We Can Make Them Pay

As Israeli forces massed on the Lebanese border, TIME CorreAs Israeli forces massed on the Lebanese border, TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis drove south from Beirut to talk to a P.L.O. leader. His report:

Once past Sidon on the coastal road south to Tyre, twelve miles from the Israeli border, there was a sense of hurry.

The traffic seemed to move faster. We were approaching what could become a war zone, and the troops in the orange groves were Palestinians. We turned a corner and got a quick glimpse of Soviet-made missile launchers. They turned left and disappeared as nimbly as a shadow darting in and out. But we saw enough to know they were new and mobile, and we remembered that when the P.L.O. opened its guns the last time, aiming at the Israeli settlements across the border, they hit 37 of their targets.

We left lyre behind and began seeing Palestinian troops again, lunching in the shade. Shortly thereafter, we stopped. "This is it," said the P.L.O. official who was acting as our guide. It did not look like much: a simple, hutlike shelter such as shepherds use. Guards watched as we bent to pass through the door. Stairs led down several levels to a vast underground complex with thick, reinforced-concrete walls.

"Welcome," said Commandant Azmi Zghayar. He was about 5 ft. 10 in., carried a cane and walked with a slight limp, the result of a wound suffered during a raid on Israel. He wore a khaki wool sweater and green fatigues, and a pistol was tucked into his hip pocket.

"The Israeli invasion is what about," you he said. want to Then a talk shrug, suggesting that to him an Israeli invasion was just another event, like the sun rising. "We would rather talk peace. But they say we of the P.L.O. are terrorists, so we must fight.

This rides Lebanon they will send 50,000 men and 500 tanks, and we are ready. We don't send 50,000 men and 500 tanks, and we are ready. We don't deceive ourselves that we can match them, but we can make them pay a very high price. We are stronger than we've ever been."

Zghayar said he hoped that the P.L.O. could cause enough Israeli casualties to convince the Begin government that it must deal with the organization that Israel has scorned so far. Warned Zghayar: "We will counterattack and this time we will hit more northern settlements. We have that ability, both with rockets and artillery. If they come back into southern Lebanon, we are going to hold our positions and we will fight back. They give us no other choice."

When talk began of a possible invasion, Zghayar wired his wife, who was on a visit to Kuwait, to return home to Lebanon immediately with their three sons. "We Palestinians are all one family, and both in times of great joy and great danger, we believe in being together, and not separated. I have taken all three of my sons to a high point not far from here, where you can look out and see Palestine. I hold them in my arms, and tell them, 'My son, breathe deeply of that air. It is the air of your homeland, and never forget what it means to have seen it this way, and breathed of it, from a distance. One day we will walk back and life will again be peaceful.' "