Behind the Headlines Will Lebanon Become Another ‘confrontation State’ for Israel?

The kibbutzniks and the fellahin still exchange friendly greetings through the barbed wire, despite the barbed wire.

Recently, an Israeli motorist on the border road was hailed by a well-dressed Lebanese on the other side of the fence. The man had come down especially from Tyre in the north. He had heard that an old friend from the pre-1948 days was ill and had undergone surgery in a Haifa hospital. Would the motorist take a message to the sick man? The message: Was there anything his old friend could do to help? The friend and all his family in Tyre were praying for the sick man’s speedy recovery.

And the smuggling, though by no means as brisk as in the pre-State days, or even as in the pre-1967 days, still continues. Bottles of liquor and perfume still said across the barbed wire occasionally, on a moonless night, despite the barbed wire. And the moonless nights sometimes come alive with gunfire and explosions, as Palestinian terrorists wreak havoc on Israeli settlements, or are chased off by the Israeli army. Those nights, too, are part of the border life reality. There are in fact two realities, existing side by side.

The terrorists make border living a dangerous business and are a continual thorn in Israel’s side. But they are no more than a thorn, Ensconced in the “Fatahland” just north of the border, they creep across the lines at the behest of their masters in Beirut, or let with volleys of bazookas or Katyushas at vehicles or homesteads on the other side. The Israeli army conducts “policing patrols” which cross the border sometimes, in the effort to prevent incursions before they occur.

RESTRAINING INFLUENCE ON TERRORISTS

The Lebanese army, small, frightened, exercises at best a restraining influence upon the terrorists. While there seems to be little control of the number of men who camp in the Fatahland, there are tacit limitations on the size of their weaponry. The Lebanese army is reluctant to see an escalation of fighting between the terrorists and the Israelis, which would eventually lead to large-scale Israeli penetrations.

For Israel, the Lebanese border represents a nagging concern; but not a military threat or challenge. The settlements must be protected–but there is no fear of real invasion in time of war. After all, who would or could invade from Lebanon? Certainly not the 18,000-strong Lebanese army. And as for the terrorists–frontal assault against a regular army is not their line of business.

Current events in Beirut–the daily carnage which has taken thousands of lives and which seems, now, to be tilting in favor of the Moslem side–may change the situation on Israel’s northern border, if the Moslems and their Palestinian backers win clear-cut victory which seems ever more possible, Israel can expect stepped up terror action across the border, and–much more importantly–the possibility that Lebanon might become a serious potential threat from the military standpoint, a fourth “confrontation state” for Israel to deal with.

The final shot in the Lebanon civil war has not yet been fired, and prognostication is, there fore, rash and dangerous. The army, though it is small (smaller perhaps than some of the warring groups), is well-equipped and well-trained. There can be no knowing whether or when the army, largely Christian officered, will swing into action, possibly changing the outcome of the struggle. If that does not happen, however, it seems that the Moslem leftists will carry the day.

SYRIA NOT TOTALLY PASSIVE

A month ago there was talk of Syrian intervention on the side of the Moslems. But the Syrians, warned off by both Israel and the U.S., wisely held off. Wisely–as it turned out–because the Moslem-leftist factions proved able to hold their own and best the Christian Phalangists without direct Syrian help.

This is not to say that Syria has been totally passive. There is good reason to believe that among the thousands of “Palestinians” who have drifted across the border from Syria to Lebanon to join up with the Moslem fighters there are Syrian regular soldiers, dressed as members of the Al-Saika Palestinian terrorist group.

Israel for its part is necessarily constrained to inaction. So long as there is no outright invasion or intervention by outside regular forces, Israel cannot act militarily without incurring the disapprobation of the entire world–including the U.S. This has been made abundantly clear by U.S. Secretary of State Henry A, Kissinger and by the U.S. envoy here, Malcolm Toon. In fact, Premier Yitzhak Rabin and his ministers understood it without American prompting.

If there is to be a Moslem takeover of Lebanon from within, aided by subversion–but not direct, open, intervention from without–then Israel can only watch warily but passively. Rabin and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon have given vent to their frustration in a series of scathing, withering statements condemning the inaction and silence of the Western Christian world in the face of the trampling of Christian rights in Lebanon.

BITTER LESSON REAFFIRMED

It has been a reaffirmation of the bitter lesson that Israel has learned over the past two years from her own experience, in the final analysis, pragmatic interests take precedence over moral obligations in this Western world of powers who are afraid to exercise their power. Both the U.S. and France have left more than one million Lebanese Christians in the lurch. The rationalization is that they have been demographically surpassed by the Moslems.

If the Moslems emerge with the upper hand, as seems likely, further internecine strife can be expected between the various factions within the Moslem camp, the Nasserists, the Baathists and the various Palestinian groups.

But Israel cannot bank on endless feuding within Lebanon. It has now to face up to the very real prospect of a new Lebanon, a nationalistic, left-leaning Lebanon, whose leaders will no longer be interested primarily in keeping out of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but rather will be concerned to prove their pan-Arab patriotism by doing their share for the Arab cause.

In practical terms this may mean that Lebanon, under its new leadership, will seek to develop a credible armed strength which, in concert with the armed might of Israel’s other neighbors would, in time of war, present a real problem for the Israel army. No more the “thorn in the side” only, Lebanon could in time raise two or three divisions and build up an airforce and coastal navy.