First Aid from a 'Rescue' Team

Lebanon, the financial center of the Arab world, is sometimes called the Switzerland of the Middle East. By now, some sectors of its capital city look more like a World War II battlefield. For the third time in scarcely three months, Beirut has been rocked by fighting between members of the right-wing nationalistic Phalange Party, most of them Maronite Christians, and bands of predominantly Moslem leftists backed by Palestinian extremists (TIME, July 7). By the time the third round ended last week, after eight days of violence, some 300 people had been killed and 700 wounded. That brought the year's death toll to about 900--the highest casualties in Lebanon since the civil unrest of 1958 that led to the landing of U.S. Marines. Losses to the nation's economy from the troubles this year are estimated at $500 million.

Gargantuan Crises. The fighting eased at midweek soon after Premier-designate Rashid Karami finally managed to form what he called a "rescue government." Karami, 53, a Moslem who has served as Premier eight times before, spent seven months in 1969 trying to put together a Cabinet. This time, after the traditional quadrille of maneuvering with many of the country's 21 parties and nine parliamentary blocs, he managed the job in only five weeks. The country might be falling apart around them, but Lebanon's aging political leaders--including President Suleiman Franjieh, 65--painstakingly haggled and bargained their way through scores of meetings. In the end, they accepted a compromise formula that had been proposed at least three weeks earlier: an interim six-member Cabinet that excludes both the extreme right and the extreme left, but includes representatives of the country's major religious groups.

Lebanon's gargantuan governmental crises, as well as the bloodshed that accompanied the latest one, are symptomatic of the country's central problem: the Middle East conflict is bringing terrible pressure on the political compromise that Lebanon's Christian and Moslem communities have lived by for more than 30 years. Until recently, the Lebanese have prided themselves, perhaps complacently, on their ability to remain somewhat aloof from the Arab-Israeli struggle. Frightened and disillusioned by this year's internal fighting, many Lebanese are now wondering how much longer the situation can last.

Larger Hand. As hammered out in the National Covenant of 1943, the Christian and Moslem communities reached an unwritten understanding that the President of the republic would be a Maronite Christian, the Premier a Sunni Moslem and the speaker of the unicameral Parliament a Shi'a Moslem. In addition, they agreed that Christians would prevail over Moslems in the legislative and executive branches by a ratio of 6 to 5. That seemed reasonable in 1943, when Christians formed the majority of the population. Although there has been no census in Lebanon since 1932, the Moslems are almost certainly in the majority now (because of a higher birthrate)--and they want a larger hand in the running of the country. They also want a larger share of the nation's wealth; thousands of Moslem peasants, driven from southern Lebanon by Israeli border raids, have flocked to the cities, where they have become a receptive audience for leftist political appeals.

The immediate cause of Lebanon's convulsions this year, however, is the continued presence of some 320,000 Palestinian refugees. As a group, the Palestinians have their own armed force and a sort of sovereignty over their 16 camps in Lebanon--indeed, they form a "state within a state," as right-wing Lebanese critics describe the Palestinians' status. Previous governments--always dominated by Christians--have reluctantly tolerated the Palestinians' use of Lebanese territory as a base for raids against Israel, but they have resisted any pressure to link the country more closely with the Arab "confrontation states." Many Moslems, on the other hand, favor greater support for the Palestinian cause.

Leftist Extremists. In the recent fighting, as in the previous rounds, the principal forces involved were the Phalangists and the mostly Moslem leftist extremists. But the battle was soon joined by some hard-line fedayeen (though not by the P.L.O.'s Yasser Arafat, who attempted to serve as a mediator) as well as by bands of privateers who turned it into a sort of free-for-all. "Beirut has gone through another difficult night," the national radio mournfully announced each morning, before warning citizens to stay off the streets and appealing to the warring parties not to fire at ambulances or fire trucks.

Complicating matters still further, there was also the presence of Israeli agents, who apparently seized the opportunity to sneak in and deal with a few of their known enemies (see following story). In the midst of the confusion, a U.S. Army colonel, Ernest R. Morgan, disappeared and was presumed kidnaped by one group or another.

In other countries, a government would automatically have called out its army to put down the kind of civil unrest that beset Lebanon in the past fortnight. But Lebanon's 16,000-man armed forces, like the nation itself, are a special case. Since the high command is predominantly Christian, much of the Moslem population would have resented the army's presence--and the soldiers might have split along religious lines. So the government prudently allowed the troops to remain in barracks.

At midweek, however, as life in the capital began to return to normal, convoys of armored personnel carriers, trucks and Jeeps cruised through the streets of Beirut to demonstrate that the new government was determined to restore order. The irony of having an army that nobody dared use was not lost on the Lebanese. "Now that it's all over," mused one spectator, "they figure that it's safe to come out in force."

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