Middle East: Menachem, Shalom

Those were Reagan's final words to Begin, but his message was "outrage"

It was a few minutes past 11 o'clock last Thursday morning when the President of the U.S., after an hour of trying, finally managed to get through by telephone to the Prime Minister of Israel. In a cold fury, Ronald Reagan told Menachem Begin of his "outrage" that at the very moment when a negotiated settlement for the evacuation of Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas appeared to be in sight, the Israeli armed forces were conducting their most severe air blitz of West Beirut. Virtually shouting, the President said that he was "shocked" at the Israeli attack, which he said had caused "needless destruction and bloodshed." The Israeli Prime Minister seemed incredulous, although in fact he had been expecting the President's call and dreading it. Begin assured Reagan that he had already ordered another cease-fire in Beirut. The two men spoke again about 20 minutes later, and, somewhat encouraged, the President closed the conversation on a more friendly note. Using the customary Hebrew greeting ("Peace"), he said farewell to Begin: "Menachem, shalom."

Those extraordinary conversations ended one of the ugliest and most inexplicable actions of the ten-week war. In the hills southeast of Beirut, U.S. Negotiator Philip Habib had already secured an agreement in principle that would lead to the evacuation from Lebanon of the 6,000 to 9,000 P.L.O. fighting men in West Beirut. He had just about completed the arrangements for the transfer of the departing P.L.O. forces to other Arab countries, leaving only a few relatively unimportant details still to be settled. The Israelis knew he was making progress, yet they continued to bomb and shell West Beirut on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Finally, on Thursday, they launched the most intensive bombardment of the war. For eleven hours, from 6 a.m. until 5 p.m., Israeli warplanes—more than 60, according to Beirut reports—dropped their pay loads of death and destruction on the besieged city, making some 220 bombing runs in all. Israeli gunboats offshore and artillery in the hills joined in the attack. By the time the cease-fire went into effect in late afternoon, at least 156 people had been killed and some 400 wounded. Some 800 dwellings had been destroyed.

Inevitably, the Thursday attack brought an abrupt halt to the peace talks. Lebanese Prime Minister Chafik al Wazzan, who had been serving as an intermediary between the P.L.O. and the American negotiators, declared that he could no longer continue to participate while his "beloved Beirut" was being bombarded. With tears of outrage in his eyes, the Prime Minister told Habib that if the Israelis were bent on destroying Beirut and its people, "then let them kill us all now and get it over with, and let you and the U.S. bear the consequences." Wazzan's performance was both heartfelt and effective. So was the telephone call that P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat made that day to Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, asking for his assistance in stopping the onslaught. Enraged by what Arafat told him about the ongoing bombing, Fahd promised to call Reagan and demand that the carnage cease. And so he did, reaching the White House scarcely ten minutes before Reagan got through to Begin.