Middle East: Bracing for the Worst

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Israel and Syria offer little room for compromise

The atmosphere was electric. Even as U.S. diplomacy tried to keep them apart, Israel and Syria exchanged bellicose threats and seemed to draw closer to all-out conflict. Israeli armored forces headed north for what many feared might be a combined land and air attack inside Lebanon. As if preparing for the worst, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin warned, "We have from time to time to take decisions to send our sons to war." Syrian forces were similarly mobilized. In Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where most of Syria's 22,000 peace-keeping troops are stationed, Syrian armored units turned their guns southward to face the possible Israeli blitz. In Syria, airborne and infantry reservists were called up, and hospital wards were cleared to make room for potential military casualties.

At sea, the 18,000-ton Moskva, a Soviet carrier, steamed closer to Lebanon in obvious support of the Syrian troops. At the same time, the aircraft carrier Independence and two other U.S. warships sailed through the Suez Canal into the eastern Mediterranean. The carrier Forrestal was also in the area, with a task force that included 1,500 U.S. Marines. The State Department instructed American embassy employees in Beirut to send their dependents home, and advised other Americans to leave. Calling U.S. diplomatic efforts to avert a conflict "a long shot," Secretary of State Alexander Haig warned gloomily: "Time is running out."

At the crux of the crisis was Syria's deployment two weeks ago of three batteries of Soviet-made SA-6 antiaircraft missiles in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon. Israel continued to demand that the missiles be removed from Lebanon and threatened military action. It was not as though the missiles were there merely for show, after all. On several occasions last week, Syria fired a succession of the SA-6s and managed to shoot down a pilotless Israeli reconnaissance drone.

The danger that the Middle East was storming toward a major conflict added a special urgency to the elaborate U.S. peace mission: a hectic diplomatic shuttle between Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem by Special Envoy Philip Habib. After meeting with Begin early in the week, Habib went to Beirut for talks with Lebanon's President, Elias Sarkis. Then he climbed back into his black limousine for a midnight drive to Damascus, where he met for the second time with Syria's President, Hafez Assad, to impress upon him the need for restraint while trying to coax concessions that might break the negotiating impasse. Later he hopped aboard an executive Air Force jet for another shuttle to Israel. At week's end he flew to Saudi Arabia for consultations. Lips sealed on the progress of his explorations, Habib told reporters at the airport in Damascus: "It's still silent movies, boys."

But if Habib's exact proposals remained a secret, it was assumed that his peace formula rested on two reciprocal concessions:

1) Christian Phalangist forces in Lebanon would cede control of the eastern city of Zahle to Lebanese army regulars. This would allow both the Christians and the Syrians to disengage from their battle for control of the city, the clash that had provoked the latest crisis.