Beirut: A Fortress Under Heavy Fire

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The letter, described by Middle East sources as the toughest from any U.S. President to an Israeli leader in years, came at the height of a week of secret negotiations. The haggling proceeded at such intensity and on so many different levels that, in the words of a Lebanese diplomat, the whole jumble of ideas was beginning to resemble a Caesar salad. Military action, meanwhile, was relatively light, except for sudden artillery bombardments, primarily by the Israelis firing into P.L.O. positions, many of them in residential neighborhoods.

West Beirut remained a forlorn fortress, surrounded to the choking point by the Israeli army and dominated from within by roving gangs of left-wing militiamen. Throughout a week of anxious waiting, the people of West Beirut stayed off the streets as best they could, quietly enduring the water shortage and the continuing stench from the faltering sewage system and the mountains of accumulating garbage. To the last Lebanese, they wanted the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Syrians alike to go away and leave them alone.

From almost the beginning of the Habib negotiations last month, all parties realized that some kind of military force would be needed in West Beirut to separate the Palestinians and the Israelis. When the thinking of the various sides focused on U.S. troops, Habib replied that American servicemen could be supplied only as part of an international force. Then he went to work to convince the Administration of the wisdom of the plan. In making his decision, Reagan told aides, "If a brief, limited involvement of U.S. personnel is what it takes, I believe we must do it."

As the negotiations continued, it was obvious that one of the most important issues had already been settled: the twelve-year reign of the P.L.O.'s "state within a state" in Lebanon was at an end. In an effort to forestall an Israeli invasion of West Beirut, which would endanger thousands of Palestinian fighters as well as half a million Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, the P.L.O. had agreed in principle to withdraw from Lebanon. Although U.S. officials declared that they were "relatively optimistic" that a final Israeli assault could be avoided, a myriad of details remained to be settled. One of the uncertainties centered on whether the P.L.O. leadership would be able to impose any negotiated compromise on all members of its diverse and sometimes undisciplined factions. Said a Western ambassador in Lebanon: "It's a highly dangerous state of affairs. The P.L.O. seems to think that the Israelis won't come into West Beirut and therefore that they themselves have all the time in the world. Well, they don't."

The Israeli aim in cutting off all water and power to West Beirut was to force the Palestinian guerrillas to surrender, but the more immediate effect was to increase the distress and discomfort of Lebanese civilians. In addition, Israel refused to give the Lebanese any control over the checkpoints between Christian East Beirut and predominantly Muslim West Beirut. That left Lebanese Prime Minister Chafik Wazzan, one of the key Muslim intermediaries between the U.S. and the P.L.O., trapped inside West Beirut. Wazzan considered the Israeli blockade an insult to Lebanese sovereignty and refused to attempt to pass through Israeli lines.