Beirut: Seven Days in a Small War

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conference on the subject of cluster bombs at 1 p.m. The casings are on display, as are the small steel pie wedges where the "bomblets" were contained. They are spread out on a table beside a small ornate chess set. An idiot in a blue jogging suit wanders by twirling a silver automatic, which he believes to be empty.

In the Sanayeh Gardens, the public gardens, refugees from bombed-out homes encamp under strange tall trees that bulge at the top. Families make walls with rugs and laundry strung from ropes. Not long ago, this park was used almost exclusively by the city's rich. Now half-dressed babies waddle among their parents' last possessions. Shirts hang on bushes like oversize blossoms. A woman does her wash in a plastic bucket. Four elders play cards. They are ashamed of their plight and shoo strangers away.

Either there is great tragedy or great aimlessness. In another makeshift refugee camp, a modern secondary school, children drift in clusters from corner to corner in a large playground. Jomaneh, 10, explains that she had to leave her house "because all the windows were broken." The most beautiful thing in the world, she says, would be to go home. Everybody waits: the P.L.O., the Israelis, the outside world. After a week of leaflets and flares, tension verges on boredom.

The "Lebanese Forces" also wait. They have been waiting nearly eight years for the opportunity the Israelis have provided them, and now, clearly, they taste victory. Of course, they would not exactly say they were "grateful" to the Israelis. The head of "G5" is speaking. He is a deadly serious young man with gray eyes and a low strong voice. He sits in uniform behind his desk. Not grateful; but he would say that his side could "benefit from recent actions." He explains that one must be careful with terms. For example, it would be wrong to confuse the Lebanese Forces with the name by which everyone knows them: Phalangists.

He is both better and worse than he sounds. At 31, he thinks himself wise for being clever, yet he is honest, forthright, committed. And he has been through a good deal of fighting, including the battle at the Palestinian camp of Tal Zataar in 1976, which to the Palestinians was a massacre and to the Phalangists a major campaign. Not eager to answer questions, he presents the recent history of Lebanon. He is remarkably precise, naming days and months as well as years, pointing out places on the wall map, moving deliberately through the whole dreadful story of his country's pain. He talks of the shelling of Lebanese schools and hospitals by Syrians and Palestinians. He is making a verbal pre-emptive strike against the subject of the destruction in West Beirut now. Still, does he not think of the civilians?

"Sure. But it's a decision you have to make. You believe in something and you fight for it. And you know that from a humanitarian point of view, there are terrible consequences. But you stick to your belief. Either that, or you have no beliefs. In all the history of mankind, civilians were killed and soldiers were killed. I don't know why we should differentiate between soldiers and civilians."

"One is equipped to defend himself."

"Yes. But one also takes more risks than the other."

"Because he is a professional."