Lebanon: What's Gone Wrong?

The predicament in which the U.S. now finds itself in Lebanon—just one year after the landing of the marines—comes as no surprise to many Washington observers who have been tracking U.S. policies in that country since it was invaded by Israel in June, 1982.

In their view, the U.S. has kept sinking deeper into the deadly Lebanese quagmire mainly for these reasons: the readiness of the Administration to accept Israel's faits accomplis; its willingness to believe Israel's version of events; and its weakness in the face of Israeli stonewalling.

A shorter way of saying this was supplied by one of these Middle East-watchers, who states: "In Lebanon, as in so many other places, the Administration allowed Israel to lead it around by the nose."

The first move in this humiliating saga was the U.S.'s acquiescence to the invasion itself. Even if the U.S. did not give the "green light" to the invasion, as many believe it did, the Administration was faint-hearted, to say the least, in its efforts to get the Israelis to turn back. And when it became clear, as the invasion continued, that Israel had goals in Lebanon which went far beyond its initially announced objective of creating a 25-mile security zone in southern Lebanon, the Administration switched from faint praise to open support, and even adopted Israel's goals as its own. U.S. officials began arguing that the U.S. would be remiss in not taking advantage of the "new opportunities" that had been opened up by the "new realities" of the situation in Lebanon. These opportunities, as the Israelis saw them, were to get rid of the PLO and install a strong, Phalangist-dominated regime that would take over control of the country and sign a peace treaty with Israel, just as Egypt had. The principal "new reality," of course, was Israel's troops on the ground-troops that could be used to impose Israel's preferred solution. Although there were many Lebanon experts in the U.S. Administration who believed the Israeli dream was neither desirable nor feasible, you couldn't have known this from listening to the statements emanating from spokesmen and high Administration officials.

That Israel's ambitions were simplistic, failing to take adequate account of the "old" realities of Lebanon, has now become crystal clear—far too late—both to the Israelis and to the Americans who so unthinkingly embraced Israel's visions. In a tragic irony, a glimpse of Lebanon's true complexity was first brought home to some of the American public when two U.S. marines were killed at Beirut international airport. The tragedy happened at a time when U.S. special envoy Robert McFarlane had been working for a long period to halt a Christian-Druze conflict during which shells fired by the Druze had often landed dangerously close to U.S. marine positions there. The word "Druze" was already becoming familiar to those who listened to the TV news or scanned newspapers. But when death came for the marines, it came as the result of mortar fire by Shiite Muslims. Shiites? The ordinary U.S. citizen who had been fed simplistic notions for so many months could have been excused at the time for wondering who they were.

The Shiites, of course, are the biggest of the 16 religious sects in Lebanon—constituting about 30 percent of the population, according to conservative estimates. The rest are Sunni Muslims (26 percent), Christian Maronites (20 percent), Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics (10 percent), Druze (eight percent), Armenians, Orthodox and Roman Catholics (six percent), Protestants and others (less than one percent).

An important underlying cause of the violence in Lebanon during the past eight years has been—and still is—that at the time Lebanon gained its independence from France in 1943 an arrangement was made which gave to the Christians, and particularly to the Maronites, the preponderant political power in the country. The arrangement was made on the basis of a 1932 census—the last government-held census to be made in Lebanon—which showed there was a slight Christian majority. It is probable that the population breakdown no longer favored the Christians even in 1943, but during the intervening years the Muslims have increased their numbers to nearly two thirds of the total. The result is that the Muslims have long considered themselves underrepresented in the Lebanese political system, and have been chafing to get their proper share. At the same time, the Christians have felt that continued dominance was necessary to prevent their own way of life from being engulfed. Yet the Israelis, in trumpeting their objectives in Lebanon, tried to give the impression to the world that the only serious problem was the presence of the PLO. Once it was rid of, the line went, Lebanon could go back to being a happy, peaceful and prosperous country. It amazed some observers in Washington to note how many Administration officials—not to mention countless Senators and Congressmen —appeared to believe this. But what was even more amazing was that the Administration acted upon this belief. After the last PLO guerrillas were evacuated from West Beirut a year ago under the watchful eyes of U.S. marines, the marines were then sent home—"mission accomplished"—as though there were now, with the PLO guerrillas gone, no more reason to have an American peacekeeping presence. It took a massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilian men, women and children by Lebanese militiamen at Shatila camp, two weeks later, to wake the Administration up to the fact that things were not as simple as the Israelis had implied they were. Back went the marines.

A Popular Israeli Pastime

Israel has had a prevailing influence not only on Washington's attitude towards the PLP, but also on its view of Syria. Pinning the tail on Syria has been a popular pastime of the Israelis for many years. But while it is understandable why the Israelis have been doing it, it makes much less sense for the Administration to be playing this game right now—if it truly wants a solution in Lebanon which will result in the evacuation of all foreign forces.

The fact is, however, that as soon as the Israelis had clobbered Syria's air force, anti-missile batteries and armor in the summer of 1982, and began branding Syria as a has-been—a country which was no longer a meaningful factor in the Middle East equation—the Administration apparently concluded that if the Israelis said so, it must be so. It then proceeded to ignore Syria for almost an entire year—not even bothering to keep it informed of the negotiations it was mediating between Lebanon and Israel regarding a future withdrawal of Israel's forces.

The Administration went even further in showing its disdain for Syria by encouraging and finally giving its seal of approval to a Lebanon-Israel agreement which was bound to cause apoplexy in Damascus—after which it overconfidently assumed that Syria had no choice but to take it or lump it (despite the fact that Syria's armed forces had by this time been completely re-equipped and upgraded by the Soviet Union).

Administration officials therefore expressed their astonishment when Syria, instead of falling into line and announcing meekly that it would now begin its own withdrawal negotiations, attacked the agreement and said it would have to be changed before Syria would even consider withdrawing its own forces. What so exercised the Syrians was their conviction that the agreement amounted in everything but name to a peace treaty with Israel at a time when Israel was still in occupation of Arab lands—and that it effectively gave Israeli forces a permanent "residual presence" in southern Lebanon. According to the agreement: joint Lebanese-Israeli patrols will be operating in the zone 24 hours per day; the only Lebanese army soldiers permitted within the southern strip of the buffer, near Israel's border, will be members of a "territorial brigade" recruited locally and run for all practical purposes by Israel's proxy, Lebanese Major Saad Haddad; and there will be limitations on the size and type of weapons that Lebanon will be allowed to bring into the northern part of the buffer zone. In fact, Lebanon will not be allowed to deploy any high-altitude air defense missiles anywhere on its territory, even outside the security zone. These and a number of other facets of the agreement would turn southern Lebanon into an area controlled at least de facto by Israel, if the withdrawal agreement ever comes into effect (see "Making Invasion Pay" in The Washington Report of May

Who is the Stumbling Block?

What also both puzzles and irritates the Syrians is the Administration's ready acceptance of the Israeli argument that it is the Syrians who are now the stumbling block for the withdrawal of troops. As the Syrians see it—and as many non-Syrian observers in Washington also see it—they were invited by the President of Lebanon in 1976, and have agreed to leave without conditions if Israel does. On the other hand, Israel invaded the country in 1982, and is imposing conditions on its own withdrawal despite a unanimous U.N. Security Council vote calling on it to withdraw without conditions of any kind. Israel not only put conditions in the withdrawal agreement itself—which was accepted by Lebanon only because of the twin pressures of Israeli occupation and U.S. arm-twisting—but maneuvered to get the U.S. to agree that Israel would not have to leave before Syria does—thus imposing an extra condition beyond those already contained in the agreement.

What all this comes down to is that it is the Israelis, not the Syrians, who have exercised a veto on the withdrawal of all foreign troops—yet the U.S. persists in its dogmatic-sounding accusations that it is the Syrians who are exercising that veto.

Many observers wonder whether the Israelis were really as surprised as the U.S. Administration was at Syria's outraged reaction to the withdrawal agreement. There are some who believe that the Israelis knew all the time that the agreement would be unacceptable to Syria—and found it convenient to be able to point the finger of blame at Syria, while continuing to sit tight in southern Lebanon for the indefinite future.

Whatever the case, the U.S. now finds itself getting more and more deeply involved in Lebanon, with little if any light at the end of the tunnel. In the view of many, it would not be in this position if it were not for its policy of ceaseless accommodation to Israel, right or wrong.