Lebanon: The Siege of Beirut: Week Six

As Israel's patience wears thin, the fighting escalates dangerously

It was the Muslim feast day of Id al Fitr, marking the end of the monthlong Ramadan fast. As the first light of day fell over West Beirut, families gathered in the city's cemeteries to mourn their dead. Some people quietly prayed and read the Koran beside older graves marked by marble slabs and beribboned arbors. Others wept beside the many fresh mounds of dirt, marked only by cinder blocks. Near by lay picks and shovels left by gravediggers the evening before. As a heavyset middle-aged woman dropped leafy sprigs on three fresh graves, she became hysterical and collapsed into the arms of those who rushed to help her. The graves held her husband and two sons.

The mourning of Id al Fitr is traditionally followed by the exchange of sweetmeats, and festive family gatherings. But as the Israeli siege of Beirut went into its sixth week, the mood was tense and somber. In the first aerial bombardment in more than a month, Israeli warplanes three times last week conducted dive-bombing raids against predominantly Muslim West Beirut, where some 6,000 P.L.O. commandos have been sealed off, along with 500,000 residents. The main Israeli targets were P.L.O. Chief Yasser Arafat's headquarters, located in the Fakhani neighborhood south of the center of the city, and P.L.O. positions near the Burj el Barajneh refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut's paralyzed international airport. Some 20 to 30 miles to the east, Israeli air force planes bombed Syrian and Palestinian positions at Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, as well as Syrian armored positions in the center of the valley. On Saturday, Israel lost its second warplane of the conflict, when a Phantom F-4 jet was hit by a Syrian SA-8 missile over Bekaa. It was the first time that the antiaircraft missile had been used in the Lebanon fighting. The Israelis immediately launched heavy raids against other suspected Syrian missile positions.

Israeli military officials insisted that the attacks were retaliatory responses to cease-fire violations by the Syrians and the P.L.O., not a major escalation in the fighting. They blamed the Syrians for the ambush that took the lives of five Israeli soldiers on patrol in the Bekaa Valley on Wednesday. Said a high-ranking official in Tel Aviv's Defense Ministry: "We are sending a message to the Syrians and to the besieged Palestinians: We will not let the situation develop into a war of attrition." Meanwhile, Fadel el Dani, 37, the deputy director of the P.L.O. office in Paris, was assassinated late last week when his car blew up as he was starting it, apparently the result of a bomb. The P.L.O.'s Paris director, Ibrahim Souss, blamed "Israeli terrorism" for Dani's death, but the Israeli embassy denied that Israelis had been responsible.