Israeli pull-out plan

Press, 12 April 1978, Page 8

Israeli pull-out plan

NZPA-Reuter Tel. Aviv Israeli troops were due to begin pulling back from southern Lebanon late yesterday, exactly four weeks after surging across the border after a Palestinian guerrilla attack near Tel Aviv in which more than 30 Israelis died. According to the plan announced by the Army, Israeli forces would begin the first part of their two-stage interim pull-back by a phased withdrawal from strategic heights on the eastern sector of the front overlooking the Khardali Bridge across the Litani River. The area is above Metullah, Israel’s northernmost town. Norwegian components of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon have already moved into position to replace the retiring Israelis. The United Nations Secre-tary-Geneial (Dr Kurt Waldheim) has called the Israeli withdrawal plans inadequate. Israeli officials have said that the original aim of their advance into Lebanon was to create a new political situation in the area, scene of months of fighting between Leftist-Palestinian forces and Lebanese Rightists supported by Israel.

The officials said the aim of the Israeli invasion' was not to seize territory or to wipe out the Palestinians but to force the Syrians and. a reconstituted Lebanese Army to prevent Palestinian attacks on Israel. The Israelis established a security belt about 10km deep in the first 19 hours of the fighting and later decided to push on to the Litani River to give the United Nations forces a bigger screen against Palestinian infiltration.

Major-General Saad Haddad, commander of Christian forces in southern Lebanon, has told the Israeli Army radio he felt the United Nations forces — at present made up of Norwegian, Swedish, Iranian, and French contingents and numbering little more than one-quarter of its planned 4000-man strength — would not be able to stop Palestine Liberation Organisation fighters from returning to the border area or harassing Christian villages. He said that P.L.O. groups were being reconstituted in areas held by U.N.1.F.1.L. around bridges over the Litani.

He quoted southern Lebanese refugees returning to their homes in villages captured by Israel as saying that, apart from women and children, Christian residents were being turned back. But Moslems were being allowed to return to the bor(der area without any check either by P.L.O. patrols north of the Litani or by U.N.1.F.1.L. troops south of it.