Israeli officials said today they did not anticipate the United Nations would make the “mistake” of trying again to deploy observers in Beirut after the Israel Defense Force yesterday prevented a convoy of 28 UN observers from gaining access to the city.
Both Israel and the UN were plainly anxious to play down the incident. The Israelis referred to it as “a technical error in that the convoy sought to deploy without coordinating in advance with the IDF.” The observers, led by an Australian colonel, were stopped on the road from Damour to Beirut by Israeli Golani troops and eventually they received orders to return to their base camp in Nakoura.
A UN spokesman said later that the UN would not seek to deploy observers “to monitor the situation in and around Beirut,” as the UN Secretary General was authorized to do in a resolution the Security Council adopted last Sunday, without coordination with all parties. The spokesman called for an early decision on the matter by Israel.
Israel has formally told the UN and Washington that its Cabinet will discuss the issue at a special session Thursday, following the return of Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir from the U.S.
There is little enthusiasm here for the prospect of a UN role in Beirut. The fear is that that UN observers would be seen by the PLO as something of a protective screen behind which the terrorists would continue to hold out in the beleaguered city. The fact that the resolution on the observers was submitted by Jordan and Spain, neither of them friendly to Israel, adds to Israeli suspicions.
On the other hand, the Cabinet ministers will have to weigh the fact that the U.S. supported the resolution. Indeed, American diplomats in Jerusalem, Washington, and New York were active in behind-scenes diplomacy during Sunday that led up to the passage of the resolution. The U.S., it it reliably understood, sees the idea of UN observers as a possible additional means of strengthening the rickety Beirut cease-fire.
U.S. officials have assured Israel that America’s support for UN cease-fire observers in no way superseded the still-valid U.S. offer of marines to be part of a multinational force to supervise the PLO’s evacuation. The U.S. sees the evacuation as attainable — and this point was forcefully put to Shamir in Washington — only if the cease-fire holds, enabling U.S. special envoy Philip Habib to conclude his negotiations.
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.
