Middle East: Menachem, Shalom

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What particularly shocked the war-weary Lebanese capital was the nature of the Thursday assault. If a negotiated settlement was almost at hand, why were the Israelis attacking with such ferocity? Why did they find it necessary to strafe apartment buildings and boulevards? The jets were flying so low that their markings were clearly visible, their noise a deafening howl. On the ground, Western correspondents wondered if the Israeli military was about to raze the entire city.

But even as the bombs were falling on Beirut, a political storm was raging in Jerusalem. At its epicenter was the roughhewn Israeli Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, who had directed the invasion of Lebanon from the beginning. Apparently wanting to destroy as much of the P.L.O. as he could before being obliged to accept a permanent cease-fire in Lebanon, Sharon had paid less and less attention to what his colleagues in the Begin government were thinking and had begun launching operations on his own authority.

Throughout most of the war, Begin had sided with his Defense Minister, but there were signs of a split between the two men even before Thursday's attack. As Cabinet ministers complained more and more openly that they were not being informed, let alone consulted, on the progress of the war, Begin remarked, in an obvious gibe at Sharon: "I always know everything that goes on, either beforehand or afterward."

The Thursday blitz of Beirut had been under way for four hours when the Israeli parliament met in Jerusalem in special session. As former Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, speaking for the opposition Labor Party, tried to open a discussion on the war, he was noisily interrupted by two members of the Democratic Front, the Israeli Communist Party. Shouted one: "At this very moment, women and children are being murdered in Beirut." Added the other: "Stop the murder! Stop the bombing!" When order had been restored, Bar-Lev spoke of the damage that had been done to Israel by its bombing of civilians in Lebanon, emphasizing that "the war has gone beyond our direct security needs."

Begin replied to the criticism in an 87-minute speech, his longest in the Knesset since he became Prime Minister. Then the debate shifted to a special Cabinet meeting, which had been called by Sharon himself. Although the burly ex-general had been running the war more and more on his own, on this occasion he solicited the Cabinet's support for a series of tactical moves around Beirut as part of the Israelis' continuing effort to strengthen their military positions. Deputy Prime Minister Simcha Ehrlich, who had generally supported Sharon in the past, immediately declared that the request was out of the question. Taking up the argument, the Moroccan-born David Levy, another Deputy Prime Minister, who has been a consistent critic of Sharon, declared, "The country is confused. Government decisions are being violated: steps are being taken without government approval. These things are endangering the [Habib] agreement and our relations with the U.S."