LEBANON: On the Border

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For the third time in its history, the United Nations last week decided to set up a team of observers in the Middle East. This time, unlike Suez and Palestine, the question at issue was one of Arabs v. Arabs.

In Manhattan, Lebanon's scholarly Ambassador Charles Malik appealed to the Security Council for aid against the "indirect aggression" of the United Arab Republic of Syria and Egypt. U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge supported Malik, said it was clear that the United Arab Republic has been promoting "civil strife" in Lebanon, stressed that "this is no time to quibble while Rome burns."

Russia's Arkady Sobolev predictably declared that the only peril in Lebanon comes "from certain Western powers which are openly preparing armed inter vention there." But when the matter came to a vote, the Soviet Union, instead of imposing an expected veto, merely abstained as the Security Council voted 10 to 0 to investigate the charges that the U.A.R. was pouring men, guns and munitions into tiny Lebanon. Reportedly, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser had asked Russia to withhold its veto: he himself was not yet ready to involve his restless Syrian satellite in reckless adventures.

Street Fighters. In Lebanon, the original source of disagreement—the possibility that President Chamoun might change the constitution to win a second six-year term—was no longer an issue. But still the Moslem rebels in arms against him continued their sporadic resistance. Reportedly reinforced by fedayeen infiltrators from the Gaza Strip, rebel forces attacked a Beirut police station, looted it of arms and ammunition before army troops drove them out in one of the few real actions of the month-old crisis.

Shooting, much of it panicky, spread through the city. A rebel band blew up Premier Sami Solh's vacant home on the edge of Beirut's Moslem quarter. By that night a reported 50 had been killed. The brigade-size Lebanese army, which has been content to be a fire department instead of a combat force, sent armored cars through the streets with searchlights probing rooftops for snipers, held the rebel forces to their old Moslem-quarter strongholds in both Beirut and Tripoli. The U.S. declared an "alert status" for Lebanon, and its Beirut embassy prepared to evacuate the families of U.S. Government employees who wished to leave.

Dual State. As the fighting flared, a handful of U.N. observers arrived in Lebanon, under the command of a Norwegian major general with the irresistible name of Odd Bull. It would be nearly hopeless for them to patrol some 180 miles of mountain border between Syria and Lebanon—a job that would take a force of perhaps 5,000 men. But they were empowered to report, not to halt, any infiltration of the border. The fact was that, at the moment, the real difficulty was not so much the direct outside help as the maneuverings of Pan-Arab elements inside Lebanon, led by ex-Premier Saeb Salam. The odd reluctance to push matters to a fighting conclusion stemmed from the realization, among many Christians and Moslems alike, that prosperous Lebanon could exist only as a dual state of Moslems and Christians, and if events were pushed to an armed test of the West against Nasserism, no one would gain.