Middle East: the spectre of another holocaust

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 17

Middle East: the spectre of another holocaust

Human suffering apart, what does the fate of war-stricken Lebanon mean for the rest of the world? Is the Middle East powder keg about to explode again? The last such explosion, in 1973, had disastrous consequences, bringing an oil embargo and the sharpening of the world recession from which we are still suffering. Just what are the Israelis, the Syrians, and the Palestinians trying to do? PETER CALVOCORESSI. of the London ‘‘Sunday Times,” reports.

For 50 years after its creation in" 1926,. Lebanon was a byeword for communal concord and a happy bunting ground for the innocent pursuit of wealth. It was called the Switzerland of the Middle East.

In sharp contrast in the past decade, its communities have fought bitter battles, its capital has been battered beyond recognition, and its territories are now partitioned and under the thumb of foreigners. Its extinction has become a possibility as Israelis and Syrians use its airspace to fight their battles.

This baneful turn of fortune goes back to the day, 10 years ago, when King Hussein drove the Palestinians out of Jordan, They went to Lebanon which became the main concentration of non-combatant Palestinians and the sole surviving refuge of their militant arm.

This afflux changed Lebanon in two ways. It gave a new edge to its communal rivalries by strengthening its Muslims at precisely the time when the Christians were losing — or believed they were losing — their demographic majority. And it drew Israel’s fire. In 1975, when civil war between Muslims and Christians was sparked off by a local dispute over fishing rights, the Palestinians joined in on the Muslim side. The Christian Falange, in effect a private army, responded by attacking, the Palestinians. The Lebanese army, neutered by its own communal balance, was incapable of restoring order. Syria intervened, not in order to' seize Lebanon but to preserve the old order (under which the Maronite Christians always hold the presidency). but the new president, Elias Sarkis, has never recovered sufficient authority to govern. Private armies have multiplied. The Syrians find themselves holding the baby, or bits of it.

In the south, A Greek Orthodox Christian deserter from the Lebanese army. Major Saad Haddad, created in 1978 a separate mini-State which he called Free Lebanon. This State is openly supported by Israel which can use it as either a buffer

or a springboard. Israel supplies and clothes Haddad's army — and has been looking after him in an Israeli hospital. Haddad's example was not lost on other Christians, among them Beshir Gemayel, the chief of the Falange, who set out to create a second breakaway state in the north. Gemayel’s aim has for the moment been thwarted by the Syrians, but their intervention has led Israel to step up the war to save the Christians from having to cave in. Israel’s designs on Lebanon go back to the Bible. Parts of southern Lebanon belong to that Eretz Israel which, in Zionist eyes

at least, the modern State of Israel must embrace. The development of the Palestinian threat has sharpened these atavistic cravings and added a practical point which all Israel’s citizens can easily see and appreciate.

So for the past 10 years there has been a considerable body of opinion in Israel ready to applaud a forward policy in Lebanon. Menachem Begin is cashing in on it. A month ago nobody gave him a chance in the elections in June, but the latest, poll reveals that his Likud Party is running neck-and-neck with Labour, and that he will be able to form a government - in coalition with

smaller religious and conservative groups. As the Israeli and Syrian air forces clash in the "skies over Lebanon, Israeli voters are cheered and Begin scents victory on the home front.

There is a narrow way of looking at these events and a broader view. The first sees the latest flare-up as one more incident in a long chain of deplorable but not catastrophic events. The Israelis have been attacking the Palestinians with more or less justification, for years. Israel and Syria have been at war for years. The casualties they are inflicting on one another are no novelty. There will always be a Lebanon — of sorts. There is

no oil in this part of the Middle East. The Soviet connection with Damascus enables the Syrians to keep going but not more than that: the Soviet interest is to keep the pot boiling and the waters muddied but not permit a serious war.

There is no sign of direct Soviet military intervention and, given the” Soviet entanglement in Afghanistan and bafflement in Poland, not much likelihood of it. The devastation of Lebanon is a howling shame but, in realpolitik terms, not one of those disasters that shake the world. The alternative view is that it could. Begin may not want an all-out war but he wants to give his electorate the impression that he is ready enough to engage in one. The elections are still two months away. Waging an election in the airspace above Lebanon, Begin is conducting a highly delicate — and irresponsible — campaign alternatively blowing hot to please the voters and then cooling it to reassure the Americans. Since he is not after all the God of Israel, Begin may fail to keep the battle under control. Moreover, the Middle East is not neatly divisible into parts and war over Lebanon is virtually bound to provoke crises further afield. The last war in the Middle East, in 1973, was a world-

wide portent which, among other things, quadrupled the price of oil and did vast damage to western and other economies. That could happen again. Those who prefer to wait and see whether it will, may .find it happening when it is too late to do anything to stop it. But do what? A Hammarskjold, one is tempted to think, would have intervened by now. However, the United Nation’s authority has declined sharply since its heyday in the fifties and early sixties, its forces on the ground in Lebanon (U.N.1.F.1.L.) are as much targets for snipers as peacekeepers, and Israel will pay no attention to it anyhow. The United Nations has not assumed the powers and responsibilities of the Great Powers.

Both Syria and Israel have shown signs of being scared by the escalation. Whether independently of one another or by some kind of tacit agreement, they seem inclined to draw "back. But if this bout of good sense proves temporary or merely tactical, the major powers will have to intervene.

The key is in Washington. Unhappily, the Reagan Administration appears not yet to have finalised its Middle East policies but the present crisis must accelerate that process. The first need is for the United States to demand

.the cessation of Israeli hostilities against Syria upon pain of curtailing" American military aid — and provided that Moscow prevails on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon the Soviet Surface to Air Missiles which it has just introduced there. Both super Powers appear alarmed by the escalation of the Israeli-Syrian conflict. They are in touch with one another about it and they have it in their power, jointly, to arrest this slide for which, as the armourers of the two sides, they have more than a little responsibility.

The second problem is the presence of Palestinians in Lebanon and the threat they pose to Israel. This, even more than Lebanon's own internal communal strife, is the cause of the de facto partition of the country and the rival Syrian and Israeli occupations. The short-term solution is to revert to the agreement of 1976 affirmed and broken more than once, to remove the Palestinians’ armed units from the Israeli frontier.

The only long-term solution is to provide the Palestinians with a state of their own to go-to. In other words, it all comes back, as nearly everything in the Middle East imbroglio does come back, to the issue of Palestinian self-determination.