Beirut: A Fortress Under Heavy Fire

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Opposition to the war effort has irritated the Begin government and its supporters. Knesset Member Meir Cohen-Avidov, who belongs to the ruling Likud coalition, complained about the "rampaging" criticism of TV editors and reporters against the whole "Peace in Galilee" operation. Deputy Agriculture Minister Michael Dekel asked the Defense Ministry to prosecute army reserve officers who, while on active duty, signed antiwar petitions and called for the dismissal of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. He described their actions as "the first signs of mutiny" and "something we have never witnessed before." Acting Attorney General Meir Gabay named a team of investigators to decide whether Journalist-Politician Uri Avnery should be prosecuted for slipping into West Beirut to meet with Yasser Arafat.

Perhaps in response to criticism from overseas, Sharon once again justified the invasion on the basis of Israeli self-defense. Said Sharon: "Beginning with the cease-fire last July, the P.L.O. began preparing for the climactic stage in its war, open warfare. Everyone who visits southern or central Lebanon and learns of the artillery network of hundreds of units established there, of the huge weapons stores, can understand that the terrorist P.L.O. [intended] to bring great casualties to Israel."

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Palestinian population reacted to the invasion of Lebanon with muted anger. Many, including former Mayor Bassam Shaka'a of Nablus, seemed convinced that Israel was determined to liquidate the P.L.O. and the Palestinian people as well, and were shocked by the failure of Arab states to come to their aid. The daily newspaper Al-Qudus, published in Jerusalem, denounced the Arab governments as "rotten regimes." On July 6, Israeli soldiers used bullets and tear gas to disperse a student demonstration at Bir Zeit University. Two days later, Israeli military authorities closed the university for three months. They also dismissed the mayor of Gaza, the patrician Rashad al Shawwa, 73, who thus became the sixth Arab mayor to be fired this year in the Israeli drive to curb Palestinian nationalism in the occupied territories.

In Lebanon, the war sputtered on. The fighting stopped quite suddenly on Monday after the Israelis called for a ceasefire, the fifth in the month-old crisis. The reason, it turned out, was that P.L.O. artillery had struck an Israeli armored personnel carrier on a hillside, and the vehicle in turn had fallen on top of two Israeli tanks, thereby trapping 14 Israeli soldiers in the wreckage and pinning them down under heavy fire. The Israelis called the ceasefire, which lasted for only 24 hrs., in order to extricate their men. After the resumption of fighting, there were clashes off and on between the Israelis and Syrian and Palestinian forces around the Beirut airport and in the hills east of the city. On Wednesday, a cloud of black smoke hung over West Beirut from a fire at a tire factory that had been hit by Israeli bombs.