"Menachem, Shalom"

By William E. Smith

Those were Reagan's final words to Begin, but his message was "outrage"

It was a few minutes past 11 o'clock last Thursday morning when the President of the U.S., after an hour of trying, finally managed to get through by telephone to the Prime Minister of Israel. In a cold fury, Ronald Reagan told Menachem Begin of his "outrage" that at the very moment when a negotiated settlement for the evacuation of Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas appeared to be in sight, the Israeli armed forces were conducting their most severe air blitz of West Beirut. Virtually shouting, the President said that he was "shocked" at the Israeli attack, which he said had caused "needless destruction and bloodshed." The Israeli Prime Minister seemed incredulous, although in fact he had been expecting the President's call and dreading it. Begin assured Reagan that he had already ordered another cease-fire in Beirut. The two men spoke again about 20 minutes later, and, somewhat encouraged, the President closed the conversation on a more friendly note. Using the customary Hebrew greeting ("Peace"), he said farewell to Begin: "Menachem, shalom."

Those extraordinary conversations ended one of the ugliest and most inexplicable actions of the ten-week war. In the hills southeast of Beirut, U.S. Negotiator Philip Habib had already secured an agreement in principle that would lead to the evacuation from Lebanon of the 6,000 to 9,000 P.L.O. fighting men in West Beirut. He had just about completed the arrangements for the transfer of the departing P.L.O. forces to other Arab countries, leaving only a few relatively unimportant details still to be settled. The Israelis knew he was making progress, yet they continued to bomb and shell West Beirut on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Finally, on Thursday, they launched the most intensive bombardment of the war. For eleven hours, from 6 a.m. until 5 p.m., Israeli warplanes--more than 60, according to Beirut reports--dropped their pay loads of death and destruction on the besieged city, making some 220 bombing runs in all. Israeli gunboats offshore and artillery in the hills joined in the attack. By the time the cease-fire went into effect in late afternoon, at least 156 people had been killed and some 400 wounded. Some 800 dwellings had been destroyed.

Inevitably, the Thursday attack brought an abrupt halt to the peace talks. Lebanese Prime Minister Chafik al Wazzan, who had been serving as an intermediary between the P.L.O. and the American negotiators, declared that he could no longer continue to participate while his "beloved Beirut" was being bombarded. With tears of outrage in his eyes, the Prime Minister told Habib that if the Israelis were bent on destroying Beirut and its people, "then let them kill us all now and get it over with, and let you and the U.S. bear the consequences." Wazzan's performance was both heartfelt and effective. So was the telephone call that P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat made that day to Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, asking for his assistance in stopping the onslaught. Enraged by what Arafat told him about the ongoing bombing, Fahd promised to call Reagan and demand that the carnage cease. And so he did, reaching the White House scarcely ten minutes before Reagan got through to Begin.

What particularly shocked the war-weary Lebanese capital was the nature of the Thursday assault. If a negotiated settlement was almost at hand, why were the Israelis attacking with such ferocity? Why did they find it necessary to strafe apartment buildings and boulevards? The jets were flying so low that their markings were clearly visible, their noise a deafening howl. On the ground, Western correspondents wondered if the Israeli military was about to raze the entire city.

But even as the bombs were falling on Beirut, a political storm was raging in Jerusalem. At its epicenter was the roughhewn Israeli Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, who had directed the invasion of Lebanon from the beginning. Apparently wanting to destroy as much of the P.L.O. as he could before being obliged to accept a permanent cease-fire in Lebanon, Sharon had paid less and less attention to what his colleagues in the Begin government were thinking and had begun launching operations on his own authority.

Throughout most of the war, Begin had sided with his Defense Minister, but there were signs of a split between the two men even before Thursday's attack. As Cabinet ministers complained more and more openly that they were not being informed, let alone consulted, on the progress of the war, Begin remarked, in an obvious gibe at Sharon: "I always know everything that goes on, either beforehand or afterward."

The Thursday blitz of Beirut had been under way for four hours when the Israeli parliament met in Jerusalem in special session. As former Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, speaking for the opposition Labor Party, tried to open a discussion on the war, he was noisily interrupted by two members of the Democratic Front, the Israeli Communist Party. Shouted one: "At this very moment, women and children are being murdered in Beirut." Added the other: "Stop the murder! Stop the bombing!" When order had been restored, Bar-Lev spoke of the damage that had been done to Israel by its bombing of civilians in Lebanon, emphasizing that "the war has gone beyond our direct security needs."

Begin replied to the criticism in an 87-minute speech, his longest in the Knesset since he became Prime Minister. Then the debate shifted to a special Cabinet meeting, which had been called by Sharon himself. Although the burly ex-general had been running the war more and more on his own, on this occasion he solicited the Cabinet's support for a series of tactical moves around Beirut as part of the Israelis' continuing effort to strengthen their military positions. Deputy Prime Minister Simcha Ehrlich, who had generally supported Sharon in the past, immediately declared that the request was out of the question. Taking up the argument, the Moroccan-born David Levy, another Deputy Prime Minister, who has been a consistent critic of Sharon, declared, "The country is confused. Government decisions are being violated: steps are being taken without government approval. These things are endangering the [Habib] agreement and our relations with the U.S."

In reply, Sharon said that he had merely been trying to protect the lives of Israeli soldiers. To that retort, Begin snapped, "You are no more responsible for the lives of the soldiers than anyone else around this table." Sharon continued to argue that the Israeli forces must improve their military positions in Beirut before any evacuation of the P.L.O. could begin, but this time his colleagues were having none of it. "What is the point of these bombings?" demanded Begin. "To put [political] gains at risk?" When Sharon became testy, Begin told him, "Don't raise your voice. You should know who is conducting things here. You should remember that the government is the commander of the army."

Later, summing up, Begin told his Cabinet: "I don't like the idea that in an hour or two from now, I'll get a message from President Reagan saying he insists that we stop the air strikes and military movements in Beirut. I don't want anyone in the U.S. to think that we have a government that cannot control the conduct of the war . . . I recommend a cessation of all military activity in the Beirut area, because these activities are of no effect. If we are talking about the future, we shall see. We can always change our policy."

In the ensuing vote on the changes Sharon had requested, the Defense Minister lost, 17 to 2. His only supporter: Science Minister Yuval Ne'eman, a member of the right-wing Tehiya Party. The Cabinet then passed another resolution specifying that there should be no more air strikes against Beirut unless authorized either by the Prime Minister or by the Cabinet in special session. Roundly defeated, Sharon observed stiffly, "I did what I had to do. I accept the Cabinet's will."

Just over an hour later, almost precisely as Begin had predicted, President Reagan called to express his sense of outrage over the renewed assault on Beirut, and Begin was able to tell him that the bombing had already been ordered stopped. Afterward, Begin double-checked with Israeli Chief of Staff Lieut. General Rafael Eitan to make sure that the order had been carried out. Then he called Reagan back and told him so. The President was notably relieved. He had been saddened and angered by the persistent bombardment of Beirut and by the resulting damage to U.S. prestige. As a White House official put it later, "The Lebanese were blaming us directly, not just the Israelis, for this wanton destruction. They felt that it could lead to a total breakdown in the negotiations."

The President was also eager for a foreign-policy accomplishment of a high order, and he did not want his hopes to be dashed by an ill-conceived military action. Only two days earlier, after Negotiator Habib had flown to Jerusalem and secured Israel's basic support of the eight-page plan, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes had declared enthusiastically that "the momentum of the peace process continues to build."

The elaborate scheme covers the evacuation of P.L.O. fighting men and some 1,500 Syrian soldiers from West Beirut over a 15-day period. It specifies that a force of 200 to 300 French soldiers would enter West

Beirut along with elements of the Lebanese army a few hours before the evacuation would begin. About a week later, a multi-national force of 800 Americans, 800 Frenchmen and 400 Italians would move in. Still to be settled, in future negotiations, is the fate of some 7,500 Palestinian guerrillas held prisoner in Israeli-occupied Lebanon and of some 20,000 P.L.O. combatants in and around Tripoli and in the Bekaa Valley.

A sticking point has been the question of bringing in foreign troops before the P.L.O. evacuation has begun. The P.L.O. wants the protection of foreign soldiers, particularly the French. The Israelis fear that if the P.L.O. should then change its mind about leaving Beirut, the foreign troops would become a buffer between the P.L.O. and the Israelis. Eventually, Habib supported the idea of a small French advance force. But he agreed that if some of the guerrillas should refuse to leave, the international force would compel them to do so or, if necessary, would step aside and permit the Israelis to drive them out.

Habib told the Israelis that Iraq, Jordan and Syria were prepared to accept the majority of the departing guerrillas, and that a few might go to Sudan and Tunisia. Only Egypt among the main Arab countries involved in the discussions was still refusing to cooperate. As his price for accepting a P.L.O. presence, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was seeking a promise from the U.S. that it would move toward a comprehensive settlement on the Palestinian issue.

The Israelis accepted the Habib plan in principle, though they asked for several amendments. They wanted a complete list of the P.L.O. guerrillas who were to be evacuated. They asked for the release of a captured Israeli pilot and for the bodies of several Israeli servicemen killed in previous fighting. They still felt uneasy about having foreign troops on hand in Beirut in advance of the P.L.O. withdrawal. Despite these Israeli reservations, American negotiators were quite optimistic by the time Habib had returned to Lebanon at midweek. Thus they were caught off-balance by the fierceness of the Israelis' Thursday attack on West Beirut.

By the end of the week the fears raised by the Thursday bombing seemed to be receding. The talks between U.S. and Lebanese officials had resumed, and there was speculation that Negotiator Habib would soon make another trip to Jerusalem, perhaps the final one in the current series. Even the chastened Ariel Sharon said he hoped that the P.L.O. evacuation from Beirut could begin some time late this week. In Washington, President Reagan declared that he was now "reasonably optimistic" because he believed that this time "the cease-fire is going to hold." The long agony of Beirut may be drawing to a close.

-- By William E. Smith.

Reported by David Aikman/ Jerusalem and William Stewart/ Beirut

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, William Stewart

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