Dark Clouds over Lebanon

By William E. Smith

As Jumblatt raises the ante, hope for a cease-fire may be slipping away

"We are making progress in Lebanon," President Reagan insisted in his State of the Union address. Maybe so, but in that embattled country, a political crisis appeared to be looming as surely as the whiter storm that whipped across the country last week.

The most vociferous warnings came from Walid Jumblatt, 36, the mercurial, Syrian-supported Druze leader, who has consistently blocked all attempts at a ceasefire. Against the noisy backdrop of almost daily artillery battles between the Lebanese Army and Druze militiamen, Jumblatt called for the resignation of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel's government. Then he said that he had meant the Gemayel Cabinet but not the President. Still later, he insisted that he had been right the first time, and that Gemayel himself should resign. "We will not take part in any government or format with President Gemayel," he declared in Damascus.

Meanwhile, Pierre Gemayel, father of the President and leader of the right-wing Phalange Party, called for a "popular mobilization" of Christian forces "to support their fighters who are defending the Lebanese entity on the front lines." The war of words between the Druze and the Christians erupted into periodic artillery duels, while the Druze fire against Lebanese Army positions sent shells flying dangerously close to the U.S. Marine base at Beirut International Airport. When President Reagan expressed continued support of President Gemayel's government last week, Jumblatt, who is dependent on Syrian arms supplies, retorted, "The Lebanese people are fighting the Americans, and Lebanon will become their new Viet Nam."

The tension has been rising steadily since early January. At that time efforts to arrange a formal cease-fire were stalled by the insistence of Druze negotiators, along with their Syrian sponsors, that Gemayel's government abrogate its May 17 agreement with Israel, an accord that was supposed to be the vehicle for getting both Israeli and Syrian troops out of Lebanon. Convinced that U.S. political pressure will force Reagan to withdraw the 1,800-man Marine contingent, Syrian President Hafez Assad has continued to stand firm with his own 62,000 troops in Lebanon.

Exactly what the Syrians want is by no means clear. At the very least, they are seeking a stable Lebanon closely aligned with the Arab world, and thus with Syria. They have strong influence over Jumblatt, but neither they nor anybody else can control him. On his own, for example, Jumblatt scuttled a security plan in early January by insisting at the last moment that Druze officers in the Lebanese Army should be treated on the same basis as Christian and Muslim officers for promotions and other benefits. That seemed fair, except that some 800 Druze officers had failed to show up for army duty after the fighting in the Chouf Mountains began last September. Should their absence now be forgiven? Gemayel offered a compromise solution last week, but Jumblatt rejected it.

For the moment Assad seems content to leave his large force in Lebanon, certain that the Israelis, the U.S. Marines and the other members of the Multi-National Force will decide to withdraw on their own. But the Syrian President is also mindful of the rise of a moderate Arab bloc whose members include Egypt, Jordan and the branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization that remains loyal to Chairman Yasser Arafat. This group, which is almost certain to gain the support of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, is likely to become far more influential than Syria in dealing with the Palestinian problem. Such a development could in turn pose a serious challenge to the Assad regime, especially if it came at a time when so many Syrian troops were still tied down in Lebanon.

The re-emergence of Egypt as a force in the Arab world is the critical factor in Assad's thinking. Two weeks ago the 42-nation Islamic summit meeting in Casablanca invited Egypt to return to the group. Its membership had been suspended in 1979 after Cairo signed a peace treaty with Israel. The government of President Hosni Mubarak is anxious to do so, but only if this will not compromise its support of Camp David and of the pact with Israel. The next step may come in March, when Egypt's moderate friends will try to get Cairo readmitted to the 21-member Arab League, a step that will be opposed by Syria, Libya, South Yemen and perhaps others. At present, such action would require the unanimous support of league members, but King Hussein of Jordan may try to have the rules changed, enabling Egypt to be readmitted by a simple majority vote. In the meantime Egypt, Jordan and the Arafat branch of the P.L.O. plan to meet in March or April to formulate a new approach for negotiating the future status of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Egyptians have also strengthened their position in the Persian Gulf. They are selling $800 million a year in war materiel to Iraq, and there are said to be at least 25,000 Egyptian volunteers fighting on the Iraqi side against Iran. The Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini has condemned such acts by moderate Arabs, but, even with his bursts of Iranian-inspired Shi'ite terrorism, he has not stopped them. In Kuwait last week, the government announced that 25 people, including 17 Iraqis, would go on trial beginning Feb. 11 on charges of carrying out bombings against the American and French embassies and other targets in December. At the time it appeared that those acts were part of a Shi'ite campaign aimed at the U.S. and French military role in Lebanon. It now seems that the terrorism was diverted toward Kuwait because it has been supporting Iraq against Iran in the gulf war.

As they watch the rising agitation around them, the Israelis are conspicuously uneasy. They fear Syria's desire to dominate Lebanon. They are concerned about Egypt, the only Arab neighbor with whom they are formally at peace, as it repairs its ties with the Islamic world. They are also suspicious of Hussein's and Arafat's attempts to start a dialogue on the future of Palestinians on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They believe that such a dialogue, if successful, would bring renewed U.S. pressure on Israel to enter negotiations on the occupied territories.

Last week, only days after an announcement that France would sell $4.1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia, the Israelis reiterated their opposition to a Reagan Administration plan to give Jordan $220 million for training and equipping a special strike force that could be used in the event of an emergency in the region. Both the Saudis and the Jordanians say they want the arms for defense against other Muslim countries, but the Israelis regard any Arab arms buildup as a potential threat.

The Israelis last week had an opportunity to express their opposition directly to one particular deal: the proposed sale by West Germany of tanks and other weaponry to Saudi Arabia. When West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in Israel for a six-day state visit, he was greeted with several demonstrations protesting not only the arms sale but also the presence of a German leader on Israeli soil.

Both Kohl and his host, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, behaved with great delicacy. Like an earlier West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, who visited Israel in 1973, Kohl went first to the Yad Vashem memorial, Israel's monument to the victims of the Holocaust. As a girls' choir sang -- and a cantor offered a prayer "for the dead, Kohl laid a wreath beside the eternal flame. At a dinner that evening, Shamir told his guest, "We are not prisoners of the past. We remember it out of belief in a better future."

In his response Kohl noted that he, like most of his countrymen, had been too young to fight in World War II. But, he continued, "I bow to you in grief at the suffering inflicted on the Jewish people by the Germans... We live with our history; we cannot and do not intend to shun this grave legacy."

In private talks the two leaders discussed the region's problems, and particularly Israel's concern about the possible West German arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

One meeting was postponed when the Shamir government faced a parliamentary vote of confidence over the inflation-plagued Israeli economy. The government won by a vote of 62 to 56.

The government also faced problems in southern Lebanon, where Shi'ite residents have become increasingly violent in their opposition to the Israeli presence.

Last week, after an Israeli position near Tyre came under fire, Israeli troops besieged the Shi'ite mountain village of Halloussiyeh. They arrested eight villagers, including the local prayer leader, Sheik Abbas Harb, and bulldozed his house to the ground. Villagers threw stones at the Israelis and set tires afire on nearby roads.

Despite the resistance, the Israelis have no intention of pulling their 22,000 troops out of southern Lebanon for the present. To do so, they believe, would merely strengthen the resolve of the Syrians to remain in Lebanon. --By William E. Smith. Reported by John Borrell/Beirut and Harry Kelly/Jerusalem

With reporting by John Borrell/Beirut, Harry Kelly/Jerusalem