the pilots could not spot the headquarters of the commanding Israeli officer. Sharon quickly identified the site for the pilots and then, when they still argued about the location, brusquely ordered them to land.
Sharon had found the right spot. He ignored the Katyusha rockets that were exploding within 300 meters of the headquarters. Dressed in rumpled khaki pants and a windbreaker, he climbed briskly up the steps to the third floor and out onto a flat roof. There he answered his officers' questions about the rest of the operation and snapped out quick orders. "Are we going to enter Beirut?" asked a noncom. "No," replied Sharon flatly. "We must stay away from Beirut." He explained: "I shall avoid at all costs fighting a battle inside the city of Beirut. The elimination of the terrorists' headquarters inside the city should be carried out by the government of Lebanon."
Screaming over Beirut, Israeli jets dropped leaflets calling on the Palestinians and Syrians to leave the city and indicating which direction to take. In west Beirut, cars with public address systems began patrolling the streets, urging people not to panic and not to pick up the leaflets, which they claimed were contaminated. The populace, however, took no chances. Piled high with possessions, vehicles ranging from Volkswagen Beetles to luxurious Mercedes fled the city.
On Friday morning, Israel stepped up its aerial bombardment of Beirut. In the heaviest assault of the entire invasion, Israeli jets sent pillars of smoke rising from targets that extended from south of the Beirut airport into the very heart of the capital's Palestinian-controlled west side. Israeli gunboats offshore and artillery along the coast joined in the assault, which hit many civilian targets.
Israel and Syria agreed to a cease-fire that went into effect at noon, but attacks against the Palestinian forces and the ferocious pounding of Beirut continued virtually unabated. Many densely populated sectors of the city were hard hit, including Palestinian refugee camps at its south end. Heavy fighting raged in and around Beirut airport. The bombardment went on through the night: illumination flares and the bright flashes of flak exploding in the air turned the night sky into a display of deadly fireworks. Israeli pilots dumped their empty fuel tanks over the city, sending them crashing into cars and rooftops. "We are animals, animals," cried a weeping Lebanese father, whose apartment building collapsed in a heap of rubble. "All we do is kill each other." Then he tenderly picked up a charred bit of flesh and buried it in the ruins.
The forces on all sides began to add up the painful costs of the Israeli blitz and the violent opposition to it. The P.L.O. claimed that its losses were light but that at least 8,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians had been either killed or wounded. A Red Cross delegation from Beirut said that as many as 1,500 civilians had died in Sidon alone. Israel conceded that more than 100 of its troops had died and that some 600 had been wounded. Jerusalem also announced the death of Major General Yekutiel Adam. He was the highest ranking Israeli officer ever killed in battle. Syria provided no count of its losses, but they clearly were heavy. Said a Palestinian spokesman: "I saw their positions in the mountains, and they have been slaughtered."
In the Syrian capital of Damascus, families were also burying the soldiers killed in Lebanon, Israeli crewmen of a tank who were captured in Lebanon agreed to put themselves and their war machine on display as Syrians fired guns into the air in a signal of triumph. If the Israelis had not submitted to the parade, said one Western diplomat, 'they would never return to Israel. When this mess is all over, they will be exchanged, and they will stay alive. Isn't that the name of this game: to stay alive?"
At week's end Israel and the P.L.O. agreed to a cease-fire, and for the first time in more than week the guns fell silent in the Lebanese capital. But an official Israeli foreign ministry statement warned ominously that "if the terrorists continue their attacks, we will feel free to react with all our might." The P.L.O. said it had agreed to the ceasefire in accordance with U.N. resolutions that also call for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Lebanese sources, meanwhile reported that the truce had been worked out in intensive telephone discussions involving Saudi Crown Prince Fahd, President Reagan and P.L.O. Chief Yasser Arafat. Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir asserted that the initiative for the agreement had been Israel's. As for a withdrawal, he said, "I cannot imagine there will be a withdrawal before we crystallize the principles of the settlement and we obtain the goals that we set for ourselves."
But Lebanon's agony was far from over. The country was still a tinderbox. Syria had more than doubled the number of its troops in Lebanon since the fight began, and Sharon estimated that the Palestinians could still count on 15,000 to 20,000 combatants. The "peace in Galilee" that Prime Minister Begin had proclaimed as his goal when the shooting started was still far out of the Israelis' reach -and may have been moved even farther away by the assault.
February 23, 1987
Stalemate in a Tormented Land
After a deadline passes, hope fades for a prisoner exchange
The videotape image showed a weary-looking American hostage with a stubbly growth of beard. "This is the last message," wrote Captive Alann Steen the next day. "Once again we announce that we will be executed at midnight." Steen issued his stark pronouncement in an open letter last week that was signed as well by fellow U.S. Hostages Robert Polhill and Jesse Turner. Terrorists were threatening to kill the Americans and Indian National Mithileshwar Singh, also a Beirut University College professor, unless Israel released 400 imprisoned Arabs by the following midnight. But as the deadline expired, the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, which holds the four captives, said it would spare their lives "until further notice."
The last-minute reprieve was amplified at week's end by another statement from the captors that omitted any new threat of execution. It was one of the few hopeful signs amid what appeared to be a hopeless stalemate in efforts to free any of the 24 foreign hostages in Lebanon. Despite denials, reports persisted that the U.S. and Israel were negotiating through third parties with Shi'ite Muslim terrorists over the release of some or all of the kidnap victims in exchange for the 400 prisoners. As the guessing game continued, pessimism grew about an agreement anytime soon. With rumors shifting almost by the hour, Washington kept the Sixth Fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. The aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy and six other warships were ordered to leave the port of Haifa in Israel after a six-day call, and resumed sea patrol. Meanwhile, anxiety deepened further over the fate of Anglican Envoy Terry Waite, who vanished last month while seeking freedom for the American captives.
At times bloodshed seemed to be war-torn Lebanon's only certainty. A powerful car bomb killed 15 people and injured 80 in a suburb of Muslim West Beirut as the week began. The moderate Shi'ite Amal militia blamed the blast on the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was driven out of Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion, and is now trying to make a comeback. Battles raged throughout the week between Amal militiamen and Palestinian fighters. In Beirut a relentless Amal blockade of Palestinian camps forced thousands of starving residents to adopt extreme measures to feed themselves (see box). In southern Lebanon, Israeli warplanes struck Palestinian guerrilla bases outside the port of Sidon.
The week's most riveting drama focused on the four Beirut University College teachers who were kidnaped in January. As the week began, Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut a six-minute videotape of Steen reading a statement from the captives. Then, hours before the execution deadline, the terrorists released a handwritten text of another letter that ended with moving messages. Steen, a journalism instructor, wrote to his wife, "I don't want to see you cry anymore. Tell them to release the 400. I love you." Wrote Accounting Lecturer Polhill: "Foura, I love you. Sorry I've messed up so much." Referring to himself in the third person, he added, "Life was the only thing he ever finished." As midnight approached, the hostages' wives pleaded on TV for mercy for their husbands.
At precisely midnight the kidnapers cited the family appeals among their reasons for lifting the execution threat. The captors seemed intrigued, however, by remarks of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres concerning the 400 Arab prisoners. While Peres declared, "Israel cannot and will not act according to ultimatums," he added that "if anyone has any offers, he should please turn to Israel in an orderly fashion." That seemed a scarcely veiled reference to an offer by Amal Leader Nabih Berri, who said he would release an Israeli flyer held by Amal if Jerusalem freed the 400 prisoners.
Berri, who helped engineer the 1985 release of 39 American hostages aboard a hijacked TWA jetliner in an apparent exchange for Israeli-held Arab prisoners, proposed a wide-ranging plan. Offering to negotiate with the seven terrorist factions that have taken captives, Berri said he would seek freedom for all 24 foreign hostages kidnaped during the past two years. Doubts were immediately raised, however, about Berri's chances of success. His Syrian-backed Amal militia is a bitter rival of the Iran-supported Shi'ite fundamentalist groups that are believed to hold most of the hostages.
Nonetheless Berri's mention of the captured Israeli navigator, who was shot down last October over southern Lebanon, clearly interested Jerusalem. Israel has released more than 6,000 Arabs in recent years in swaps for nine Israelis in enemy hands. At midweek the Israeli newspaper Davar reported that multinational negotiations to free all foreigners were secretly under way. While calling the story "completely baseless," a government affidavit conceded that efforts were being made to get the Israeli flyer back. That aroused new suspicions about a sweeping hostage deal.
Some Israelis were outraged by all the talk of a new prisoner exchange. The families of seven victims of Palestinian terrorists held a vigil outside the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem and later demanded that the Israeli Supreme Court legally enjoin a trade. Shouted a demonstrator: "The blood of our children has been spilled, and the government plans to free the terrorists who murdered them. If the judges decide to free the terrorists, we personally will kill them."
In Washington, State Department officials studiously avoided any suggestion that a trade was in the works. Spokesman Charles Redman refused to confirm or deny that the U.S. and Israel were preparing a deal. As speculation about secret diplomacy grew last week, Secretary of State George Shultz gave vent to some undiplomatic anger. Speaking to an American Legion delegation, he declared, "We want to raise the cost to those animals that hold the hostages." Yet Shultz, a strong advocate of last April's U.S. bombing of Libya to punish Leader Muammar Gaddafi's support for terrorism, shied away from any hint that Washington would launch military action to free kidnaped Americans in Lebanon or take reprisals against their captors. Said Shultz: "We should not go running around using our capacity for force right and left."
Such remarks were carefully followed, if not always believed, by terrorist groups in Lebanon. At week's end the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement that seemed to end speculation that the four hostages it holds will be part of any prisoner swap. The issue of their fate will remain "suspended," the group said, because of the U.S. Administration's "failure to respond to our demands." The statement called the four captives "criminals" and vowed to punish them, but stopped short of renewing the previous threat to kill them. In the climate of violence and uncertainty that has engulfed Lebanon, freedom for any of the hostages seemed as elusive as ever.
March 9, 1987
Saving a City From Itself
The militiamen lose their weapons and their beards as the Syrians move
into West Beirut
There are only 2.7 million Lebanese, but they are divided into so many feuding factions that the sound of their fighting can be heard round the world. Week after week over the past decade, battles have taken place among confusing groups of militants who seem united only in their determination to blow themselves and their country away. The outside world has become an unhappy participant in the civil war through the hostages held by one group or another. Amid all the car bombings and shellings and kidnapings, the only certitude of Lebanon seems to be that the battle will go on.
But last week, after another prolonged period of anarchy in the Lebanese capital, Syrian President Hafez Assad took one of the biggest gambles of his 16 years in power. He sent 7,500 Syrian troops into West Beirut to try to restore order there — a task that several countries, including the U.S., France, Israel and Syria itself, had previously tried without success. Was Assad about to become the latest victim of Lebanon's endless civil war, or could he restore peace to the troubled land?
The last time Assad sent in his army was in 1976. At that time the Syrians were trying to save the Maronite Christian forces from total defeat at the hands of an alliance of leftist Lebanese Muslims and the Palestine Liberation Organization, thereby disrupting the country's delicate balance of power. The Syrians ended up fighting the Christians they had come to save, suffered heavy casualties, and had to pull out of the Beirut area in a hurry after the Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982.
This time a worried Assad decided to occupy West Beirut, the predominantly Muslim half of the divided Lebanese capital, because of what he regarded as an ominous series of threats to Syria's long-term strategic interests. In the first place he was concerned about the renewed strength of the P.L.O. in West Beirut, especially in the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila and Burj el Barajneh. More specifically, he was angry about the resurgence of P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat, with whom Assad has been feuding for years. The one good thing about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, from Assad's point of view, was that it drove Arafat and most of the P.L.O. out of the country. But during the past three years, Arafat has been quietly rebuilding his strength in West Beirut. Since last fall, Assad's closest Lebanese ally, the Shi'ite Amal militia, headed by Nabih Berri, has waged a merciless battle against the P.L.O. in the refugee camps but failed to defeat it.
The Shi'ites are the largest of Lebanon's principal religious groups, with a population of more than 1 million. They are also the poorest and politically the most unstable. Founded in 1975, Amal quickly became the main Shi'ite political movement. One of its aims has been to wrest a more equitable share of power from the Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims, who have divided most of the political spoils since Lebanon became independent of French rule in 1943. In recent months, however, Amal has lost ground within the Shi'ite community to the radical Hizballah (Party of God). Hizballah's rising power concerns Assad because the group, which is allied with Iran, has dreams of establishing an Iranian-style Islamic republic in Lebanon.
In the complicated world of Middle East politics, Hizballah's Iranian connection is something of an embarrassment for Assad, since Syria and Iran have generally good relations. Syria, along with Libya and South Yemen, supports non-Arab Iran against Arab Iraq in the gulf war, mainly because Assad shares with Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini an overpowering hatred for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In return for its friendship, Iran sells Syria oil at bargain-basement prices. Assad cannot afford to lose his Iranian relationship, but neither does he, as the head of a secular Arab state that has already had to deal with fundamentalist uprisings, want an Islamic republic created on his border.
Finally, Assad has been worried about the latest military setbacks suffered by Amal. Two weeks ago Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze sect, an offshoot of Islam, sent his militia into West Beirut to help the P.L.O., with whom he has been allied, in its struggle against Amal. Within a few days the Druze had taken over as much as three-quarters of the Muslim section of the capital. Casualties, estimated at 300 dead and 1,300 wounded, were unusually high, even by Lebanese standards.
The primary purpose of the Druze operation had been to end the impasse between Amal and the P.L.O. But another factor may have been the anger of the Druze over the disappearance of Anglican Envoy Terry Waite, who had been under the protection of Druze bodyguards until shortly before he vanished in January. He is believed to have been seized by radical Shi'ites with whom he was trying to negotiate the release of Western hostages.
"Ahlan! Ahlan!" (Welcome! Welcome!) shouted Lebanese villagers as Syrian soldiers, poking their heads out of trucks and Soviet-made tanks, drove through the outskirts of West Beirut last week. From the roadside women waved and men jumped up to kiss the soldiers when they moved toward the capital. But the welcome barely lasted out the week. Within days Hizballah militants were parading down the streets of the city's southern suburbs carrying the bullet- riddled bodies of slain comrades. "Death to the killers of our martyrs!" chanted the marchers. "Death to Syria! Death to America! Death to Israel!"
The Hizballah demonstrators were protesting the killing of 23 of their members by Syrian commandos. According to the Syrians, the fighting started when Hizballah gunmen opened fire on them after the Syrians arrived to take over a Hizballah stronghold known as the Fathallah barracks. It is widely believed that at least some of the foreign hostages in Lebanon have been detained at one time or another in this stronghold. Before abandoning the barracks last week, Hizballah fighters burned some of Fathallah's underground cells, possibly to destroy evidence that hostages had ever been held there.
After the skirmish Syria's military intelligence chief in Lebanon, Brigadier General Ghazi Kenaan, went on Lebanese radio to repeat his order that all militiamen in West Beirut surrender their weapons. Said Kenaan: "All armed men, no matter what their party or movement, will be considered enemies of Beirut."
Syrian intervention had been formally requested by Lebanon's Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Rashid Karami and others in an effort to end the brutal fighting between the Druze militia and Amal. Nobody consulted the country's Maronite Christian President, Amin Gemayel, whose sovereignty now barely extends beyond the borders of Christian East Beirut. Gemayel predictably denounced the Syrian occupation as "unconstitutional." In truth, however, though he may find the nearby Syrian military presence disconcerting, he also knows that it spells bad news for the P.L.O., and he can live with it as long as the Syrians stay out of Christian territory.
Interested foreign governments did not voice strong objections to the Syrian action. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was notably restrained, and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, apparently still smarting from U.S. policy failures in the region, said that if the Syrians could restore order in West Beirut, it would be a "positive development." The British government, which broke off relations with Damascus last fall over indications of Syrian-backed terrorist activity, privately regarded the Syrian action as preferable to the prevailing chaos.
Only the Iranians appeared concerned by last week's events. They sent two top officials, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Minister of the Revolutionary Guards Moshen Rafiqdoust, to Damascus to find out what was going on. According to Western observers, the Iranians were hoping to prevent a confrontation between Syrian troops and Hizballah. Clearly, as the shoot-out at Fathallah the following day indicated, they failed.
By week's end, as several of Lebanon's leaders repaired to Damascus for talks with Assad, West Beirut was eerily quiet. General Kenaan invited foreign diplomats and journalists who had previously fled the city to "return immediately," though there was still no sign of the 24 missing foreign hostages. Syrian tanks and armor were concentrated at Beirut International Airport, which remained closed to commercial traffic, while two regiments of Syrian troops manned roadblocks around the city. Garbage collectors were reported back at work for the first time in weeks, and in some Shi'ite neighborhoods posters of Khomeini were being replaced by those of Assad. Following a Syrian order that all militiamen shave off their beards, a sort of emblem of militia membership, scores of young Muslims were lining up outside barbershops. Overall, it appeared that the Syrians had achieved their short- term objective of stopping the fighting. Long-term problems are quite a different matter. As the Syrians well know, Lebanon has a way of conquering anyone who tries to conquer it.
April 17, 1989
Nearing the Point of No Return
A nightmarish monthlong bombardment reduces Beirut to chaos
The terror arrives with the sound of rolling thunder and the flash of perpetual lightning. Hour after hour, petrified families huddle in basements and stairwells as booming howitzers rain shells over the city. For the 1.2 million residents of Beirut, the past month has been a living hell. Rival militias have relentlessly pounded the Muslim and Christian halves of Beirut, with shells tearing into houses, apartment buildings, schools and even hospitals. Ambulances careen through deserted streets scooping up bodies sliced by shrapnel. During early-morning lulls, men scurry out to buy increasingly scarce bread and bottled water. Then they stop at pharmacies to stock up on tranquilizers to help them get through the next barrage.
Lebanon (pop. 3 million), once a lovely oasis of fine beaches, snowcapped mountains and cosmopolitan culture, may be in its death throes. Its brutal civil war, which began 14 years ago this week, shows no sign of ending. Since March 8 the heaviest bombardments in four years have killed 177 and wounded 591. Equally devastating, men, women and children are suffering mental breakdowns from the protracted, indiscriminate terror.
Few understand anymore what is being fought for. The country is rent into sectarian fiefdoms ruled by quarreling Christian, Muslim and Druse warlords. The once thriving economy has all but collapsed. With nine Americans and five other foreigners still held hostage by Muslim gangs, few Westerners any longer dare set foot in the country.
What makes Lebanon's current predicament more hopeless than ever is the disintegration of the presidency. Somehow the office had survived previous crises nominally intact as the main symbol of Lebanese nationhood. But when President Amin Gemayel's six-year term expired in September, factional disputes prevented parliament from electing a successor. As his final act, Gemayel named General Michel Aoun, 53, commander of the mainly Christian Lebanese Army, to head an interim government. Muslim groups rejected Aoun and set up their own government headed by Gemayel's last Prime Minister, Selim Hoss.
Aoun's bold moves to assert his authority triggered the new fighting. In March, Aoun's 20,000-man army took on the Muslims, imposing a sea blockade of five of their illegal ports, used mainly for smuggling drugs and guns. Druse warlord Walid Jumblatt's militia and 40,000 Syrian troops responded with continuous bombardments of Christian neighborhoods. Aoun's forces hit back in kind.
Aoun claims a larger aim — "a war of liberation" against Syria's occupation army. While some Lebanese laud his moves as patriotic, his tactics risk locking the Christians in a perilous confrontation. Syrian President Hafez Assad adamantly refuses to withdraw, insisting his troops are necessary to maintain at least a semblance of order. Making the situation more ominous, the Christians are getting substantial military support from Assad's archenemy, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who seeks to avenge Assad's support of Iran in the gulf war.
But Lebanon's real trouble goes back to a 1943 unwritten "national pact" giving a dominant share of power to the Christian community. It has battled to hold on against the Muslims, who today are in the majority and are demanding a larger role in governing the country. Now, without even a figurehead President to sustain the fading dream of national reconciliation, and with the big guns drowning out all appeals for peace, Lebanon's chaos may have reached the point of no return.
October 23, 1989
Lebanon: If This Is Peace . . .
"Failure is not allowed," Muslim patriarch Saeb Salam instructed 63 surviving members of the Lebanese parliament elected in 1972 as they sat down to ponder a solution for their country's devastating 14-year civil war. In fact, failure in Lebanese peace efforts has become almost customary. But after two weeks of consultations in the Saudi Arabian resort of Taif, the parliamentarians — 33 Christians and 30 Muslims — were close to agreement on a plan to establish a "government of national reconciliation." It calls for Muslim-Christian power sharing and phased withdrawal of the 40,000 Syrian troops who have been in Lebanon under an Arab League mandate since 1976.
The plan's success is far from certain, of course. General Michel Aoun, commander of the Christian forces fighting Syria and its Lebanese Muslim allies, warned in East Beirut that "the war of liberation will continue" until the Syrians are driven out. Muslim warlords also dismissed the Taif meeting and called for Aoun's ouster.
December 17, 1990
A Fragile Ray of Hope
After 15 years of a civil war that has claimed 150,000 lives, Lebanon last week saw what could be the first glimmer of peace. Lebanese Army troops took full control of the capital for the first time since 1975 and dismantled the ''green line,'' which cut the city into Christian and Muslim sectors. Earlier, the last of the Christian forces loyal to Samir Geagea had pulled out of the city and moved north, near the port city of Jounieh, completing the first phase of a Syria-backed Arab League plan to free Beirut of all rival militias. The war-weary Lebanese greeted the pullout warily. Fighting between rebellious militias scuttled efforts to unify Beirut in 1976 and 1984. Asked a commentator on a Beirut radio station: ''What guarantees do we really have that history won't repeat itself?'' The answer may come during the next phase of the peace plan, which calls for the government to disband the rival militias and implement a system that would address the concerns of both Muslims and Christians.
January 21, 1991
Beirut Lives Again — for Now
But the capital is likely to be no more than a city-state in a lawless,
cantonized land
When the Phalangist militia finally pulled out of Beirut early last month as part of an effort to reunify the city, it was supposed to be a kind of surrender. It did not look like one, though. There was no laying down of arms by the Lebanese Forces, as the Christian militia calls itself, no plea for national reconciliation. Instead, the 70 military trucks in the outbound convoy rode low under the weight of thousands of live artillery shells. The Christian fighters, last of the unofficial armies to withdraw from Beirut and the only ones to have missed the Nov. 19 deadline imposed by the Lebanese government, stood proudly atop the shell casings, brandishing their M-16s and flags.
The scene captured both the hopes and the fears of today's Lebanon. There is the hint of promise because for the first time in more than 15 years of civil war, Beirut is, for the most part, militia-free and under the national army's control. There is also fear because when the competing fighting forces left town, they took their weapons — and their animosities — with them. Even if the peace holds in Beirut, the capital is likely to be no more than a shaky city-state in the midst of a generally lawless, cantonized country.
The citizens of Beirut have greeted the latest twist in their fortunes with a mixture of conditioned sobriety and unaccustomed cheer. "I've seen the militias leave before," Ahmad, a Muslim clerk, observed dryly. "As soon as anything goes wrong in Beirut, they'll be back in a couple of hours." Still, he could not suppress a smile as he talked about the sudden improvement in daily life. The government is finally providing electricity to his West Beirut neighborhood: for the first time in nearly two years, he can use the elevator to reach his ninth-floor apartment.
Signs of resurrection abound. Barricades and checkpoints along the 15-km- long "green line" that separated the predominantly Christian eastern part of the city from the mainly Muslim western sector have been bulldozed away. Muslims venture into the long-off-limits Christian zone to enjoy sweeping views of the capital from the eastern hills. Christians, likewise, are heading west.
Beirutis are again beginning to invest in their lives. Maya, a TV journalist, and her fiance Salah, a policeman, are renovating a penthouse apartment in West Beirut. "When there's shelling, it's too dangerous to live on the top floor," says Maya. "Now we're willing to take the risk."
At the airport, workmen are finally replacing the ceiling, which caved in during bombardments in 1989. "This is the first time we have dared to believe the war might be over," says an employee of Middle East Airlines, Lebanon's flag carrier. Technicians are repairing telephone lines, attempting to rebuild a system decimated by years of artillery fire. New or refurbished shops, restaurants and nightclubs, such as the Xanadu in Christian Jounieh, are springing up.
President Elias Hrawi, perhaps a bit optimistically, is planning to have a new presidential palace built. Since the old official residence in the suburb of Baabda is a bombed-out ruin, the President has been living and working in an ordinary apartment building in West Beirut. Hrawi's choice of a new site, the Beirut Hippodrome, has ignited a controversy: the area is one of the few green spots left in the city. Still, it is a refreshing sign of the times that a President's building plans, rather than massacres or bombardments, are what Beirut is talking about.
The change in the city's fortunes became possible in mid-October, when Syrian and Lebanese government troops crushed a year-long mutiny led by General Michel Aoun, Lebanon's cashiered Christian commander in chief. Aoun, who sought refuge in the French embassy compound, which he cannot leave, had rebelled against the Arab League-sponsored Taif peace accord. That plan, approved by Lebanon's National Assembly in October 1989, promised the country's Muslim majority — who make up more than 60% of the estimated 3 million people — a more equitable share of power with the long-dominant Maronite Christians. Aoun denounced the agreement because it provided no schedule for the withdrawal of the 40,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon. His defeat removed the last major obstacle to implementation of the Taif pact, as well as the last organized resistance to Syrian hegemony.
Syria has had troops in Lebanon since 1976. President Hafez Assad seized an opening early in the gulf crisis, when countries that might have opposed his moves were otherwise preoccupied, to consolidate his control of Lebanon. The U.S. vehemently denies that it gave Syria — for years at odds with Washington but suddenly an ally in the struggle against Saddam Hussein — the green light to attack Aoun. But according to reliable Israeli sources, prior to the final assault against Aoun, Assad had a meeting with a high-ranking U.S. official and came away with the impression that the U.S. would do nothing if the attack was surgical and involved minimal civilian casualties. Israeli officials admit they did not object when informed in advance by their own intelligence community of the Syrian offensive.
With Aoun out of the way, Syria is more dominant in Lebanon than ever before. Its troops control well over half the country. Omar Karami, Lebanon's new Prime Minister, is known to be avidly pro-Syrian. It was Damascus and Tehran, not Hrawi's weak government, that supervised truce negotiations in the fall between two warring Muslim militias: Amal, a Shi'ite group backed by Syria; and the radical Hizballah, also Shi'ite, which is supported by Iran. Likewise, it was Damascus that gave the Lebanese Forces the guarantees they requested — including assurance that two pro-Syrian militias would refrain from fresh aggression in areas the Christians vacated — before retreating from Beirut.
What Syria seeks in Lebanon is a matter of dispute. Assad's harshest critics, including many Israelis, believe he is attempting to re-create a kind of Greater Syria, an administrative area that included present-day Lebanon and parts of what are now Jordan and Israel. His methods, they charge, are simply more subtle than those Saddam used in Kuwait. "Assad understands that annexation is not fashionable," says a European diplomat based in Damascus. "But he will do his best to exert control over Lebanon without it."
The Syrians maintain that what they want is a neighbor at peace and one not controlled by Israel — and they find some sympathy for that quest elsewhere. "Yes, they moved into Lebanon," says another Western envoy in Syria. "But there was good reason to believe that if they did not, Lebanon would be a running sore on their border." Though he is hardly at liberty to chastise the Syrians, who enable his government to survive, Hrawi himself went so far as to rebut Damascus' detractors in a recent television address. To those who say Syria wants to devour Lebanon, he replied, "For what? For our oil wells? For our diamond mines?"
Clearly, Damascus' main concern in Lebanon is strategic. Israeli intelligence contends that some Syrian officials may net a total of $1 billion annually from drug traffic out of Lebanon, a major supplier of hashish. But Syria's primary interest is to maintain Lebanon as a buffer against Israel. Jerusalem not only feels the same way but also wants to keep Palestinian guerrillas from operating out of Lebanon. To that extent, Syria and Israel have a common interest in bringing stability to the country. The problem is that Hrawi's authority does not yet stretch much beyond Beirut and its suburbs.
In a sense, the war has simply moved out of the capital — and not entirely at that. The Phalangists, for instance, have held on to some of their ) positions around Beirut Harbor. Gunmen from Amal and others, apparently from Hizballah, have been spotted elsewhere in the city. Various factions accuse their rivals of leaving arms caches behind, allegations supported by Israeli intelligence reports. Making tensions worse, Phalangist leaders Samir Geagea and Georges Saadeh, both appointed to the 30-member Cabinet formed by Prime Minister Karami last month, are still boycotting its meetings to protest the government's pro-Syrian tilt. Last week another key militia leader, Druse chieftain Walid Jumblatt, resigned his Cabinet post, citing unexplained "personal reasons."
For the moment, Amal and Hizballah are focusing their collective energies on the 600 Israeli troops in southern Lebanon and on Israel's local surrogates, the 2,500-man South Lebanon Army. Some 6,000 Palestinian guerrillas have joined in the skirmishing. In the past two months, six Israeli soldiers and 37 Lebanese and Palestinians have been killed, mainly in the Israeli "security zone" along Lebanon's southern border.
Under the terms of the Taif agreement, all militias in Lebanon are eventually to be disarmed. The seven militia leaders invited into the Cabinet are in theory to oversee the destruction of their own power bases. The Palestinians, President Hrawi says, will not be exempt, despite their claims to be a resistance movement, not a militia.
Hrawi has had tough words for the Israelis too. His army, he has threatened, will fight them if they do not leave Lebanon. Jerusalem may pay lip service to the idea of pulling out, "but," notes a high-ranking Israeli defense official, "we must be convinced first that the central government would be the sole authority sovereign over all Lebanon, and that this government will not allow terrorist actions to be launched against Israel."
And as long as the Israelis remain, the Syrians are not likely to pack up. Under the Taif accord, two years after the "complete application" of its provisions Damascus is to restrict its troops to eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. But interpretations of this clause vary, and there is no deadline for — or even discussion of — a final Syrian pullout, which is one measure of Lebanon's impotence. Hussein, a Muslim electrician in West Beirut, typifies the prevailing attitude toward the Syrians. "Hi, how are you, buddy?" he asks whenever he is stopped at a Syrian army checkpoint. As he drives away, he mutters, "Bastards." But would he like to see the Syrians leave just now? "No," he replies, shaking his head. "Our government is not strong enough to enforce peace without them."
July 22, 1991
After the War, the Mop-Up
The guns finally silenced, a nation begins to mend. But the populace
is haunted by a single question: Was it worth it?
Charles Mardini left home at age 15 to fight Palestinians in Beirut. That was in 1975. During the next 15 years, he participated in every campaign waged by the Christian Phalange militia — against Palestinians, Druze, Shi'ite Muslims, Syrians, even other Lebanese Christians. Along the way he lost his left eye, his spleen, a kidney and one finger.
Was it worth it? All over Lebanon, many of the men and women who survived a ferocious 16-year civil war are asking themselves that question. On one conclusion most agree. "We all lost," says Ghassan Matar, 49, a magazine editor whose only child, a 17-year-old daughter, was killed by a car bomb in 1989. "How can you say anybody won when 150,000 people died, 200,000 were wounded and half a million left the country?"
Lebanese date the war's end to Oct. 13, 1990, when a Syrian-led attack ousted from power General Michel Aoun, the renegade Christian leader who had declared war on the Syrian troops in Lebanon. But it has taken until now for people to begin the painful process of rebuilding their lives and their country. Although Muslims and Christians are beginning to venture into formerly "enemy" territory, the old nightmares are not easily exorcised.
Mardini says his worst memory is of the September 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Phalangist militiamen in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. "What shocked me was not the dead women and children, but the severed limbs and heads — the grotesqueness of it," he says. "Yes, I killed there. I was a soldier, and I obeyed orders." Mardini stands ready to fight again should the war recommence. "After 15 years," he admits, "it became normal to see people die."
Beirut's American University hospital reports a high incidence of cases of depression, especially among young people. Hala Attalah, 30, almost burned to death in April 1990 when gunmen fired incendiary bullets into the bus in which she was traveling. "Every night I wake up in terror," she says. "I see the flames rising up and my hand melting onto the shoulder of my friend who died in the bus. I scream, 'Stop! Stop!' to the driver because the bus is zigzagging. But he is dead." Attalah survived by jumping out of a window: she suffered a broken pelvis, and her hand is horribly disfigured.
Despite such memories, most Lebanese seem eager to start afresh. The real estate market is booming, with much of the property for sale being snapped up by rich Kuwaitis and Saudis. Three Western airlines have resumed flights to Beirut. Businessmen have begun modest renovations. A stylish new clothing store in the Hamra shopping district in West Beirut calls itself the Green Line — after the demarcation line that separated Christians from Muslims. At the St. Georges Yacht and Motor Club, sunbathers are again around the pool; the St. Georges hotel next to it remains a burned-out ruin. Though battle scars show throughout the capital, the Corniche, the boulevard that winds along the Mediterranean, is regaining some of its luster. The vendors who once cluttered it with chairs, tables and litter are now required to wear white coats and caps — and their vans must be freshly painted.
Slowly, the administration of Syrian-backed President Elias Hrawi is asserting its authority. This month the reunited Lebanese army brought the southern city of Sidon under government control, disarming Palestinian guerrillas and Muslim militiamen who had run the area for well over a decade. The government would now like to impose its writ on the southern town of Jezzine, held by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army militia, but it worries about a confrontation with Israel.
Reflecting growing public confidence, the currency is getting stronger. "The Lebanese pound is one of the only currencies in the world appreciating against the dollar," says a high-ranking Central Bank official. The pound has gained 21% in value since February, and the Lebanese are shedding their dollars so quickly that the Central Bank was able to increase its foreign-currency reserves more than 50% during the past six weeks.
Nonetheless, the economy is still severely damaged. Unemployment is widespread, most notably among demobilized militiamen; the housing shortage is severe. Telecommunications are spotty, and Beirut residents have only six hours of electricity each day. Estimates are that it will take something like $18 billion to repair Lebanon's shattered infrastructure. Yet the Arab League has paid only a small portion of the $2 billion it pledged for reconstruction, and Western aid is unlikely to flow until the government resolves two sensitive issues: its refusal to allow Aoun to accept a French offer of asylum, and the question of the 13 Western hostages held in Lebanon.
Government officials contend that the country could rebuild far more quickly if Lebanese who fled during the war, taking with them as much as $20 billion, returned. But there are several obstacles that give exiles pause. Some 40,000 Syrian troops and more than 1,000 Israelis are stationed on Lebanese soil. Religious barriers remain firmly fixed: key government positions are allocated according to sect; national identity cards still list the holder's religion. A recent scuffle at a "Songs of Peace" concert attended by Christians and Muslims showed that fear and resentment linger just below the surface. For all the talk of a bright future, the Lebanese know better than anyone else how easily their country could slip back into the bloody past.
February 8, 1993
Mr. Miracle
Everything about Rafik Hariri is big. Now he's working on rebuilding
an entire country
Who says money can't buy happiness? Certainly not Rafik Hariri. Like many a self-made billionaire, he is using his money to fulfill his wildest dreams. It's just that his dreams go beyond self-advertising aggrandizement or monuments to mammon. What he wants to do is remake an entire country. As the new Prime Minister of Lebanon, he is purchasing a measure of contentment by deploying his considerable fortune as a catalyst for peace and prosperity. After 15 years of civil strife, he aspires to restore his native land to its pre-war glory as an intellectual, financial and tourism center.
Such king-size ambition is wholly in keeping with his style. Everything about Hariri is big — his houses, his fortune (estimated at $4 billion), his Rabelaisian appetites for food, real estate, banks, radio and TV stations, newspapers and power. And now he is playing the central role in his country's comeback from ruin and pariah status, helped by a tenacity commensurate with his prodigious size.
Last December Hariri received a 2 a.m. phone call from Lebanon's ambassador in Washington, warning him that Israel was about to deport 415 Palestinians to Lebanon. "We will not allow them to come," replied Hariri. The immediacy of his response — without consulting his Cabinet or any other power brokers — and his refusal to accept the Palestinian deportees was his way of demonstrating that Lebanon is on the mend, a sovereign state unwilling to be pushed around or to serve as "Israel's dumping ground."
In a country where politicians who show decisiveness have a short life expectancy, it was a courageous stance. Hariri regards the risk of assassination philosophically; his Muslim faith clearly helps. "I believe if my life is finished, it will be finished," he says. "It is written." But the businessman in him improved the odds of survival by spending $2 million of his own money to install blast-resistant armor plating and bulletproof glass in the government palace. He employs 40 private bodyguards and drives in a convoy of six armored Mercedes with smoked-glass windows. Even the Lebanese soldiers who ride shotgun in Range Rovers interspersed with the Mercedes cars do not know which vehicle carries the Prime Minister.
While many of his compatriots continue to mull over grievances from the years of fighting, Hariri looks to the future. "I am not responsible for what happened before," he says. "I am responsible for what happens after I came into office. The past is past." He says he is convinced that Lebanon's war is finished forever: "We have learned that Lebanon cannot be governed by a part of the Lebanese people. It must be governed by all, by Christians and Muslims together. That is what I am trying to do." This emphasis on actual power- sharing contrasts with the prewar, Maronite Christian-dominated society. For the first time since the end of the French mandate in 1943, real authority has shifted from the presidency, which is reserved for a Maronite, to the Muslim Prime Minister.
Hariri's story is unique in a country traditionally ruled by established families. "I was born in a modest house, into a modest family," says the Prime Minister, who speaks reluctantly of his rise to wealth and power. "Each one of us loved the others. But I was not satisfied with our situation. I was sure that I had to do something to change it. I never dreamed I would reach where I am now. I still think that I am in a dream." In 1965 the 21-year-old farmer's son from the coastal city of Sidon emigrated to Saudi Arabia to teach mathematics. He became an accountant, then founded his own construction firm. His big break came in 1977, when Saudi Arabia desperately needed more hotel rooms for a major Islamic summit. He built the Taif Intercontinental Hotel on a deadline other contractors said was impossible to meet.
For that feat the young entrepreneur won the lasting favor of the late King Khalid and the Saudi royal family. Saudi citizenship was soon awarded, and Hariri went on to build many of the kingdom's palaces, hospitals, hotels and schools. Today his network of real estate and banking investments extends from the Middle East to Europe and the U.S. One of the world's 100 richest people, he has 15,000 employees (many of whom now work in his government), private jets, a yacht and homes in Riyadh, Jidda, Damascus, Paris, Monaco, London and New York City.
With great wealth came a willingness to spread it around. Sheik Rafik, as his Lebanese staff reverentially call him, contributes $87 million annually to * Lebanese charities, and since 1982 he has paid university fees for 15,000 Lebanese studying at home and abroad. In 1989 he bankrolled the Taif peace conference, flying 62 fractious Lebanese parliamentarians to Saudi Arabia and enclosing them — under Arab League auspices — in the city's Conference Palace for three weeks until they came up with the agreement that eventually restored peace to Lebanon.
For that he won the allegiance of many Lebanese, who post his photograph in shop windows throughout the country. Yet his Saudi connections have proved a source of tension in Lebanon, where foreign sponsorship of competing religious communities has often aggravated sectarian strife. Some pro-Iranian Shi'ites view the return of the Sunni Muslim billionaire with suspicion. After 27 years in the kingdom, Hariri speaks with a Saudi accent. He has encouraged other wealthy Saudis to invest in Lebanese reconstruction projects. Twice last month he met with King Fahd in Saudi Arabia, where his Palestinian-born wife Nazek and five children still live when they are not in Paris. While acknowledging his friendship with the King, Hariri denies he is "Saudi Arabia's man" in Lebanon. "King Fahd doesn't need a man in Lebanon," says Hariri. "Saudi Arabia doesn't have a policy of expansion or of trying to be influential in Lebanon. He is my friend. But I'm not here on a Saudi mission."
Neither is he Syria's man, he says. Unlike his recent predecessors, Hariri claims he does not seek approval for policy decisions from Damascus, which continues to maintain 40,000 troops in his country. But since it is virtually impossible to hold high political office in postwar Lebanon without Syria's stamp of approval, Hariri has cultivated ties there. Abdel Halim Khaddam, the Syrian Vice President responsible for his country's involvement in Lebanon, is a close friend. And Hariri's firm recently completed President Hafez Assad's hilltop palace in Damascus, a gift from Saudi Arabia. In addition, Lebanese allies of Syria retain key portfolios in Hariri's Cabinet.
Though a September 1992 deadline for Syrian forces to withdraw to eastern Lebanon was not observed, Hariri says the redeployment is "not an issue" because the Lebanese army isn't yet strong enough to preserve law and order on its own. He declines to set a deadline for the Syrians' departure: "We cannot sacrifice the security of the country to satisfy some people. The Syrians don't want to stay, and we don't want them to stay. But they are needed." Whether or not the disengagement is too slow, few challenge the view among Western diplomats in Damascus that the October appointment of the strong- willed Prime Minister was a sign that Assad is at last willing to give Lebanon some political leeway.
Hariri insists his sole mission is to rebuild his country and — perhaps more important — to nurture a new Lebanese nationalism that can supersede the family and sectarian loyalties that have contributed to his country's internecine strife. Working 15-hour days, he is putting all his gifts to the task. Unlike former militia leaders in the government, whose violent pasts still inspire distrust among former enemies, Hariri has the valuable distinction of having no blood on his hands, thanks to his sojourn in Saudi Arabia, and his countrymen believe he is too rich to be corrupted. The millions Hariri has given for roads, schools and social projects and the perception that there is a strong government at last in Beirut have created new confidence. The Lebanese pound has risen 28% against the dollar in the three months since he was appointed, and $714 million in capital that left the country in 1992 has returned.
Hariri's pet project is his $2.65 billion plan to reconstruct Beirut's devastated commercial district. And his vision inspires others. Almost overnight, high-rise buildings are springing up from Beirut's rubble. Other signs of stability are also encouraging. Price-gouging merchants are now punished on government orders. Police enforce one-way-street rules and no parking zones, relieving Beirut's chronic traffic jams. To limit corruption, Hariri has abolished civil servants' immunity to prosecution. He also promises to target the growing of drug crops in the Bekaa Valley and is asking the Clinton Administration to reverse seven-year-old restrictions on the travel of U.S. citizens to Lebanon, as well as a ban on the national airline's flying to the U.S.
Lebanon remains physically and psychologically maimed by the 1975-90 conflict, which caused an estimated $20 billion in damage. But Beirut bankers say the improvements under Hariri could soon translate into the country's first real economic growth since the war.
The most common criticism of the Prime Minister is that he is too big for Lebanon. Business sources estimate he spent $100 million in a real estate- shopping spree in the country last year, making him one of the nation's principal landholders. And he is prepared to put up another $100 million or more for the downtown Beirut project he initiated "if my participation will give confidence to the people who want to invest." Hariri's moments of ill temper, like his throaty, boisterous laugh, can take visitors by surprise. He does not accept criticism of his motives lightly, insisting that neither his financing of the plan to rebuild Beirut's commercial district nor his ownership of a radio station, two television stations and four newspaper titles constitutes a conflict of interest. "Are you going to argue that the Prime Minister should be a poor man? If someone is rich and he is Prime Minister, the least he can do is put his holdings in a blind trust. That is what I have done."
He does sometimes fear that his compatriots overestimate his ability to rebuild the country. And some Lebanese are concerned that too much hope has been invested in "Mr. Miracle," as Lebanese newspapers have dubbed him. Nonetheless, even one of Hariri's detractors admits grudgingly that the billionaire Prime Minister "wants to go down in history as the man who saved his country." When the question is put to him, though, Hariri laughs. He wants to go down in history, he says, "alive — not as someone who died on the job." And, he adds, "I'd like to be written about as the man who lost weight."
June 13, 1994
Mourning and Warning in Lebanon
Revenge is in the eyes of the Hizballah guerrillas, and grief is on the faces of the black-clad women. Families peer through doorways along the funeral route — so fearful of another Israeli air raid, they say, that they dare not join the procession. A loudspeaker carries high-decibel hate chants of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." As the crowd takes up the old cries, the effect is hypnotic. Thousands of mourners pound their chests in unison, making a deep, eerie thud that reverberates through the streets of Baalbek.
In the town's main square, standing before six plywood coffins draped in bright red cloth, Sheik Mohammed Yazbek, regional commander of the Iranian- backed guerrilla movement, delivers the funeral oration. "The spirits of our martyrs are meeting with the spirit of Imam Khomeini," says Yazbek.
Just a day earlier, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Ayatullah Khomeini's death, the Israeli air force bombed the Hizballah training base in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley with devastating effect. Hizballah officials claim 26 guerrillas were killed and 40 others wounded in the predawn raid on Thursday; local residents say the toll was far higher. Even at Hizballah's announced figure, the casualties are the worst inflicted on the Party of God in a single attack.
After the funeral speeches, Hussein Musawi, head of the Islamic Amal faction of Hizballah, talks of retaliation. "Of course we expect Muslim 'actions' in the region, and perhaps in Europe and America," says Musawi, his eyes burning. Though softly worded, his threat carries a chill: when Israeli forces assassinated Hizballah leader Abbas Musawi (no relation to Hussein) in 1992, another of the group's offshoots bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29.
The Israelis chose a military target in response to Hizballah's almost daily attacks on Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon. Wounded guerrillas in Baalbek's Imam Khomeini hospital told of being awakened in their sleep by rocket explosions. When bleeding survivors tried to flee, they were pursued through ravines by helicopter gunships using searchlights and heavy machine guns. Bitter anger shows plainly when Hussein Musawi talks of the bombing, which escalated tension in the often savage 12-year-old war between Israel and the Lebanese fundamentalists: "Some of the bodies were cut in half. If people see Jews blown apart, they shouldn't blame us. Because this is the result of what our people have seen here."
Hizballah had also received a jolt last month with Israel's kidnapping of Mustafa Dirani, another Hizballah leader, from his home near Baalbek. The timing of the air raid last week — on the morning of a scheduled military graduation ceremony — renewed speculation that Israeli intelligence has infiltrated the fundamentalist movement.
The Lebanese government declared an official day of mourning, but Beirut's authority is in retreat in Baalbek. Hizballah gunmen are back on the streets. "Life had almost become normal here," laments a local merchant. "Until Thursday, Lebanese soldiers and police patrolled the town; fewer women were wearing veils; men shaved their beards. The Israeli raid will strengthen Hizballah's grip on Baalbek, because the Lebanese government has shown it can't protect us."
January 15, 1996
Up from Despair
No place has been more shattered by civil strife than Lebanon. Now
it is a paradigm of hope
Like millions of television viewers around the world, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri followed the course of the Bosnian war on the evening news with sad fascination. But for Hariri, there was also a sense of déjà vu. "It was like reruns of the Lebanese war," he says. "Similar architecture, the same kind of arms. They even bought some of their weapons from Lebanese militias. I wanted to take them downtown and show them our ruins — and the effort it takes to restore them. I'd tell them, 'This is the result of war.'"
The Lebanese see many parallels between their own past and Bosnia's present. They say that Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and, for that matter, the Chechens, Somalis, Algerians and Afghans will learn Lebanon's harsh lesson: that civil war ends not in triumph but in poverty and exhaustion, that sooner or later someone has to pay for the cities the militiamen so blithely destroy. The bill for Lebanon's devastation came to $25 billion, immeasurable suffering and the loss of more than 150,000 lives.
The compulsion to keep tearing at the nation's flesh and psyche was so powerful in Lebanon that breaking the cycle required an act of coercive diplomacy remarkably similar to the formula later employed with Bosnia's warring parties. Just as U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke convened a Balkan peace summit in the isolation of Dayton, Ohio, Hariri organized the 1989 Taif peace conference. To secure a nation-saving deal, he flew the fractious Lebanese parliamentarians to Saudi Arabia and locked them in a conference hall until they agreed on a treaty.
Yet for all the mournful epitaphs still etched into Beirut's shell-pocked facades, Lebanon now represents a more positive paradigm — that of a nation staging a startling recovery after 16 years of ferocious civil strife. In a transformation wrought by cranes, pile drivers and resurgent human energy funded by a host of investors, Beirut's citizens are well along the way toward reclaiming their city and once again making it the most advanced metropolis in the Middle East. On the harder job of changing the sectarian hatreds that fragmented their nation, the Lebanese are finding the progress slower, but even there can point to a few encouraging signs. And the resumption of Syria-Israel peace talks near Washington at the end of December offers new hope that 1996 will bring a solution to Lebanon's intractable problem of political autonomy: the civil war left nearly 10% of the country occupied by Israel, while the rest is effectively under the control of Syria and the 30,000 troops it has stationed there. Lebanon and Syria have agreed that they will sign any peace treaty with Israel together. An accord would almost certainly end Israel's occupation of the south and weaken Syria's grip on Beirut.
The enormous commitment necessary to the task currently under way requires that no one look back on the past. Perhaps because their collective crimes were so unspeakable, the Lebanese now affect an attitude of amnesia toward the war. Instead of dwelling on the horrors they lived through, they focus on the revival and the beckonings of a happier future. "Lebanon is a big construction site," says Hariri. "We are building a new airport. We are enlarging the seaports. We are going to build a conference palace for over 2,000 people."
The multibillionaire Prime Minister made his own fortune completing similar projects for the Saudi royal family. Since coming to office in October 1992, Hariri has stabilized the Lebanese pound, brought inflation down from 131% annually to 10% and nurtured two major programs: Solidere, a private real estate company that is rebuilding downtown Beirut, and an $18 billion government plan to install new electricity, telephone, sewerage and transportation networks nationwide.
Much of Beirut has reverted to favorite prewar pursuits: enjoying life and making money. A generation that grew up in bomb shelters now crowds into piano bars and nightclubs until 6 in the morning. Four-wheel-drive vehicles, and cell phones — which cost $1,500 and work badly — are status symbols for the Beirut rich. To judge by the sleek cars parked outside the Rabelais and Vieux Quartier restaurants and the luxury apartment buildings springing up among the ruins, the city's moneyed elite is proliferating.
Meanwhile, an estimated third of Lebanese live in poverty. A university professor compares postwar Lebanon, with its handful of megacompanies, with the late 19th century America of the robber barons: "This is rabid, vicious, uncontrolled capitalism," he says. "The modern West evolved a social system and accountability alongside free enterprise. Lebanon hasn't." The government knows it must address social problems. "We have to narrow the gap between rich and poor," admits Hariri. Yet almost no provision is made for urgently needed public schools, low-income housing and health programs. Highly visible, prestige construction projects fan the resentment of the have-nots.
The rebuilding of Beirut's city center, by far the largest of the projects, is the boldest undertaking of its kind since Europe and Japan resurrected their cities after World War II. It may yet serve as a model for other destroyed cities like Sarajevo. For 16 years downtown Beirut — once the glittering financial hub of the Middle East — was a desolate, violent place of front-line ruins inhabited by drugged gunmen and homeless refugees. Today the 180-hectare site belongs to the Solidere company, which has transformed it into a surreal landscape swarming with bulldozers, giant concrete mixers and pipe-laying equipment. Skeletal Ottoman and French-mandate buildings of yellow stone, their facades eroded by bullets, await restoration. Lebanese, some with tears in their eyes, are flocking to visit ancient mosques, churches and recently unearthed archaeological treasures. A Phoenician wall, Roman baths, Byzantine mosaics, a Mamluk shrine and remnants of the Crusader castle are to be preserved in the new city.
"You will be able to walk through five thousand years of history in one kilometer," says Solidere chairman Nasser Chammaa. "But Beirut will also be a city of the future. No other city in the Middle East will have such modern infrastructure." Innovations include centrally supplied air-conditioning and heating for the district and fiber-optic cabling to put Beirut on the information superhighway. About a quarter of the downtown office and residential space should be completed by the year 2000.
Solidere was Prime Minister Hariri's brainchild, and his peculiar role as entrepreneur-premier is controversial. He bought 6.7% of the company himself and handpicked longtime aide Chammaa to run it. With a market value of $2.4 billion, the joint-stock company is divided between former owners and tenants, who received shares in return for their property, and investors like Hariri. In exchange for Solidere's $600 million investment in downtown infrastructure, the government gave the company 148 acres of prime seafront landfill. With that sort of dual interest, Hariri unsurprisingly has been attacked by critics, who claim that property was deliberately undervalued to enrich Solidere investors, including the Prime Minister.
"We paid $170 million just to get the squatters out," responds Chammaa. "There was no infrastructure, no economic activity. We're creating the critical mass that will make this place work as a center." Chammaa argues the rebirth of the city center is of great psychological importance. "This was the area where all religious communities lived and worked together — Lebanon's melting pot," he says. "The communities have become more polarized, but all of them continue to feel that this part of the city is theirs, and they're all buying land here. This will contribute significantly to the healing process."
Hariri's goals concern not only the nation's physical rebirth but also the reconstruction of its past. And Hariri has helped formulate a plan for that too. As in the former Yugoslavia, every Lebanese sect has its own version of history, a different community memory. "That's where the problem started," explains Hariri. So the politicians he gathered to draw up the 1989 peace accord prescribed a single, nationwide history text for all Lebanese schools. Professor Mounir Abou Assali, president of the Education Ministry's research center, was given the unenviable task of making the Lebanese agree on their history. "We discuss every word, every phrase — sometimes for hours," he says of the endless committee meetings.
Like all government institutions, Abou Assali's committee is half Muslim, half Christian. Its members are chosen by sectarian political leaders — including former militia chiefs who have no interest in dredging up their own war crimes. Abou Assali says the approved history must "eliminate everything that creates conflict between Lebanese. We will emphasize what civil conflict cost on a human, social and economic level. For the time being, this is the only way. We are in a period of healing. Later we can raise the truth dosage." Many scholars are understandably skeptical about any such bland, processed information. "Whatever version of history the government agrees on will be fabricated," says Ussama Makdisi, a doctoral candidate in Lebanese history at Princeton University. "You can't abolish sectarianism in Lebanon, just as you can't abolish race thinking in America."
A tiny country with 17 different Christian and Muslim religious sects, Lebanon disintegrated through internal schisms and the power struggles of its neighbors. In 1976, after a year of war, the late Lebanese President Suleiman Franjieh asked for Syrian help; the Syrians came, under the guise of an Arab League mandate, and never left. A deft practitioner of the principle of divide and rule, Syrian President Hafez Assad constantly arbitrates between quarreling Lebanese politicians. All are beneficiaries of a tripartite system that reserves the presidency for the Maronites, the Prime Minister's office for Sunni Muslims and the speaker of parliament's job for the Shi'ites. When President Elias Hrawi and Prime Minister Hariri last year proposed extending Hrawi's five-year term, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri opposed this breach of the constitution. Assad settled the matter by giving loyal ally Hrawi an extra three years in office, on the pretense that stability was needed for peace talks with Israel. And it was Assad again who mediated a dispute over the size of Lebanese voting districts for this year's parliamentary elections.
Assad has made it clear that he will not withdraw his 30,000 troops from Lebanon so long as Israel continues to occupy a 1,100-sq-km strip of land in the south of the country. For while Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese leaders haggle over the conditions of peace, the last Arab-Israeli war sputters on in southern Lebanon. With the blessing of Damascus, the Beirut government allows Iranian-backed Lebanese Hizballah militiamen to attack Israel's 1,200 occupation troops and their 2,500 Lebanese militia allies. In 1995, 151 combatants, including 25 Israeli soldiers, were killed in 890 clashes in southern Lebanon.
The war in the south handicaps Lebanon by burdening the capital with refugees from the Israeli-occupied zone as well as frightening off potential investors who view it as a source of instability. "We will not know a booming economy before signing a peace treaty with Israel," says Freddie Baz, adviser to the chairman of Banque Audi, one of Lebanon's top banks. The U.S. refuses to lift restrictions on travel to Lebanon because of Hizballah's armed presence — another by-product of the south Lebanon war.
Lebanese politicians pay lip service to "liberating the south," but the region's poor Shi'ite Muslims feel alienated. "Nobody cares about the suffering of people down here," says a Hizballah guerrilla in the village of Jibsheet. "The government is too busy with Solidere and building highways. They only want a return on investment." Villagers in the south live in constant fear. Thirty Lebanese civilians were killed by Israeli gunfire last year, while across the border in Israel, an Israeli and a Frenchman died in retaliatory Hizballah rocket attacks.
Lebanese truck driver Ali Bdir and his wife Khadijeh were going for an after-dinner walk last July 8 when they heard an Israeli tank fire four antipersonnel shells from the ridge above their house in Nabatiyeh. "I turned and ran home," says Bdir. "My wife ran behind me screaming, 'My children, my children.' " The Israeli flechette shells spray hundreds of tiny, razor-sharp arrows into victims. The couple found their two eldest daughters, Jihane, 18, and Sylvana, 12, and their next-door neighbor's son Ali Abbas, 14, dead on the front porch where they had been watching television. Zakaria, 4, the baby of the Bdir family, died later. Israeli officials said the attack was a mistake, and the Israeli tank sergeant who fired the shots was sentenced to 28 days in prison. Such tragedies — and they occur several times a year — invariably win new recruits for Hizballah. "Before my children were murdered, I used to hate Hizballah," says Ali Bdir. "I'm a nonviolent man. But now I'm owed a blood debt for my children. I'll support anyone who fights Israel."
Even as the war continues, the Lebanese believe a Syria-Israel peace deal would either include, or soon lead to, the end of hostilities in the south, and the Beirut government is preparing for peace. The Lebanese Army has been increased to 58,000, compared with 20,000 before the civil war. Equipped with surplus materiel from U.S. forces in Germany, Lebanese soldiers will move into the Israeli-occupied zone once the Israelis pull back across their border. The Lebanese Army will be responsible for ensuring that neither Hizballah nor Palestinian guerrillas attack Israel. With that flash point doused, Lebanese officials expect, hesitant foreign investors will flock to add new vigor to the recovery.
Almost everyone in the country — rich or poor, beneficiary of a particular project or critic — is at least partially infected with the fever of recovery and the dream of returning Lebanon to its still remembered glory. No one imagines an overnight miracle; the living standard of the average citizen, government projections indicate, will not reach its prewar, 1975 level until 2007. But despite the difficulties ahead and the enduring tensions of religious division, the Lebanese are driven by a shared desire for a new future together.
Consider the strengthening of the Lebanese Army. Not only does it further the practical goals of the government, officials proudly declare, but its role and training have been rethought to serve a more abstract, nation-building purpose. During the civil war it broke apart — its Muslim and Christian soldiers allying themselves with the militias. Today commander in chief General Emile Lahoud has made a year's military service mandatory for all Lebanese. He believes that if Christians and Muslims train and live together, they will set aside sectarian differences. "We teach them to be Lebanese first, then Druze, Maronite, Shi'ite or Sunni," explains General Ali Harb, head of army education. Army brigades are no longer composed of members of a single religion. Promotions are made on merit — not on the old Christian-Muslim quota system.
At the army's boot camp, just east of Beirut, 3,000 conscripts marched in the rain one recent Saturday morning. "A Muslim sleeps in the next bed in my barracks," says Antoine Sacre, 21, a Christian Maronite. "We share our food. He uses my boot polish. I've learned he's a human being." General Michel Abou Rizk's philosophy lecture booms out over the loud speaker. In rapid succession, he cites Socrates, Aristotle, Christ, the Prophet Muhammad and Thomas Jefferson. "Freedom must be protected," General Abou Rizk concludes. "Anarchy is our enemy. Lebanon belongs to..." The general pauses as 3,000 young men shout in unison:"...its people!"
August 2, 1999
Barak's Timetable For Peace
Can Israel's new leader find the right formula within 15 months?
In a toast to visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at an elegant White House dinner last week, U.S. President Bill Clinton reported that Barak had promised he would "not sleep a wink" until a comprehensive peace was reached in the Middle East. Relating how Barak, a notorious night owl, had kept him up talking at Camp David until 1:45 a.m., Clinton joked, "I can assure you this is a man who keeps his commitments."
There are a lot of commitments to keep. Speaking to reporters the day after Clinton's remark, Barak said he would "leave no stone unturned" in his quest for peace. But if it's clear Barak wants to seal new deals with Israel's Arab neighbors, it remains to be seen how fast he can do it.
The Prime Minister himself proposed a rather confusing timetable of 15 months, during which, he said, "we will know [whether] we have a breakthrough...or we are stuck again." Plainly, that schedule was chosen with Clinton's daybook in mind. In 15 months, Clinton — who is eager for a foreign policy triumph that would lend his presidential record some much-needed class — would be in the dwindling days of his term. Barak was signaling Clinton that he'd do what he could to beat the clock.
But the remark was widely misinterpreted as a promise of new accords within a little more than a year: specifically, a land-for-peace trade with Syria, a treaty with Lebanon that would enable Israel to peaceably withdraw its occupation troops from the southern part of that country, and a comprehensive and final agreement with the Palestinians.
Clinching deals on the first two prospects within one earth orbit is certainly possible because the issues are relatively uncomplicated. Syria wants back the strategic Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 war; Israel wants genuinely peaceful relations, including an exchange of ambassadors. Each accepts the other's basic demand although some sensitive points remain, notably how to configure limited-troop zones around the Golan Heights. But negotiators, including Barak himself as military chief of staff, had already started hashing these out before talks were frozen in 1996.
The main issue for both sides is primarily one of will. Last week, there was quite a bit of it on display, and it was of the good variety. Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam met with leaders of militant Palestinian groups based in Damascus, whose presence has been a sore point both with Israel and the U.S. In an unusually conciliatory move Khaddam told them to stop plotting acts of violence against Israel, as this was not in keeping with Syria's peace goals. Meanwhile, Danny Yatom, Barak's chief of staff, said that Israel had "no problem" meeting Syria's demand to resume negotiations at the place they left off in 1996, though there might be disagreements over where that was precisely. Syria's demand had kept Barak's predecessor, hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu, from restarting talks.
If Israel can successfully negotiate a treaty with Syria, another with Lebanon is almost sure to follow. Israel and Lebanon are eager to make peace, and the components of a deal are simple: Israel would pull out of south Lebanon and national authorities would move in, neutralizing the Hizballah militia that menaces northern Israel. Until now, Syria, which controls Lebanon, has prevented such an accord, but probably would allow it once Syria's own accounts with Israel were settled. On that front, too, the atmospherics of late have been good. Israeli commanders said Syria recently had been restraining Hizballah, contributing to relative calm in south Lebanon.
The Palestinian track contains the tricky work. Even under the dovish Labor government that preceded Netanyahu's, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were painstaking and deadlines were almost never met. Israeli and Palestinian lives have overlapped too long to be untangled easily. Even so, 15 months is too long for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Under the original 1993 Oslo accord, he was more or less promised a state by last May 4. On that date, he delayed a threatened unilateral declaration of statehood in order to give then candidate Barak a chance. Arafat's new deadline is May 4, 2000 — nine months from now. It will take many sleepless nights for both Barak and Arafat to meet that mark.
FEBRUARY 21, 2000
Searching for Peace
After a week of turmoil in Lebanon, Israel's talks with Syria have
stalled. Can Barak salvage them?
Ehud Barak is starting to realize just how elusive peace can be. The sweeping promises the Israeli Prime Minister made after his election last year--and which he has doggedly pursued ever since--now ring hollow. After a hopeful start, talks with Syria have gone nowhere. The Palestinian peace process is missing one deadline after another. Members of Barak's cabinet whisper that they have lost confidence in his judgment. And public support for Barak's efforts to salvage the peace process is falling fast: in late January one poll found that more than half of Israelis oppose withdrawal from the Golan Heights, an inevitable component of a deal with Syria. Only 25% would vote for such an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement.
Last week the outlook became even more bleak. Prodded by outrage at the killing of four Israeli soldiers in the last two weeks by Hizballah guerrillas, Barak ordered air strikes on power stations deep inside Lebanon. The attacks injured about a dozen Lebanese civilians and knocked out electricity in Beirut. "Israel may be sending a message, but it's sending it to the wrong people," said Peter Samaha, a Beirut coffee shop owner. In expectation of Hizballah reprisals, residents in northern Israel scurried to bomb shelters. On Thursday the Israeli army allowed citizens to leave the bunkers, claiming that the strikes had deterred the Syrian-backed Hizballah gunners from launching Katyusha rockets into Israeli territory.
The crisis seemed to subside by Friday, when the U.S. convened a five-country Israeli-Lebanon monitoring committee to defuse tensions and begin the work of getting Israel and Syria back to the negotiating table. But then the fighting flared again: a Hizballah rocket killed another Israeli soldier, prompting Israel to launch a retaliatory air raid and walk out of the mediation talks. "This has been a dangerous set of exchanges," said a U.S. official. "The question is how and whether they will come back from it and engage [in peace talks]. We don't know the answer to that yet."
Some signs were encouraging. After ordering the strikes last Tuesday, Barak talked conciliation. "Our goal is not to close the door in the face of the possibility of continuing the peace process," he said. But elsewhere the rhetoric was more incendiary. David Levy, Israel's usually dovish Foreign Minister, warned Hizballah that "the soil of Lebanon will burn" if the guerrillas targeted civilians.
Other officials fumed that Syria was deliberately supporting the escalation of violence by Hizballah in an effort to exact concessions from Israel. Said Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh: "The pattern of [Syria's] negotiating peace and at the same time giving their support and blessing to Hizballah is unacceptable." Like Barak, he left open the door to restarting negotiations, but warned that "we are in no rush."
American officials scrambled to overcome the new hurdles on the road to a Syrian-Israeli peace deal. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright phoned Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al Shara demanding that the Syrians rein in Hizballah. "In some cases, Syria can be more or less effective in preventing these things from happening," said a senior White House aide. "We've explicitly and directly said to the Syrians, 'Make them cool it.'"
That still might not be enough to break the impasse, which existed even before Israel's skirmishes with Hizballah. Shara and Barak have yet to agree even on what to negotiate first. Shara wants to talk about where the new border would run after Israel withdraws from the Golan Heights, but Barak refuses to consider lines on the map until guarantees of security and normalized relations are established. The Syrians were also furious at the Israelis for leaking a document from last month's talks which revealed Syrian concessions, including a joint commission to draw a new border and provisions for the U.S. and France to maintain early warning stations on the Golan Heights. Since then, Damascus has been cool to Western overtures on resuming negotiations.
Meanwhile, Barak faces other dilemmas. His discussions with Yasser Arafat are in abeyance due to squabbles over the next transfer of West Bank land. The White House has warned Israel that further delay could result in an outbreak of violence by Palestinian radicals. And after last week's fighting, Barak is under increasing pressure to end Israel's 18-year military presence in Lebanon even before his original goal of July, though some advisers would prefer to make a Lebanon pullout contingent on a deal with Syria. "To withdraw unilaterally," says Sneh, "would be to cut and run, and that wouldn't achieve anything." But with peace prospects so dim, remaining in Lebanon any longer may accomplish even less.
APRIL 10, 2000
Inside a Land of Great Charm and Even Greater Chaos
BY ZIAD DOUEIRI BEIRUT
There is something enigmatic about Beirut. It is the tension between old cultures and new ideas, the contrast between the chaos from an absence of government and the day-to-day freedom that results. Beirut has never had an adequate infrastructure or careful planning. Fifteen years of civil war did not help either. Yet things limp along--how, no one really knows. The country has tax laws but no effective collection system, yet all government workers get paid. Street signs and numbers are erratic. If you ask, "Where is the IBM shop?" you will hear something like this: "Find the old Swiss Pastry Shop that was bombed in 1978, go across the street, turn right at the Pepsi-Cola sign; make a left where Ali's Java Shack is; go into the car dealership and ask them; they will tell you where the IBM shop is."
I once wrote my dad a letter and estimated it would take two months to arrive. It never did. "Which address did you send it to?" Dad asked. "Our home, Hamra Street, Concord Building, eighth floor, across from Saint John's Church," I told him. "Of course I didn't get it," he said. "They bombed the church." Europeans seem to agree that Lebanon is a special case. In the 1960s a group of experts was commissioned to study Lebanon's economy. Their conclusion: We have no idea how the country works, but we recommend that no changes be made.
Beirut is trying to outgrow these "quaint" imperfections. The country's tumultuous civil war brought invading armies, marauding militias and enough political intrigues to make Watergate seem demure. But the country has a new chance now with an Israeli withdrawal on the horizon. It is a moment to watch.
Lebanon is a country about the size of Connecticut with 4 million inhabitants. It produces not a drop of oil, has no mineral resources and manufactures no weapons of mass or minor destruction. And though the land is often convulsed by TV-worthy violence that lands it a slot on the American news, Lebanese have never stopped finding ways to live their lives. To withstand the punishments of centuries of invaders and civil wars, the Lebanese have evolved into a species that not only adapts to but takes advantage of all that is broken. The rebuilding of shredded downtown Beirut is a testament to the Lebanese will not only to survive but to do it in style.
I have lived in some quite frenetic cities, yet Beirut is the only place where chaos is the order of the day. There is no privacy in this city. For one thing, friends and family drop by unannounced. You will always bump into someone you know, whether at a bar, in a shop or on the streets. A couple of years ago, while scouting a location for a film, I got stuck at a very busy intersection. I considered making a U-turn to avoid gridlock. I asked the traffic officer if it was O.K.
Traffic Officer (TO): If you want.
ZD: I do, but is it legal?
TO: Give it a try.
ZD: Yes, but are you going to give me a ticket?
TO: The only way to find out is to try.
ZD: Well, how do I know you won't give me a ticket?
TO: That's right, no one knows except Allah himself.
So I made the U turn, and the officer blew his whistle. "Pull to the
side!" he yelled.
ZD: I guess Allah decides to give me a ticket.
TO: My friend, Allah does not give tickets. I do.
I produced my California driver's license and my U.S. passport.
ZD: So you live in Los Angeles? How long?
ZD: Fifteen years.
TO: And what do you do?
ZD: I work in film.
TO: Like what kind of film?
ZD: Films, you know, like Hollywood films, nothing you would recognize.
TO: Why do you say I don't know?
ZD: O.K., I worked on a film called Pulp Fiction. Have you heard of
it?
TO: YOU KNOW TRAVOLTA?
He summoned other traffic officers, who hurry over.
TO: Check this out. The gentleman knows Travolta!
Questions and comments poured in. "So, how is Johnny? We like Travolta,
he is good people? What is he like, nice? Does he like Arabs?"
ZD: I didn't ask him if he likes Arabs.
TO: We apologize for keeping you. We'll clear a path for you.
ZD: Thank you. Perhaps you can fix the traffic now.
TO: My friend, the traffic can take care of itself.
So can Lebanon. We hope.
Ziad Doueiri grew up in Lebanon. He is the director of the award-winning West Beirut--a film set during the Lebanese civil war. He has also worked on Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and From Dusk Till Dawn END
APRIL 10, 2000
No Man's Land
Hizballah is driving Israel from Lebanon. It wants even more power.
An exclusive look inside
For the rendezvous with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the turbaned leader of Hizballah, the time and place are kept secret. Eventually you are driven into a barricaded neighborhood protected by bearded militiamen and hustled into an apartment block with mirrored windows. Wallets, key chains, and even belts are removed from you and taken away for inspection. Finally you are seated in a room dominated by an acrylic painting of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the far end is Hizballah's yellow banner, the words "Islamic Revolution of Lebanon" written in Arabic beneath the silhouette of a holy warrior's rifle.
It may seem like a journey to the center of one of the world's deadliest terrorist organizations. But appearances never tell all. The Party of God has come a long way since its founding in 1982, when even most Lebanese considered it nothing more than the fanatical stalking horse of revolutionary Iran. Having since sacrificed 1,375 "martyrs" in the fight against Israel's 22-year-old occupation of southern Lebanon, Hizballah has seen its profile in Lebanon, even among many Christians, transformed into that of a heroic resistance army.
With Israel promising a final troop withdrawal by July, Hizballah is being hailed for doing what Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians have never done: driving Israeli soldiers off Arab land by force. Hizballah leaders can barely contain their eagerness for the day when their fighters, crying "God is great!," will march into the buffer strip along the southern Lebanese border that Israel calls the Security Zone. The Lebanese postal service is issuing stamps in honor of the jihad. And though still on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, accused in the suicide bombings of U.S. diplomats and military forces in Beirut and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon, Hizballah is reinventing itself as an increasingly respectable Lebanese political party. They've even relaxed their enforcement of Islamic codes on drinking and women's veils.
Israel's planned withdrawal is a pivotal event for Lebanon. Lebanese see it as a chance to rebuild their nation. The streets and cafes of Beirut are filled with ambitious, entrepreneurial Arabs from around the region, eager to transform the country. Visions abound: some see Lebanon as a kind of Singapore of the Middle East, a technology and business center for the entire region. Others dream of a more cosmopolitan nation that recalls Lebanon's days as one of the Mediterranean's most opulent jewels.
In southern Lebanon, where Hizballah is still grinding out a war against Israel, those visions can seem incredible. The area around the Israeli occupation zone is a no-man's-land of mines, barbed wire and abandoned villages. But it is in that desolate and hilly country that Hizballah has begun its transformation. Shunning outward extremism for the sake of attracting the broadest support among its mainly Shi'ite constituency, it now holds nine seats in the Lebanese parliament. It dominates scores of municipal councils. And, using millions of dollars given by Iran and donations collected from Lebanese, Hizballah has won support by opening hospitals, health clinics and dozens of private schools.
The group's accomplishments also dot much of the country, hinting at its nation-wide ambitions. Hizballah runs one of the country's finest schools, the Shahed (Witness) School--just a few minutes' walk from the Beirut barracks near the airport where a suicide bomber killed 241 U.S. servicemen in 1983. Children of Hizballah martyrs make up a quarter of the 1,000 students there, who are drilled in daily English classes. Another symbol of the new Hizballah is its al-Manara (Lighthouse) TV, which broadcasts news, soap operas, kiddie programs and with-the-guerrillas footage of attacks on Israeli fortifications in southern Lebanon. The station--managed by close-shorn Islamic revolutionaries--recently climbed to No. 3 in overall viewership in Lebanon, a sign that the group is as intent on fighting a ratings war as it is on continuing a guerrilla war.
The architect of the improbable makeover is the 40-year-old Nasrallah,
who took over as secretary-general after Israeli planes killed his predecessor
and mentor, Sheik Abbas Musawi, in 1992. In a 90-minute interview, Nasrallah
strongly emphasizes Hizballah's commitment to working within the political
system and avoiding any provocation, including Hizballah's preference for
an Islamic state, that might trigger a return of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil
war. "We are for partnership," he says, "so that the Christians do not
ignore the Muslims and the Muslims do not ignore the Christians." When
it comes to discussing Israel, however, Nasrallah is vehement. "Let us
be clear," he says. "In our opinion, the Jewish state is an illegitimate
and illegal state and will remain so in the eyes of the Arab and Muslim
people, even if it is 50 years, 100 years, 200 years." Nasrallah lost his
eldest son, Mohammed Hadi, then 18, in the resistance, and has another
currently at the front.
The "Lebanonization of Hizballah," as the trend is dubbed, is evident
in Hizballah's efforts to improve the lot of its grass-roots base, the
country's more than 1.5 million mostly impoverished Shi'ites. Far from
fixating on Islamic law, Hizballah's representatives in parliament have
busied themselves winning funding for projects that will benefit their
constituents. One recent morning, as Hizballah fighters were launching
attacks on Israeli outposts in southern Lebanon, a Hizballah M.P. was walking
Lebanese journalists around Beirut to highlight the more mundane problem
of potholes. Says Mohammed Baydoun, an M.P. for Amal, a rival Shi'ite party:
"They are pragmatic. They understand the political game."
Will Hizballah play the game as well, once the resistance shine wears off? Evolving beyond the battlefield will demand geopolitical finesse--a tough requirement for any political group, to say nothing of holy warriors. U.S. diplomats say they regard Nasrallah's protestations of moderation with a very wary eye, and if the slippery rapprochement between Washington and Tehran ever gets traction, Iran might start writing smaller checks to the group. Deprived of that largesse, Hizballah would find its intra-Shi'ite rivalry tougher going against Amal, whose support from Syria, with its 30,000 troops in Lebanon, has helped it seat twice as many M.P.s as Hizballah. If Syria and Lebanon ever wind up at peace with Israel, Hizballah will be under intense pressure to disarm--by force if necessary.
With no peace, Hizballah still faces a serious dilemma. If the impasse in negotiations with Israel persists, as indicated by President Clinton's failed talks in Geneva last week with Syrian President Hafez Assad, Syria may eventually sanction new Hizballah attacks to pressure Israel for concessions. Yet if Hizballah cooperates with such wishes, the Israeli reprisal bombings that would surely follow might alienate legions of Hizballah's hard-won Lebanese supporters. What is not in doubt is that Hizballah's well-trained and well-equipped fighters will fight on, if told to do so. "When the Israelis leave, we will celebrate by thanking God for our victory," says Said Kassem, 32, a Hizballah guerrilla since he was 18, as he sits by a waterfall near the Iklim al Toufah battle zone. "Then we will wait for our leaders to tell us the next step."
APRIL 24, 2000
Withdrawal Symptoms
Syria vacillates as Israel seeks world support for a plan to pull its
troops out of southern Lebanon
Usually, when one country seizes part of another, the victim pleads for international support to end the occupation, while the aggressor strives to perpetuate the status quo. But in the bizarre drama playing out now between Israel and Lebanon, the actors have swapped scripts. While Israel seeks world backing for its planned withdrawal from south Lebanon, Lebanon is acting unenthusiastic about the liberation of its own land.
As Israel attempts to close the curtain on its 22-year presence in Lebanon, other players are acting oddly. Syria, which effectively controls Lebanon, has at one moment threatened war should Israel leave and at the next welcomed a departure. Antoine Lahad, the dapper commander of Israel's proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, was expected to retire gracefully to France, but now says he and his men will go on fighting their fellow Lebanese if necessary, with the Israelis or without them.
The tumult is a measure that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is being taken seriously when he says he'll pull Israeli troops out of Lebanon by July. The momentum for a unilateral withdrawal accelerated three weeks ago when a Geneva summit between President Clinton and Syrian President Hafez Assad flopped. Barak had preferred to keep the south Lebanon pullout in reserve, hoping to first secure Syria's cooperation in a withdrawal. But with the Syria talks moribund, Israel has turned its agenda to what Barak calls the "tragedy": 1,549 Israeli soldiers dead since Israel's full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982, followed by its creation three years later of an occupation zone in the south, in theory to protect northern Israel.
Lining up U.S. backing was a top item on Barak's agenda when he zipped briefly to Washington to meet Clinton last week. Foreign Minister David Levy is consulting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the withdrawal, pledging, uncharacteristically, to "cooperate fully" with the organization.
Barak isn't so much worried about getting world support for the withdrawal as he is about keeping it through the possibly nasty aftermath. Following a pullout, Israel intends to deter its main foe, the Hizballah militia, and other enemies by retaliating for any attacks on civilian targets "very quickly and very strongly," in the words of a senior army officer. Operating from within its borders, Israel hopes to be seen no longer as an occupying bully but as a harassed country defending itself.
Though unhappy with Israel's insistence on leaving, the 2,600-strong S.L.A. was expected to pose no major obstacle. Lahad and his senior commanders were offered exile in Israel or abroad. Ordinary fighters, it was thought, would face minor prison terms in Lebanon, or would cut their own deals with Hizballah or government officials. Lahad's pledge two weeks ago to stick it out makes Israeli officials uneasy. They would hate to leave him to his fate, but they aren't prepared to hang around just to back him up.
Barak's pullout plan plainly bothers Assad. "The Israelis have outsmarted him," says an Arab diplomat close to the Syrians. A unilateral withdrawal by Israel would deprive Assad of an important instrument of pressure in his bid to have Israel also end its occupation of Syria's Golan Heights. Assad has held himself as the answer to Israel's quagmire in Lebanon: I can use my 35,000 troops in Lebanon to keep things quiet on your border, he tells Israel, if only you'll give me back the Golan Heights and get out of Lebanon. Now Assad is feeling doubly burned: no Golan Heights, and Israel doesn't give a hoot about his Lebanon card anymore. "This," says a U.S. official, "is Syria's worst nightmare."
In March, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al Shara called Barak's pullout plan "suicide." "They should not use this as a way of pressuring us," he said. The Lebanese, out of necessity, followed suit. Defense Minister Ghazi Zuayter went so far as to suggest that after Israel left, Syria would place rockets on the Israeli border, a proposition even Damascus couldn't let stand. Even after Syria's Shara embraced the idea of an Israeli departure, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, in a letter to Annan, argued against extending his government's authority to the south, saying that would only reward the former aggressor, Israel.
The official postures in Lebanon mask another sentiment, which is causing Assad more dyspepsia. If Israel truly leaves Lebanon, the justification for big brother Syria staying there gets flimsier. Last month, Gebran Tueni, publisher of the leading Beirut daily An-Nahar, caused an uproar by writing a front-page open letter to Bashar Assad, the son and heir-designate of Hafez, asking that Syrian troops depart Lebanon after Israel's do. "We are not a Syrian province," Tueni declared. A country that quibbles with another state for trying to end a bloody occupation should be able to find an argument to answer that one.
Friday, October 13, 2000
Power Play
The Lebanese resistance group Hizballah increases the pressure on Israel
As the Palestinians and Israelis hover on the brink of war, Beirut still remains a hot spot despite Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's decision to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in May this year. Hizballah, the Lebanese guerrilla resistance group, holds three Israeli soldiers it captured earlier this week and is using them to ensure that it remains relevant in the regional balance of power.
The three soldiers are locked away in an underground room somewhere in Lebanon, with just a bed, a pillow and a blanket. They wear no blindfolds, and the injured soldier is receiving medical treatment, a Lebanese politician close to the Hizballah leadership told TIME. In its initial reaction to the kidnapping, Israeli defense forces held Lebanon and Syria responsible and reserved the right to retaliate. According to Hizballah Deputy Secretary-General Sheik Naim Qassim, retaliation will only lead to more violence.
In an hour-long private interview with TIME, Qassim explained Hizballah's contingency plan in case of an Israeli attack to free the soldiers. "The retaliation will take place against Israeli settlements wherever we think appropriate on the opposite side of Lebanon, whether in the Shebaa Farms or the occupied territories in Palestine," Qassim said, implying that Hizballah attacks could extend well into Israel.
The Hizballah leadership denies the kidnapping was an act of aggression, as it was carried out in the contested Shebaa Farms area, which is claimed by Lebanon and Hizballah as Lebanese territory.
Hizballah is eager to secure the freedom of its detainees in Israeli prisons. "The kidnapping operation had one essential goal: a detainees exchange for our detainees in prison," said Qassim. "But the timing of the abduction, falling in the same week that violence in the West Bank and Gaza accelerated, was also a message to the Palestinians that we are in the same bunker in the confrontation with Israeli occupation." Qassim also said that Hizballah wanted to emphasize its rights over the Shebaa Farms area along the border.
According to a Hizballah source, the group struck no deal with the Palestinians
to coordinate the escalation of tensions. The leadership has long been
discreet about what stakes Hizballah has in assisting the Palestinian resistance.
Members privately believe Hizballah will play a role in ridding the region
of what it considers an occupying force, but doubt the group will lend
its military muscle to Palestinian groups. Hizballah could also lose broad
support if it maneuvers outside its established goal of freeing southern
Lebanon.