Blows for the P.L.O.

The heaviest tank and artillery action of Lebanon's long-playing 18-month civil war reverberated last week through the steep mountain ranges northeast of Beirut. And as has more and more been the case in the country's so far insoluble struggle, the principal combatants were not even Lebanese. The battle was mainly between Palestinian commandos holding some towns near Lebanon's 8,500-ft. Sannin Mountain and Syrian forces determined to dislodge them, with Lebanese forces fighting in secondary roles. The Syrians, after a 36-hour artillery barrage, were successful; altogether, however, another 1,500 people were killed or wounded. One more casualty was the ceasefire that Syrian President Hafez Assad had been trying to enforce since he first dispatched troops into Lebanon.

Assad's peace efforts were helped two weeks ago, when Lawyer-Banker Elias Sarkis, 51, was inaugurated President of Lebanon, replacing the intransigent Maronite President Suleiman Franjieh. Yet Sarkis' inauguration took place under the aegis of the Syrian army which is now trying to make peace in Lebanon, by battle if need be. The Syrian army in Lebanon, which now numbers 21,000 men with 90 tanks, holds the lush Bekaa Valley--Lebanon's breadbasket--across the mountains east of Beirut. Christian Lebanese meanwhile hold the Mediterranean coastal area north of the capital. Between those allies, until last week, was a Palestinian mountain salient centered on the crossroads town of Ain Toura. Assad and Sarkis demanded that the Palestinians evacuate their salient and return to their refugee camps below the mountains. In addition, Assad insisted that Palestinian Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat send away any P.L.O. units that had come into the battered state from other Arab countries to join the fighting on the Leftist-Moslem Lebanese side.

Military Conference. The Syrians, in effect, were demanding an enforcement of the so-called Cairo agreement, a 1969 deal that was supposed to control the movement of Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon. The P.L.O. has ignored the agreement from the beginning by carrying out operations against Israel from Lebanon as it saw fit. To obey the Cairo accord now, Arafat realized, would be to destroy the last unrestricted political base left to the Palestinians in the Middle East. The P.L.O. chief refused to withdraw from the mountains and sent urgent pleas for support to other Arab countries, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The Syrians responded with a fierce artillery and rocket barrage from their positions in the Bekaa. As town after town was hit, Palestinian defenders took advantage of the mist and smoke from exploding rounds to slip out of their positions. Arafat himself had nearly been hit earlier when Syrian gunners rained shells and rockets into Aley, a resort town on the Beirut-Damascus highway where the P.L.O. leader was conferring with his military commanders in a luxury villa.

The rout came only days after another Syrian-Palestinian incident, in which four guerrillas stormed the New Semiramis Hotel in the center of Damascus and took 90 guests hostage. Most of the hostages were Scandinavian tourists; four of them died before Syrian soldiers charged the hotel, killed the guerrilla leader and freed the surviving hostages. The remaining fedayeen were captured, tried swiftly and sentenced to hang. Although they had come from Iraq, they confessed over Syrian television that they were part of Arafat's Fatah. All three were hanged publicly in downtown Damascus, emphasizing Assad's split with the P.L.O.

Syria's move to embarrass Arafat was obviously deliberate, and it added to what has become a growing problem for the P.L.O. Arafat committed a major blunder by allowing the Palestinians to become involved in the Lebanese civil war; by now they cannot extricate themselves, and the side issue has seriously damaged their primary aim of a Palestinian state. Scarcely two years ago, their movement was gathering world recognition, so much so that Arafat himself was invited to address the United Nations General Assembly even though he had no official diplomatic standing. By last week, in contrast, Arabs themselves were criticizing the Palestinians. Arafat's job --some said his life--was in danger.

This changing situation affects not merely the Palestinians but all Middle Eastern peace efforts. Israel has never wanted to deal with Arafat; the fact that his movement has been discredited to some extent justifies Jerusalem's determination. More than that, it revives the role of Jordan as a peacemaker. In 1974 the Arabs had opted for Arafat rather than King Hussein to speak for Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. At that time, also, Syria refused to participate in a Geneva conference because the Palestinians had not been invited. Judging from recent events in Lebanon, any future Syrian response would almost certainly be different.

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