How Lebanon learned to hate the P.L.O.

Press, 29 October 1981, Page 20

How Lebanon learned to hate the P.L.O.

By

CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN

J who recently visited Beirut.

The press, reported that people in Beirut, rejoicing at the news of President Sadat's murder, “fired shots in the air.” I’m sure they did, butjt’s not as dramatic as it sounds. Syrian troops, who patrol West Beirut in their jeeps, fire shots in the air all the time, as motorists elsewhere honk horns. But I’m sure there was some rejoicing in West Beirut, and other parts of Lebanon, not only among the occupying Syrians and the Palestinian commandos, but also among some Lebanese, especially among some of the multifarious armed factions. I’m equally sure that a great many Lebanese — I would suggest a majority — did not share in that rejoicing: quite the contrary. . • The case of Lebanon may seem at first sight to bear out the view that Arab nationalism, passionately committed to the Palestinian cause, is ultimately invincible in the Arab world. Certainly the old Lebanese oligarchy, based on a compromise between Christian and Muslim patricians, was the least enthusiastic of Arab governments about the Palestinian cause, and certainly the Palestinians and their Lebanese Left-wing allies- helped to destroy the power of that oligarchy and Lebanon’s existence as an organised polity. The condition of Lebanon today — its capital city split in two and partly ruined, half its territory occupied by the Syrians, and much of the rest contended for by no fewer than 80 paramilitary groups — can

be held up, by those who so wish, as an object lesson of the consequences which can befall an Arab State if it fails the cause of Arab nationalism.

Yet many Lebanese are not disposed to draw that particular lesson from their country’s fate. This is most obvious in the case of. the Christians. Christian intellectuals in Lebanon were among the original promoters of the Arab nationalist idea. Until about 10 years ago, Christian Lebanese were prepared to go along with other Arabs in condemning and ostracising the State of Israel. But they felt themselves to be Lebanese, ahead of being Arabs. If they could help it, they were not going to put the stability and prosperity of their Lebanon at risk for the sake of a Palestinian restoration. As it turned out, they weren’t able to help it. Their oligarchic compromise would have had to crumple some time. The process was already well under way, from internal factors, when it was accelerated by the influx into Lebanon of armed Palestinian emigres from Jordan, after King Hussein’s Black September, in 1970. Most significantly, the military force they represented broke the oligarchic system by demonstrating its incapacity to impose its will on anyone. The Sunni Muslim partners in the oligarchy defected, finding the ground giving under them. Its fall involved the disintegration of the Lebanese Army, and a phase of acute civil war. The Maronite Christians, feeling themselves acutely threatened

in a Lebanon now apparently dominated by their enemies, hastened to set up their own militias and later their own army. With Arab nationalism, they had burnt their bridges. Arab nationalism — personified by the Palestinians and the Left-wing Lebanese allies — had destroyed the Lebanon the Maronites knew and loved, and they hate Arab nationalism in proportion to that deep injury. Feeling as they did, the Christians could now commit what was. from an Arab nationalist point of view, the ultimate treason. They looked to Israel for arms and protection.

The Christians are alone, among the Lebanese tribes and sects, in being allied to Israel. But they are not alone, in distrusting the Palestinians and wanting to avoid renewed war with Israel. Here the case of the Shia Muslims is significant. The Shia are generally believed to be the biggest, as well as the fastest-growing, body of Muslims in Lebanon today. They are the poorest of the major groups in Lebanon and have suffered the worst from the wars.

At the time of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon up to the Litani River in 1978, as many as 300,000 Shia are reckoned to have fled north; many of them lived in camps in Beirut, in conditions comparable to those of the Palestinians. Some observers discerned a “comradeship in misery” between the Shia and the Palestinians, both victims of Israeli power.

There may have been such a sense of comradeship in 1978, but it is not much in evidence today. I spent some days last month in Shia country in south Lebanon. This was in the zone now controlled by United Nations forces, between the mainly Palestinian-controlled area to the north of them and Israel’s Christian “good fence” to the south. The United Nations mission is to prevent infiltration by either “armed personnel” (the United Nations expression for the Palestinians) or “de facto

forces” (the Christian militia), and thus to avert incidents which might lead to renewed war. The United Nations force has been quite successful in this and this success is aue in great measure to the strong support and co-operanon of the local population, the Shia, who have been returning to the area in large numbers and who understand the need to repress any activity that might lead to renewed war with Israel.

The nearer Arab populations are to Israel, the less eager

they are for war with it, and these Arabs are very near indeed. Together Christians and Shia Muslims must constitute a clear majority of the Lebanese population. Whatever their other differences, they share an aversion to activities directed against Israel. They feel Lebanon has already paid too high a price in the cause of Palestinian restoration. There are certainly many other Lebanese, less articulate, who agree. — Copyright, London Observer Service.