Middle East: The Guns Fall Silent

After ten weeks of bitter siege, the P.L.O. evacuation from West Beirut begins

We have reached the end of our sorrows," Lebanese Prime Minister Chafik al Wazzan declared with heartfelt fervor last week, then quickly added, "at least on paper." And so it seemed. In mid-afternoon last Saturday, a force of about 450 fighting men of the Palestine Liberation Organization left Beirut by sea bound for Cyprus, | thereby setting in motion the evacuation of some 7,000 P.L.O. guerrillas from the Lebanese capital. The event was both dramatic and historic, since it marked the end not only of the ten-week Israeli siege of West Beirut but of the PL.O.'s twelve-year domination of Lebanon.

All Beirut seemed to erupt in gunfire as the first elements of the P.L.O. contingent left the Fakhani district, site of the organization's headquarters, aboard Lebanese army trucks. For nearly three hours, hundreds of Palestinian soldiers throughout the city fired rifles, machine guns, rockets and antiaircraft guns into the air in a grand salute to their departing comrades. Watching the spectacle were 350 French peace-keeping troops who had arrived shortly after dawn that morning to assist in the evacuation.

As the convoy moved through the crowded streets, the Palestinians were greeted by cheers and placards reading THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES and BEIRUT IS PROUD OF YOU. Caught up in the emotion, an old Arab woman cried, "They are all my sons. Allah is great!"

Watching the withdrawal from Beirut's waterfront, Israel's tough Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, architect of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, declared that the P.L.O. had suffered "a crushing defeat" and had lost "its kingdom of terrorism," and so it had. But in the streets of West Beirut, the P.L.O. guerrillas were full of bravado as their moment of departure approached. Said a colonel: "We are withdrawing but we shall return, just as we shall return to Palestine." In a remarkably short time, the Palestinians, together with their packs and their AK-47 assault rifles, were loaded aboard a Cypriot ferryboat, the Sol Georgious. Shortly after 2 p.m., a full two hours ahead of schedule, they were on their way to Larnaca, Cyprus, as the bombastic farewell salute continued in the city they were leaving behind.