Libya: Fury in the Isolation Ward

Lebanon's crisis has made Gaddafi fume at almost everyone

Israel's blitz into Lebanon and its brutal stranglehold on Beirut have aroused doubt, controversy, criticism and apprehension in the U.S. and within Israel itself. But one side effect of the episode is likely to be received as good news in both Washington and Jerusalem. Whatever damage it has done to the long-term interests of the U.S. and Israel, the crisis already seems to have increased the isolation of Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi has close military ties to the Soviet Union, a propensity for sending expeditionary forces elsewhere in Africa (to Uganda and Chad, for example), and an undisguised ambition to radicalize such Third World bodies as the Organization of African Unity and the nonaligned movement. He is, therefore, pre-eminent in the demonology of the Reagan Administration. In a number of offices at the CIA, Gaddafi's picture hangs next to those of Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and Cuban President Fidel Castro in a kind of unholy trinity. An agency official not long ago called Gaddafi "the first among equals, our international public enemy No. 1." The Reagan Administration blames Gaddafi for sponsoring international terrorism (he says he supports only legitimate liberation movements), and even for dispatching hit squads to assassinate the President and other public figures (a charge that Gaddafi flatly denied, and one that seems to have faded for lack of firm evidence). Gaddafi is the only foreign leader whose forces have engaged the U.S. in armed combat during the present Administration (the dogfight in the Gulf of Sidra last August).

But the greatest fear of American policymakers has been that the Arab-Israeli conflict would gradually, or perhaps suddenly, drive other, traditionally moderate Arabs toward Gaddafi's militant banner. U.S. officials are concerned that Gaddafi-ism, as his brand of uncompromising opposition to the existence of any Jewish state in the area is sometimes called, will spread, and along with it his influence.

That nightmare seems, so far at least, not to be coming true. On the contrary, since the Lebanon crisis began two months ago, Gaddafi's relations with almost every Arab state, and a number of non-Arab ones as well, have deteriorated. Tensions have risen between him and Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, between him and Syria and between him and the Soviet Union.

Last month Gaddafi issued a public message to the Palestinian leaders promising that Libya "will place all of its resources at the disposal of Syria and the Palestinian resistance." Those resources have turned out to be mostly words of encouragement, plus some fraternal advice from Gaddafi: "I advise you to commit suicide rather than to accept disgrace. Your suicide will immortalize the cause of Palestine for future generations. Your blood is the fuel of the revolution. . . Let suicide be the priority. It is the road to victory."