Tightening the Noose

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Just south of Beirut, the Israelis slowly began to tighten the noose around Palestinian defenses, establishing commanding positions above the city's airport, east of the runways. Backed by Israeli artillery barrages, Christian Phalangist forces on Wednesday captured a Palestinian stronghold on the science campus of the Lebanese University at Shuweifat. Israeli officers denied that their commandos were involved. "The Christians are doing the fighting," explained an Israeli colonel. "We are just looking."

By late in the week, the surviving core of the Palestinian guerrilla army was completely surrounded in West Beirut. Phalangist guides directed Israeli armor through the streets of East Beirut, not far from the capital's so-called Green Line dividing the Christian and Muslim sectors. Israeli gunboats patrolled the port and coastline, thwarting nearly all naval traffic. To the south, invasion troops occupied a wide arc, stretching from the Khalde road junction into Beirut's surrounding hills, merging with Phalangist forces and blocking any escape.

Nonetheless, Palestinian forces doggedly continued to challenge the Israeli occupation troops. Some 300 P.L.O. holdouts barricaded themselves inside the Ein el Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon and pelted Israeli positions with mortar fire before being flushed out. Other P.L.O. guerrillas, however, were said to have found refuge in the hills. Admitted an Israeli officer: "The territory has not yet been sterilized."

In West Beirut, P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat tried to galvanize his beleaguered forces for a last stand. Speaking on the Voice of Palestine radio station in an angry, desperate tone, Arafat vowed to turn Beirut into "the graveyard of the invader and the Stalingrad of the Arabs." Arafat and other top P.L.O. officials spurned calls to surrender their arms in exchange for safe escort out of Beirut. Young guerrillas bulldozed walls of red clay to serve as barricades and cut holes in street pavements to plant mines. Despite the overwhelming odds, Palestinian morale seemed high. Said a P.L.O. major: "We have grown up fighting in the streets of Beirut. It is what we do best."

On a butte with a panoramic view of the city and its suburbs, the Israelis set up new headquarters in a large Catholic high school. While most soldiers relaxed by shopping, sunbathing or enjoying the beautiful if war-pocked landscape, some Israelis pondered the grim vision of more death and destruction if negotiations fail and the final battle for Beirut takes place. "We do not want to go in there," sighed an infantryman, gazing down on the capital. "We want to go home." Across the Green Line in West Beirut, a few miles away, a Palestinian guerrilla took another view. "We will fight here to the last man if we must," he said. "We have nowhere else to go." —By William Drozdiak. Reported by David Halevy/Baabda and Roberto Suro/Beirut