Tiny Lebanon faces division into four

Press, 20 August 1976, Page 8

Tiny Lebanon faces division into four

From the “Economist,” London

Is Lebanon about to disintegrate, not into two pieces, but into four? Consider the reasons for thinking that it may; and the consequences if it does. First, the Palestine Liberation Organisation rejected its chance to save its longbesieged enclave at Tel Al Zaatar, inside the Christian part of Beirut, by accepting the peace terms Syria offered to it in Damascus on July 20.

The stillborn Damascus agreement, which would have put the Palestinians in Lebanon under tight control, was signed by one of the P.L.O’s more conservative leaders, Mr Farouk Kaddoumi; but it was then rejected by the P.L.O.’s radicals, and Mr Yasser Arafat, the organisation’s nominal commander, as usual swivelled and slithered on to the noes’ side. After a meeting between Mr Arafat and his left-wing Lebanese allies it was announced that the war would go on “whatever the price.” The result was the fall of Tel Al Zaatar. The Palestinians lost another of their Beirut en-

claves, Nabaa, earlier this month when a local Lebanese Moslem boss handed it over to the surrounding Christians. Second, however, Syria is hesitating to push its campaign in Lebanon to its logical conclusion by an all-out assault on the areas still held by the Palestinians and Lebanese left-wingers. President Assad of Syria has for the moment brought the domestic opponents of his Lebanon policy under control.

He is also putting the word around that he will not be deterred by Russian opposition, even by the ending of Russian arms supplies to Syria, because if the Russians do not want him as their friend the Americans do. But his power base, the Alawite community in Syria’s hills, is narrow; Syria’s history, from which Mr Assad’s rule has thus far been a welcome respite, is one long stagger from coup to coup; and the political consequences of the casualties Mr Assad’s army might suffer if it attacked the Palestinian strongholds

head-on still deter him from delivering the final blow. Third, the obvious beneficiaries of this apparent stand-off are Lebanon’s Christians, who may now be in a position to clear away the last pockets of MoslemPalestinian opposition in their part of Lebanon. But the other, less obvious, beneficiary is Israel. The Israelis are extending their army’s patrols into the southern corner of Lebanon, now that most of the Palestinian guerrillas have left that area to fight farther north; and they have opened

the border for trade, and to provide work and medical help for local Lebanese. Nothing much now happens in this part of Lebanon without Israeli approval. The disruptive result is a possible four-way division of the country: a Christian part between the mountains and the sea; a pair of Palestinian-Moslem areas to the north and south of it; a long Syrian - controlled swathe in the east; and the Israeli-influenced strip in the south.

The dividing lines are blurred: the Palestinian-Left-wing alliance may be able to hold on to some positions in the mountains between the Christian and Syriancontrolled areas; the breakaway Lebanese Moslem army in the south is a joker in the pack. But, blurred or not, a stalemate along these lines could have a profoundly destructive effect on something even more important than the future of Lebanon itself: the prospect of an ArabIsraeli peace settlement. A Palestinian community bottled up in two beleaguered Lebanese enclaves, snarling at its sea of

enepties but still undefeated, would be in no state to negotiate a settlement of its quarrel with Israel. Its attention would be riveted on warding off its Christian and Syrian adversaries: its moderates w’ould lose control, in this extremity, to the radicals whose opposition to conservative Arab governments goes hand in hand with a refusal to recognise Israel or to negotiate with it.

A Palestinian movement capable of making peace with Israel has to be a movemen. either self-con-fident enough to be moderate, or enough under the control of other Arabs to be obliged to be moderate. A continuation of the present state of things in Lebanon will produce neither of those conditions.

Nor is the matter likely to be solved by putting the clock back to where it stood before the Syrian army marched into Lebanon. A Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon would probably be the result of, or would itself bring about, a coup against President Assad; that would probably produce a Syrian regime more radical, and

less willing to settle with Israel, than Mr Assad’s has lately seemed to be. The natural ally of such a Syrian regime would be the radical wing of the Palestinian movement, which rejects any compromise with Israel and would probably be strengthened in that view bv its success over Mr Assad. Since this radicalised Palestinian movement would wield a good deal of power in a Lebanon from which the Syrian counterweight had been withdrawn, the whole structure of hopes for an Arab-Israeli peace would be in danger. President Assad has got himself into .Macbeth's predicament: he has waded so deep into his Lebanese adventure that turning back would be as dangerous as wading on. The best argument for his intervention in Lebanon was that, by bringing the Palestinians under his control, he could set the scene for an Arab-Israeli peace agreement. But his intervention has set off a reaction among the Palestinians which, if he fails, will make an agreement even harder than it was before.