A History of the Middle East (51 page)

Syria’s intervention led to a bizarre alliance with the right-wing Lebanese Christians which, although short-lived, was sufficient to turn the tide against the leftist-Palestinian coalition. The Arab states reluctantly endorsed the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon as the main body of an Arab peace-keeping force. The civil war died down, leaving some fifty thousand dead and many more injured, while about one million Lebanese were driven from their homes. As in all such wars, atrocious acts of massacre, kidnapping and murder were committed by both sides.

With their usual vigour the Lebanese set about restoring their economy. Trade and banking revived; the Lebanese currency remained strong and it seemed that Lebanon could not easily lose its commercial pre-eminence in the region. But it was soon apparent that the civil war had subsided rather than ended. The fears and hatreds which had been intensified by the war remained, and the Syrian forces were incapable of disarming the sectarian militias and pacifying the whole country. The Lebanese Christians, who had welcomed them in 1976, soon came to detest the presence of Syrian troops and demand their withdrawal. But Syrian domination was opposed by some in the opposite camp, too. In March 1977 the Druze leader Kemal Jumblatt was assassinated, almost certainly by
Syrian military intelligence. Moreover, the continuing presence of the Palestinian quasi-state in Lebanon meant that Israel always found cause to intervene. The alliance between Israel and various branches of the Christian militia, which had begun during the civil war, continued to develop.

Since Israel’s earliest days, its leaders had seen the advantages of promoting Christian separatism in Lebanon and the creation of a Maronite-dominated Christian state which would be in alliance with Israel. In southern Lebanon the Israelis had an opportunity to make a start by helping to establish a friendly border enclave controlled by a Lebanese Christian officer who had their full support. By Israeli–Syrian mutual agreement, mediated through the Americans, Syrian forces kept a substantial distance from the Israeli frontier. Lebanese southerners now crossed the ‘open border’ into Israel for refuge or medical treatment. The great majority were Shiites, and some of them, embittered by their suffering and antagonized by the frequently domineering and insensitive attitude of the PLO fighters towards them, joined the Christian militia.

The situation became more dangerous with the advent to power in Israel in May 1977 of a right-wing government headed by Menachem Begin. The virtual certainty that Israel need no longer be concerned about war with Egypt after President Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in November meant that Israel was free to concentrate on its northern front. In March 1978 it launched its first full-scale invasion of south Lebanon, with the aim of destroying the Palestinian guerrilla bases. The Palestinians melted away northwards and it was mainly the Lebanese who suffered. On this occasion, firm UN Security Council action, backed by President Carter, secured an Israeli withdrawal by June and the installation of a UN International Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). But Israel continued to maintain and support the friendly border enclave over which UNIFIL had no control.

The years 1979–81 were a period of uneasy stagnation in the Arab–Israeli conflict. It became fully apparent that the conclusion of a separate peace between Egypt and Israel was not going to lead
to any comprehensive settlement; in fact it made this more difficult in that Israel, faced with an Arab front in disarray from which the strongest member was excluded, was even more determined not to yield to the demands of Palestinian nationalism. In June 1980 the members of the European Community issued what was called the Venice Declaration, in which they said that the PLO should be ‘associated’ with any Middle East peace negotiations. But Israel could afford to ignore such suggestions as long as the Europeans still accepted President Sadat’s view that the United States held 99 per cent of the cards in the Middle East.

In July 1979 the Israelis formally annexed east Jerusalem and declared the united city their permanent capital. In August 1981 the Saudi Arabians put forward their own plan, to be guaranteed by the UN, providing for Israel’s withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in 1967 and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem as its capital. All states in the region, including Israel by implication, should be able to live in peace. But Saudi Arabian influence, although strong, was not enough to secure Arab endorsement. A new disturbing factor had emerged in the outbreak, in 1980, of full-scale war between Iran and Iraq. This diverted attention in the Middle East and the rest of the world away from the Arab–Israeli conflict and caused further division among the Arab states.

During this period, Lebanon hardly enjoyed peace. Violence between sects and within sects, with their inevitable reprisals, and massive Israeli retaliation for Palestinian guerrilla attacks resulted in many thousands of dead and injured. Some partial respite was achieved when, in September 1981, the PLO arranged an unofficial cease-fire with Israel through US mediation. But Israel had not abandoned its aim of finally destroying the Palestinian quasi-state in Lebanon. An assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador in London by young Palestinian extremists provided Israel with a pretext: on the following day – 6 June 1982 – it launched another full-scale invasion of Lebanon but this time it did not halt at the River Litani, some twenty miles from the border, but went on to
besiege Beirut for two months. Thousands died and tens of thousands were made homeless in the capital and the cities and villages of the south.

The Arab states were appalled, but frustrated and humiliated because of their inability to influence events. Many Lebanese Christians greeted the Israeli invaders as friends and deliverers, while even some Muslims showed that they had come to detest the Palestinian presence in their country. Syrian forces put up some resistance but, after Israel destroyed their missile sites without losing any planes, Syria agreed to a cease-fire. The Israelis secured a stranglehold on the PLO headquarters in Beirut but the Palestinians, supported by some Lebanese allies, were able to demonstrate that what would have been Israel’s first occupation of an Arab capital would be extremely costly. Faced with tremendous odds, Palestinian fighters put up a fair resistance, although they lacked an effective strategy.

The Arab gains from this – which might be called the sixth Arab–Israeli war – were negative but important. The heavy civilian casualties among Lebanese and Palestinians, the huge destruction of property and the callous saturation bombardment of Beirut all helped to swing world opinion against Israel, and began to divide public opinion inside Israel itself.

President Reagan, responding to desperate appeals from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, began to show public disapproval of Israel’s actions and to exert pressure for restraint. Through US mediation an agreement was reached whereby Israel would stay outside Muslim west Beirut and Yasir Arafat and 13,000 Palestinian fighters would be evacuated under US military supervision. The evacuation began on 22 August. On the following day Bashir Gemayel, the young leader of the combined Christian militias, was elected president under the shadow of Israeli guns. But on 14 September, before he could take office, he was assassinated – almost certainly by Syrian agents – and Israeli troops, against vigorous but vain US protests, entered west Beirut ‘to maintain order’. Two days later atrocious massacres of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese rightist militiamen took place in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps – in areas now
under Israeli military control and without any Israeli attempt to foresee or prevent them. The event provoked huge protests by the peace movement in Israel. The frustrated Arabs could only denounce the USA for breaking its promise that Palestinian civilians would be protected after the fighters had been withdrawn.

Nevertheless, there seemed for a time to be a chance of a new understanding between the United States and the Arabs. On 1 September 1982 President Reagan announced comprehensive proposals for a Middle East settlement which for the first time showed equal concern for Arab and Israeli interests. Although he ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state, he said that permanent Israeli control over the occupied territories was unacceptable and proposed instead the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian entity linked with Jordan. While Mr Begin angrily rejected the Reagan plan, the response of the Arab states was more conciliatory. At a summit meeting in Fez, they put forward their own plan – which was in fact identical with the Saudi proposals of the previous year. Although it differed from the Reagan plan in important respects – notably in demanding the creation of an independent state – the US and the Arab proposals were not too far apart for their reconciliation to be inconceivable. On the other hand, US–Israeli relations were distinctly cool.

However, this was only one of many false dawns in United States relations with the Arabs. It was not only that the US government in reality still supported Israel in its rejection of Palestinian self-determination; the more immediate problem was that US strategy in the Middle East ignored the role of Syria and, by extension, that of Syria’s ally, the Soviet Union, which had more than replaced the Syrian weapons lost in the fighting with Israel. The Kissinger Doctrine of excluding the Soviet Union as far as possible from Middle East diplomacy still held.

In September 1982, US marines returned to Lebanon to form part of an international peace-keeping force with similar Italian and French and much smaller British contingents. United States declared policy was to secure the evacuation of all foreign troops – Israelis,
Syrians and the remaining Palestinians – to enable the new Lebanese president, Amin Gemayel, to establish the authority of the Lebanese state throughout its territory. Vigorous US mediation between Lebanese and Israeli negotiators finally produced, on 17 May 1983, an agreement between Israel and Lebanon which fell short of a peace treaty but which was clearly intended to establish normal relations between the two countries in every respect. But President Assad, who was outraged at this attempt to remove Lebanon from Syria’s influence and link it with Israel, had the means of aborting the agreement. Neither the United States nor Israel was able to force him to withdraw his troops, and the Lebanese state was far too weak. In November, suicide-bombers blew up the US marine headquarters and that of the French contingent, leaving more than three hundred dead. Although the United States attributed the direct responsibility to extremist Shiite militia, it considered that Syria must have approved and backed the action. The United States identified Syria, with its Soviet backers, as the obstacle not only to a settlement of the Lebanese problem but also to peace in the whole area. Its response was to move closer to Israel – with Israel’s actions in invading Lebanon forgotten and forgiven – by adopting a common strategy towards an Arab–Israeli settlement and greatly increasing military and economic aid.

The United States was forced to accept that its strategy for Lebanon had failed. The American public would not have accepted any deeper involvement of US troops in the hopeless cause of pacifying Lebanon. In February 1984 the US marines were withdrawn from Beirut, and the other, European contingents soon followed.

Israel also found that the objectives of its invasion of Lebanon were far from achieved. The PLO structure in Lebanon had been destroyed and its fighters scattered, but Arafat and the PLO survived and eventually made their headquarters in Tunis. Israel’s dream of having a friendly neighbour to the north, dominated by Christian Maronites, had rapidly faded. The Israeli forces were quite unable to control the multi-factional civil war that was raging and turning Lebanon into a partitioned country with shifting internal borders.
In southern Lebanon the mainly Shiite population, who had not initially resisted the Israeli invasion because of their sufferings caused by the Palestinian presence, turned bitterly against the Israelis, who too often behaved as conquerors. The Israeli forces faced increasing attacks from Lebanese fighters, who now included members of Hizbollah (‘the party of God’) – Shiite extremists supported by revolutionary Iran. As Israeli casualties mounted, Israel’s intervention in Lebanon became increasingly unpopular at home.

In September 1984 the Israeli Labour leader Shimon Peres became prime minister of a Labour/Likud coalition after a tied election.

The Labour Party had not been responsible for the invasion of Lebanon, although it had not effectively opposed it. By June 1985 Peres was able to secure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. However, Israel kept military advisers with the South Lebanon army, composed mainly of Christians in a ten-mile buffer zone along the border, and to this extent could still interfere in Lebanon’s internal affairs. But it had abandoned its opportunity to influence directly the character of Lebanon’s regime.

It seemed to many that, although Arafat and his PLO colleagues had survived the siege of Beirut, their organization’s effectiveness was ended. Moreover a worse blow was to come in April 1983 when a rebel movement within the PLO, supported by Syria, declared Arafat’s leadership to be corrupt and denounced what was seen as his intention to abandon the armed struggle in favour of diplomacy in collaboration with Jordan. Expelled from Syria by President Assad, Arafat made his headquarters in Tripoli in north Lebanon, where he faced attacks by the rebels backed by Syrian and Libyan troops. After lengthy negotiations, Arafat and 4,000 loyalists were evacuated by Greek ships flying the UN flag.

This was surely the end. The PLO’s fighters were scattered to the farthest corners of the Arab world, and its headquarters was 2,000 miles away from Palestine in Tunis, at the opposite end of the Mediterranean. But in fact these disasters caused most of the four million Palestinians, whether in the diaspora or in Palestine, to cling more tightly to Arafat and the PLO as the only effective symbols
of national identity. To the outside world the pudgy and half-shaven figure of Arafat seemed to lack appeal, but to his own people he had powerful charisma and magnetism, especially when speaking in his Arabic tongue rather than coping with Western interviewers. There was still no real alternative to him as ‘Mr Palestine’, as Israel acknowledged by attempting to destroy him and his headquarters in an air raid on Tunis in October 1985. He was also a subtle politician. He infuriated Western well-wishers by refusing to state clearly what they knew to be true – that he was ready to recognize Israel and abandon the armed struggle in return for an independent Palestinian state – and he opened himself to the charge of changing his words to suit his audience, but he knew that he had first to convince the great majority of Palestinians or their movement would shatter and dissolve. It was to prevent internal differences from emerging that he consistently refused, despite the urging of outside sympathizers, to form a provisional government-in-exile whose policy decisions would have had to be binding on all its members.