Pre-empting Mr. Reagan?

As the U.S. Administration looks forward into 1983, it must cope with this question:

Are both of its major Middle East initiatives—the one in the West Bank and the one in Lebanon—being doomed to failure by the rapid creation of new facts on the ground?

On the West Bank, President Reagan's Sept. 1 initiative is being attacked pre-emptively by an Israeli government which wants to move Jewish settlers onto the West Bank in sufficiently massive numbers to make implementation of his plan a practical and political impossibility.

This Israeli strategy to thwart the return of the territory to Jordan is not a new one—but what is new is that it is being carried out at an unprecedentedly accelerated pace as 1983 gets underway.

During the next three months alone, Israel is planning to double the present West Bank settlers population of 25,000, according to the World Zionist Organization. The increase will come as 6,000 new housing units constructed over the last two years come on the market.

At the present rate, the World Zionist Organization's goal of having 100,000 Jewish settlers in place by 1985 will be reached long before then. According to the organization's officials, the big population growth will come not from the establishment of "new" settlements but through the buildup of the Jewish communities which already exist. The speed of their growth will be limited only by the ability of Israeli contractors to put steel and concrete into place.

Freeze Not Enough

Thus, even if President Reagan succeeds in getting Israel to put a freeze on new settlements which the President has promised King Hussein he will do but which had not yet been done by the time this publication went to press—it will probably be too late to have any meaningful effect.

In Lebanon, it is not only the Israelis but the Lebanese who are creating "new facts" that could block the Administration's dual goal of removing all foreign troops from Lebanon and helping the Lebanese set up a stable central government.

Israel's very presence in Lebanon is a six months-old fact on which it is continuing to build —particularly in the south. There, its military is putting up warning stations, paving roads, erecting prefab shelters. Occupation authorities have been opening their own administrative offices and creating local armed militias which operate under their authority—thereby undermining attempts by Lebanon's central government and its newly reconstituted army to re-assert control.

Israel also continues to strengthen the economic links between Israel and the south—to the extent that the area has been nicknamed the "North Bank." Trade flourishes across the border, as Israeli businessmen sell clothing, food, building materials and plastics, in happy-go-lucky disregard for Lebanese customs duties. Lebanese businessmen, on the other hand, are urged to export their goods not through their own ports of Sidon or Beirut but through the Israeli port of Haifa.

The Israeli government has not announced that it intends to annex south Lebanon, but Israeli officials have said their goal is to have a 25-mile "security zone" established there in which Lebanese troops (no United Nations or multinational force would be allowed) could operate as long as they do not bring in any artillery, rocket launchers or anti aircraft missiles. Israel, however, would be allowed to establish its own manned ground stations. Whether or not all of these conditions are met, it is clear that Israel is determined to be the power exercising control over the area.

In the meantime, the Lebanese themselves are creating facts in the rest of the country which pose serious dangers for their own future stability.

The main problem is that the "Lebanese Forces," the Christian Phalangist party militia which along with the Israelis was mainly responsible for putting the new president of Lebanon, Amin Gemayel, into power, has declined to put itself under the authority of the new regime—and has gotten away with it so far. In East Beirut, which is its headquarters, militiamen continue to man roadblocks, collect taxes, and carry out services while paying obeisance to the spirit of their former leader, Amin's brother Bashir Gemayel, whose photo is everywhere. In the Shouf mountains and in the suburbs of Beirut itself, they fight their own fierce battles with Druze militiamen, while the Lebanese army—no larger or more powerful than the Phalangist militia itself—remains helpless to stop the fighting. At the same time,severe fighting between Moslem groups in the northern city of Tripoli is a potential catalyst for further instability nationwide.

Ironically, the only place where the Amin regime exercises control other than in the immediate area of the presidential palace is Western, mainly Moslem, Beirut. But the Moslems, who had welcomed Amin's election in the belief that he was committed to a unified state in which all religious groups would be protected, have begun to worry that he may be powerless to carry out this commitment. They note that among other things the President has not disarmed the Phalangist militia, as had originally been expected, and that the Phalangist leaders who were responsible for the Shatila and Sabra camp massacres are still free and working at their old jobs. Some Moslems live in fear that the Phalangists, if not disarmed, will be integrated into the Lebanese army, and that this would result in the domination of the Moslems by Maronite Christians. Such a development could lead, many observers believe, to the outbreak of civil war once again.