Counting the Costs

Israel assesses the damage of the fighting--and the cease-fire

"We shall not hold our fire indefinitely. If the terrorists keep on shooting, we shall not stand idly by." So declared Prime Minister Menachem Begin as he tried to reassure a worried Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Knesset that Israel's security had not been unduly compromised by the ceasefire with the Palestinians. Begin's gruff tone--and the contentious nature of the meeting--reflected Israel's mood last week as it counted the costs, military and political, of the 14 days of fighting and the uneasy peace that followed.

The cease-fire was holding--barely--although there was a hot debate over what it entailed. After a Syrian MiG was shot down by Israeli planes over Lebanon, for example, the question arose whether Israel had the right, under the agreement, to continue its reconnaissance flights over the country. The Palestine Liberation Organization said no; the Israelis said yes, and the U.S. backed them up.

Leaders of the P.L.O. felt that they had gained some invaluable diplomatic clout from the negotiations for the ceasefire by dealing, however indirectly, with both the U.S. and Israel. Neither country has recognized the P.L.O. as officially representing the Palestinians. The P.L.O. was also confident that the Israelis had suffered a serious propaganda defeat as a result of their bombing raid on Beirut, in which some 300 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed and another 800 wounded.

The Beirut raid had indeed shocked the world, as the Israelis were worriedly acknowledging. Opposition Leader Shimon Peres flatly called it "a mistake." On the other hand, the Israeli raids on Lebanon called attention to the enormous arms buildup of the P.L.O. over the past six months. The new arms, paid for mainly by Libya, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, include Soviet-made 122-mm howitzers and 130-mm field guns. These weapons have not yet turned the Palestinians into a serious threat to the Israeli armed forces, but they have made it difficult for the Israelis to knock out P.L.O. concentrations with anything short of a full-scale ground attack.

Begin had another problem on his mind last week: forming a government. He was having a far harder time than expected in bargaining with his three potential partners, all small and conservative religious parties, to get the support he needed. Begin brought up the difficulty in an unusual setting in Tel Aviv. Wearing a black skullcap and sweating under the bright lights, he stood before an audience of the National Bible Quiz, a sort of Israeli College Bowl for scholars of the Old Testament. After telling the group how hard he had been working to try to put a new government together, the Prime Minister declared: "But the Bible is so rejuvenating, I feel quite young and strong." In fact, he joked, "you could say I feel fit enough to go through another election." In all likelihood, however, he will still be able to form a new government by Aug. 4, the deadline he had originally set for himself. He could nevertheless be forced to take an additional 21 days before he would be obliged to report failure to President Yitzhak Navon.

In the meantime, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat was preparing to fly to Washington for his first meeting with President Reagan. Sadat, whose historic 1977 trip to Jerusalem marked the beginning of serious negotiations between Egypt and Israel, is worried about both Soviet adventurism and Israeli aggressiveness, and he is distressed over delays in the delivery to Egypt of such promised American military equipment as F-16 jet fighters, M-60 tanks and Hawk antiaircraft missiles. But the most important subject the two leaders will discuss is the best way to get the stalled Camp David peace process moving again.

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