Meantime, on Both Banks ...

As the U.S. and Israel continue to forge more links in their new strategic partnership, some Middle East watchers are raising this question:

How much does the Administration still care about achieving its declared goals in both the West Bank and south Lebanon?

The question is a relevant one, because on both fronts Israel is continuing to move in directions that conflict, rather than conform, with the official policies of the its U.S. partner.

On the West Bank, the defiance of U.S. objectives by the Israelis is open and deliberate, as they move ever more quickly to pre-empt the September 1, 1982 Reagan plan, which called for the return of that territory to Arab sovereignty.

In south Lebanon, on the other hand, the continued Israeli drift against the current of proclaimed U.S. goals is unofficial and unstated, but very real. On the record, Israel is still committed to a U.S.-brokered withdrawal agreement which was premised on the idea that there would be an early, albeit conditional, withdrawal of Israeli troops—and Israeli leaders declare publicly that they do not plan to keep the troops there indefinitely. On the ground, however, Israel has created a number of circumstances which make it increasingly likely that an indefinite stay of these troops is exactly what is in store. In fact many Israeli officials, talking in private, acknowledge that an Israeli presence in the south could last for at least several years.

What many observers find paradoxical is the fact that in each area the movement away from U.S. policies is becoming more pronounced at the very time that the U.S.'s bonds with Israel are getting stronger. It leads some to believe that these developments could be harbingers of the Administration's abandonment of even the pretense of support for these policies.

In the West Bank, during the first weeks of November—as top Israeli leaders were preparing to go to Washington to discuss common Middle East strategies with the Administration—the occupation authorities were cracking down hard on Palestinians, whose frustrations have grown in proportion to the decline of their hopes that they will ever be free. Some of these frustrations took the form of street demonstrations and stone-throwing by juveniles. Israeli authorities responded in a variety of ways: such as shutting down two universities for extended periods; closing two high schools; shooting at and killing two youths who refused to stop running after throwing stones; placing a curfew on five refugee camps; preventing, through threats, the mayor of Bethlehem from attending President Carter's recent conference in Atlanta; and barring the former mayor of Nablus (a hero on the West Bank) and the head of the Gaza Red Crescent Society from travelling to Jerusalem to meet with a British minister of state who had requested to see them. On November 14, while these and countless other actions were being taken—along with the routine arrests, interrogations, incarcerations, land confiscations and assorted humiliations that go on every day in the West Bank—Israeli Radio announced that the government was establishing five more Jewish settlements. The radio noted that the Committee on Settlements decided three of them would be built near Jericho—which is very close to the Jordanian frontier—as a way of making it more difficult for even that tiny part of the West Bank to be returned to Jordan in any future settlement proposed "by the U.S.," as the radio put it. In the meantime, Benyamin Ben-Eliezer, the new military coordinator for the West Bank, has promised to initiate what he called a "harsh" and "even more severe policy" of dealing with Palestinians who resist the inexorable spread of these settlements, which now total well over a hundred.

In contrast to the clearly annexationist policy Israel is pursuing in the West Bank, it is carrying out a policy in south Lebanon that is concentrating on turning it into an Israeli-controlled "security" zone that will act as a buffer for the protection of its northern border. Ironically, "security" was also the reason given for staying in the West Bank for the first ten years of the occupation, until Prime Minister Begin came into power and decreed that the territory must in any case be retained for biblical reasons, quite aside from any contemporary security considerations.

But after nearly 18 months of occupation of the south, it is the security of their own soldiers and allies in that area that the Israelis are having to worry about the most. Hardly a day has gone by when Israeli troops have not been victims of ambushes or other attacks. Even after the Israelis pulled in their troops from central Lebanon on September 4, so as to allow themselves to concentrate on securing the area south of the Awwali River, the attacks on them continued escalating until on November 4, two months later, a truck-bomb blew up Israel's military intelligence headquarters at Tyre, and killed 60 persons, including 28 Israeli soldiers. In their unsuccessful efforts to prevent the guerrilla actions, Israeli forces have been using a number of methods borrowed from the West Bank: arbitrary arrests, intimidation and imprisonment, and collective punishment. The latter has included the demolishing of houses belonging to families of suspects, stringent curfews for entire villages—during which residents have been allowed out for only an hour a day, and supplies to the villages have been cut off—and the burning of wheat fields and olive groves belonging to villagers. All of these collective reprisals are prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

Making Life More Difficult

If Israeli officials are to be believed, the residents of the south are now in for a lot worse. After the truck-bombing, Israel's chief of staff General Moshe Levy warned that there would be additional security measures taken in south Lebanon which "surely will make life in general in that region more difficult, and not only for the security forces." Already, much tighter controls over passage of Lebanese to and from the southern zone are causing severe hardship for many, and led the Lebanese National News Agency to denounce them as "degrading and humiliating." But according to General Levy, the earlier security policy which he described as one of "leniency," had been "exploited" and should therefore be abandoned. Many in the south now fear that the Israelis may now resort to measures that they took to "clean up" Gaza in 1970: such as mass searches and mass arrests; obligatory resettlement; the fencing off of large areas; and the issuance of special identity cards.

What bothers many observers who have been uneasy about Israel's long-term plans for the area is that every official who reiterates that Israel is not planning to remain in Lebanon also says that the soldiers will not leave until the conditions in the area are "safe." Yet there is good reason to believe that such conditions may be impossible to attain.

Handling Security Unilaterally

When the Israelis first moved into Lebanon, they believed that the Palestinians were their only real enemy in the south. But in the intervening months, they have made many more enemies—principally among the Shiite Muslims, who constitute about 70 percent of the area's population. Among the reasons for the enmity are a general unhappiness with the prolongation of occupation; a rising tide of the same kind of anti-Western, anti-Israeli Shiite fundamentalism that is found among their brethen in the slums of West Beirut; and Israeli actions in the south which have often been clumsy and insensitive, to say the least. Perhaps the worst such incident took place last October 16, when tens of thousands of Shiites gathered in a square in Nabatiyeh during a holy religious commemoration which is traditionally highly emotional. Israeli troops had been ordered to stay clear of the town that day, according to Israeli officials—but an Israeli convoy entered the area just the same and tried to push its way through the crowd. The crowd turned hostile, and the soldiers shot into it, killing one civilian and wounding ten others. There have been other incidents during which Israeli security forces have killed Shiite civilians. Top Shiite religious leaders now call publicly on all Shiites to "resist" the occupier. And Israeli officials acknowledge that most of the attacks during the past year on Israeli soldiers and their local collaborators have come not from Palestinians but from Lebanese Shiite Muslims. A senior Israeli official told correspondents that the driver of the truck which blew up the headquarters at Tyre was believed to have been a Shiite.

Even if Israel should ever get the south under control, some observers believe, there is reason to doubt that it will ever turn over the job of maintaining security there to outside forces—and certainly not to U.N. troops, which they have always distrusted. In fact, the Israel-Lebanon withdrawal agreement, which seems increasingly unlikely to take effect, provides for round-the-clock security operations by Israeli soldiers. Israel has already indicated that if this agreement is either abrogated or overly weakened, it will handle security in the south unilaterally, for however long is required.

Some skeptics have often wondered whether Israel ever really expected the withdrawal treaty to come into effect—since it gives Israel somewhat less control over the south than many of its military leaders would like to have. The more suspicious note that although the U.S. seemed to be naively assuming during the withdrawal negotiations that Syria would go along with the agreement, the Israelis never did. In fact, many Israelis accused the Americans of being simple-minded for assuming that the Syrians would accept, and then withdraw their own troops. Did the Israelis therefore prevail upon the Americans to agree that Israel should not withdraw from Lebanon until the Syrians did—knowing full well that under these conditions they would never actually have to go? The world will probably never find out.

There are those who argue that the trauma in Israel caused by the losses in the Lebanon war and its aftermath (about 200 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the major fighting ceased in the latesummer of 1982) will make it impossible for any Israeli government to decide to remain in south Lebanon indefinitely. But there are those who turn this argument on its head, saying that because of the great sacrifice, the Israelis will never again allow south Lebanon to become a base for its enemies to strike from—and that only a strong presence can stop this from happening.

Observers also note that even many of those Israelis who used to believe that Israel had no right to take permanent possession of the West Bank have now, after 16 years, become used to the idea. This could also happen in the south—which many have begun to call the "North Bank"—as long as Israeli casualties are at "acceptably" low levels.

What bothers those observers who are the most suspicious of Israeli motivations is that there is no shortage of people in Israel who believe that southern Lebanon, at least up to the Litani River, is part of Greater Israel, and should be absorbed. The early Zionists always included this part of Lebanon on their maps as part of the Zionist state, and others believe possession of the waters of the Litani is essential to Israel for life-and-death economic reasons. One Israeli cabinet minister, Yuval Ne'eman, has even gone on record with his belief that south Lebanon is "geographically and historically an integral part of Israel."

A big, unanswered question today is whether the new U.S.-Israel strategic partnership will accelerate or reverse the present drift in Israeli policy both in south Lebanon and the West Bank. As Israeli leaders carry out their discussions in Washington, there may soon be at least some clues to the answer.