Israel intends to maintain its present policy of supporting the South Lebanese Army (SLA) while keeping its own military presence in the area to a minimum, this despite the weakened condition of the SLA, a condition which is giving Israeli military policymakers much cause for concern.
This resolve to adhere to the policy that has been in force since Israel withdrew from Lebanon in June 1985, and to strengthen the SLA wherever possible, was enunciated this week by Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Levy.
He indicated that the decision followed exhaustive deliberations within the defense establishment.
Thirteen SLA soldiers were killed in a number of recent clashes with Shiite Hizbullah units — usually attacks by the Shiites at night on poorly staffed SLA positions. This weekend one such incident resulted in a Shiite defeat — a development warmly welcomed in Israel. But the graver problem of defections from the SLA ranks, continues to concern Israeli policy makers.
According to informed estimates, some 20 percent of the 1,500-member force have melted away into the hills and villages of south Lebanon over recent weeks.
Israel has sought to stanch this hemorrhage by increasing the salaries that it pays the SLA men — these are henceforth to be paid in U.S. dollars, no longer in the steadily plummeting Lebanese currency — and by insisting that south Lebanese civilians can only cross the border daily to work inside Israel if they have a member of their family serving in the SLA.
CONCERN OVER PLO BUILDUP
In addition to Israel’s worries over the complement and fighting-fitness of the SLA, there are deepening concerns here over the steady buildup of PLO forces in south Lebanon — north of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) line.
Some Israeli sources have been quoted as citing a figure of 3,000 Palestinian fighting men now grouped in the areas around Tyre and Sidon. These Palestinian units, moreover, are buoyed by their recent success in holding their own against numerically superior Shiite Amal forces — especially around the village of Maghdoushe where the Amal was beaten in pitched battles.
Israel was peripherally involved in that fighting: its naval craft shelled PLO positions on the coast. Also, the Israel Air Force has been used frequently of late to bomb and strafe Palestinian — and occasionally Hizbullah — terrorist largest in various parts of Lebanon.
But there is a feeling among some observers here that Israel may have been overestimating the military strength of Amal, which, though numerically large, seems badly organized and badly commanded.
Particularly chastening to Israel is the fact — and it is by now a proven fact — that the PLO has enlisted the aid of the Beirut Christian forces in infiltrating men and materiel back into south Lebanon. Israel has clear evidence that the Christians — both the government circles around President Amin Gemayel and the Phalangists–have actively enabled the PLO to use the Christian-controlled port of Junieh, north of Beirut, as an entry point.
While Israeli naval craft frequently arrest and search small craft en route to Lebanon, and have recently turned back the regular ferry from Cyprus because it was carrying PLO reinforcements, Israel cannot impose a total blockade on the busy waters off Lebanon.
In June 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, the enemy was the PLO and the ally was the Christian community.
Now it seems, in the ever-shifting pattern of alliances that accompanies Lebanon’s endless civil strife, the Christians are moving towards Syria and the PLO, and disavowing any vestigial involvement with Israel. Last week, in a Christian Radio Broadcast monitored here, Israel was referred to as “our Zionist enemy.”
This setback, from the Israeli standpoint, could be better countenanced if Israel’s efforts to reach a reliable understanding with Amal seemed likely to succeed.
But, as throughout the past years, Amal is still proving a reluctant and unpredictable target of Israel’s overtures. Moreover, its own failure to defeat the PLO in battle, and the steady rise of the fanatical Hizbullah within the Lebanese Shiite Community, has rendered Amal itself a less attractive target for such overtures.
Behind the rise of Hizbullah, according to Israeli experts, lurks an increasingly active and influential Iranian involvement in the religious, political and military life of Lebanon.
TWO UNPLEASANT PROSPECTS
Israel, therefore, is faced by two equally unpleasant prospects across its northern border: a growing PLO presence and an ascendant, Iranian backed Hizbullah which is driving the Shiite moderates onto the defensive.
And if Israel’s outlook for accommodation with the indigenous forces in south Lebanon is bad, its relations with UNIFIL have reached an all-time low.
The killing last week of an Irish corporal by Israeli tank fire has triggered a flurry of openly condemnatory statements by UNIFIL officers in the field, and by UN officials and contributing nations. The incident is seen as topping a wave of SLA attacks on UNIFIL positions — for which the UN directly blames Israel.
Israel, which only belatedly admitted that its own tanks had killed the corporal, has now offered monetary compensation to his family.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
