Will Syria finish the job?

Charles Glass

Tripoli Esmat al Muqaddam's grocery is doing a .1—.Ibrisk business these days. The rest of Tripoli is closed for the duration, but Esmat sells hundreds of Pepsis, cigarettes and pocket torches to the journalists assembled outside the ramshackle tem- porary headquarters of the PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat. When the Syrian artillery shells are not actually landing in Tripoli, the camp followers attack dozens of local en- trepreneurs selling hot Arabic coffee, pop- corn and fruit from their mobile stalls. Every so often, the Chairman himself comes outside to deliver the latest news, which is invariably good. A horde of French photographers, a breed better banished from the face of the earth, jostle and push one another to snap yet more pic- tures of the unshaven man in the peaked military cap. The photographers, like most of the press corps at this carnival of Arafat- watching, believe Tripoli is the old man's last stand. But Arafat has fooled us before.

Mohammed Shaker, a junior Arafat spokesman, wanders out of one of the of- fices regularly to encourage the pressmen to take trips up to Badawi Palestinian refugee camp. Badawi is more of a suburb of Tripoli, sitting on the city's well-defended northern perimeter, than qseparate township. There are periods when it is safe to go there, but one never knows when these quiet hours with women and children venturing out of their underground shelters will come to an abrupt end. Most of the reporters and photographers regale one another with their daring exploits in Badawi, once they are back in the bar of Beirut's Commodore Hotel. It is hard to know just how seriously Mohammed takes the safety of journalists he is so constantly rude to.

Tripoli is a city which claimed a popula- tion of 400,000, now less than half that, sit- ting on a promontory along the northern Lebanese coast. It is a Sunni Muslim city, Lebannon's second largest, and the richest prize in Syrian-controlled Lebanon. The Syrian army stays out of the city itself, which until last month was ruled by a varie- ty of rival war lords. Then Arafat, who knew what was coming, helped his Lebanese ally in Tripoli, Sheikh Said Shaban, to expel all of Shaban's op- ponents. Most of these groups — Com- munists, Baathists and other familiar characters from the Syrian-backed Lebanese left — were unhappy with their expulsion and wait at the gates of the city with rebel Palestinians and Syrians to come home.

Tripoli is not an easy city to take. The Crusader Raymonde of Toulouse, disap-

pointed by his failure to win the kingship of Jerusalem, tried to conquer Tripoli in 1103. He had the city's Muslims outgunned (or out-arrowed) and, like Syrians today, he controlled all land approaches to the city. His first attacks failed, so he built a citadel on Mount Pilgrim in the hills overlooking Tripoli. (Sheikh Said Shaban's forces are now in the same citadel.) Raymonde laid siege to Tripoli, attacking but never con- quering it. It only became part of the Crusader kingdom by an agreement with the city fathers.

The latest Tripolitan siege began a few months ago, as the al Fatah rebels took one Arafat position after another, leaving only two camps, Nahr el Bared and Badawi, in Arafat's control. They took Nahr el Bared earlier this month, when Arafat's forces made a tactical withdrawal. The camp would have been indefensible, more than ten miles from Arafat's main force at Badawi through territory controlled by the Syrian army. Arafat fell back on Badawi, and the rebels have made several attempts to conquer it. A ceasefire negotiated last week by the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia et al) expired after four days, and on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. Syrian artillery began an all-day barrage of the camp and Arafat's positions near Tripoli's port of El Mina. As I write, the camp is still contested, but Arafat's men are good at defence. They showed that much when they stopped the Israelis from entering West Beirut in 1982. They have had no practice at offence, and they are fighting their own brothers with similar experience behind rather than in front of the barricades. The Syrians are not going to involve their own troops in an infantry assault, since they pre- tend the whole affair is an internal Palesti- nian dispute. They will allow the Palesti- nian Liberation army, Saiqa and Ahmed Jibril's General Command, to join the Al Fatah rebels in any infantry assault they care to make.

The Palestinian war is making life hell for the Tripolitanians. Except for Esmat al Mu- qaddam, Tripoli's shopkeepers have closed. Children cannot go to school, and electrici- ty is in short supply. But surprisingly few people are demanding that Arafat go, tak- ing his merry men with him. Partly it is because they hate the Syrians, partly it is because they don't want all those rival gunmen returned, and partly it may not be safe to criticise Arafat just now. Sheikh Said Shaban, who is hardly representative, said Arafat is welcome to stay as long as he likes. Shaban is a Sunni fundamentalist, a humourless-looking man who wears a red fez wrapped in white cotton. As head of the Islamic Unity Movement, he makes oblique references to the Syrian President Hafez al Assad, who is an Alawi Muslim, as an unbeliever. He knows Assad has a fate planned for him similar to that of his Muslim Brother friends in Hama, who are no more. Arafat is counting on Lebanese hatred of the Syrians to give him extra sup- port if and when the city is breached by ar- mour and infantry.

The Chairman is surprisingly nonplussed. Mohammed Shaker arranges late-night in- terviews for selected reporters, mainly those willing to spend a lot of time in Tripoli and make those terrifying trips to Badawi. On Monday night, only a few hours before the Syrian artillery began to hit the city and the refrigerator trucks began collecting corpses in plastic bags, Arafat sat in his office and said, 'Through this American-Syrian deal, the Syrians and the Libyans are trying to finish the job the Israelis failed to com- plete.' He is referring, of course, to the li- quidation of the PLO as an independent body. Seated behind his desk in a barren of- fice, his hand is wrapped in bandages. Is that a wound? I ask. No, he fell on the stairs and sprained his wrist.

What about the rebels' demands for reform of the PLO? Wasn't self-criticism inevitable after the Beirut disaster? 'We are not angels. This is a revolution. But it is most important to follow the result. What we have gained for our people, for our cause, is more important.' The gains must seem intangible to people still in Badawi, to the survivors of Sabra and Chatila and to Palestinians in south Lebanon.

Arafat's survival has become synonymous with the independence of the PLO. Despite his faults, he or a democratically chosen successor is the PLO's last chance to avoid becoming a sub- ministry of the Syrian government. The old man, who survived Jordan in Black September, the Syrian attacks of 1976 and the Israeli invasion of 1982, still imagines there is room for compromise. How, I ask, can there be a compromise?

'You will see.'

'Give me a hint.'

'Very simple. Because we will not yield. And look what is going on around us. They [the Syrians] are completely isolated, from their people, from our people, in the Arabic area, even in the international area.'

If compromise is not reached Tripoli is in trouble. Arafat said, think the Syrians are planning to invade the city as they have declared and informed some of the leaders of the city. They want to disarm the city. This means a big massacre will happen.'

The massacre has already begun. It is on- ly a matter of stopping it before it is finished.