Beirut Tumult

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In the meantime, the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon was expected to be completed sometime this week, exactly three years after Israeli forces poured across the border and pressed on to Beirut. For the departing Israelis, nothing could be more grimly ironic than the reports of the fighting in the Palestinian camps, scene of the 1982 massacre by Christian Phalangist militiamen, and of Syria's difficulties in dealing with the Lebanese maelstrom. Said a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem, with ill-concealed satisfaction: "We can almost sympathize with Syria's reluctance to send its troops into Beirut. They will find it as big a can of worms as we did."