Books

Who was to blame?

Charles Glass

The War for Lebanon 1970-1983 Itamar Rabinovich (Cornell University Press £19.95) Israel's Lebanon War Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari (Allen & Unwin £12.95) When David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan proposed in 1955 to involve Israel in Lebanon, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharrett managed to obstruct the plans of his more bellicose colleagues. He noted in his diary that determining the future of Lebanon would be 'a vain fantasy. We'll get bogged down in a mad adventure that will only bring us disgrace.' Both these books by Israeli writers describe in detail how the disgrace from which one Cabinet Minister saved Israel in 1955 descended with full force through the actions of another Cabinet Minister, Ariel Sharon, in 1982.

Both books tell a tragic tale of increasing Israeli intervention in Lebanon with dis- astrous consequences for both countries. Itamar Rabinovich, a scholar who directs the Shiloah Institute at Tel Aviv Universi- ty, takes the longer view, tracing Leba- non's disintegration from 1970, when Palestinian commandos arrived from Jor- dan. Unlike many Israeli writers, he does not lay the blame for the disintegration of Lebanon exclusively at the door of the PLO. He attributes it instead to Lebanon's internal weaknesses and its neighbours' rivalries. Rabinovich's first book, Syria under the Ba'th 1963-1966, was a classic work, covering ground which few scholars and fewer journalists (other than, notably, Patrick Seale) dared to tread. But in Lebanon, Rabinovich is on terra only too well cognita to readers already familiar with the dozens of books by other academics, journalists and politicians.

David Gilmour's Lebanon: the Fractured Country gives a much better historical perspective than does The War for Leba- non, and has the added advantages of being more sensitive to the Lebanese and better written. Jonathan Randall's The Tragedy of Lebanon gives far more insight into the conflicts within the Christian community which became Israel's nominal ally. Had Rabinovich read Randall, he might have avoided such errors as saying that Bashir Gemayel had become 'virtual leader of the (Phalange) Party', when he had in fact forged his own military orga- nisation, the Lebanese Forces, to challenge the Party. Rabinovich gives special weight to the events of the 1982 invasion because .of 'their significance, their intrinsic interest and the absence as yet of authoritative works'. But there is an authoritative work, from the Israeli side, and it is undoubtedly Israel's Lebanon War.

Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, two prom- inent Israeli journalists, write only about the period between 12 March 1976, when the Phalange Party first approached Israel for help, to February 1984, when the multinational peacekeeping force with- drew from a Beirut in chaos. The story is particularly compelling during the ten months from Ariel Sharon's appointment as Minister of Defence to the June 1982 invasion of Lebanon, during which Sharon steered his country steadily down a course of war. Sharon is portrayed as the villain of the book, his evil genius destroying lives in Lebanon and shaking the foundations of Israeli democracy. According to the authors, the other four members of the 'ideologically pitched quintet' were Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzak Shamir, Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan and, later, Ambassador to the United States Moshe Arens. If these men were ever to be put on trial, Israel's Lebanon War would serve as the brief for the prosecution.

Schiff and Ya'ari are as good on the battlefield as they are in the Cabinet room, both places where, they claim, Sharon tried to deceive and bully his colleagues. One of the best descriptions is of the battle for Château Beaufort in June 1982, a pointless struggle with a high loss of life on both sides. By the time the Golani Brigade assaulted the castle, it was far in the rear of the invading Israeli's army's front lines and posed no threat to its lines of com- munication. The Israelis were bent on taking the PLO position because it had been a thorn in their side for years. The authors write that 'after killing all the PLO defenders but one, two Israeli fighters — Motti Goldman, a self-proclaimed hawk, and Guni Harnik, a man who called for compromise with the Palestinians -- stood side by side in a trench at a ruined crusader castle in Lebanon opposite a lone, trapped Palestinian, sharing a single choice: kill or be killed.'

This absurd choice cost Harnik his life. The hawk Goldman ended the 'conquest of Beaufort' by throwing an explosive at the Palestinian, who was not offered a chance to surrender. As a postscript to the battle, which might serve as an epitaph to the war, the authors tell how Begin and Sharon arrived next day to celebrate the 'victory'. Of Begin, they say, 'He had partaken of the glory of war; other men had paid the price.'

Like Rabinovich, Schiff and Ya'ari were, because of their nationality, denied access to Palestinian and Syrian sources, and therefore of two points of view which should have rounded their picture of the invasion. Unlike Rabinovich, who scrupu- lously identifies his sources, Schiff and Ya'ari leave the reader wondering what information is hearsay and what is documented. Some of the assertions beg for sources, if their validity is to be judged: Was there really a detailed accord be- tween the local United Nations comman- ders and the PLO on Palestinian activity in the area of south Lebanon where PLO guerrillas were prohibited?

What was the source for statements quoted in secret meetings of the Palesti- nian leadership?

What was the source for the story that Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Yasser Afa- fat's military commander, stood without emotion in his apartment in Dasmascus as Syrian security men pushed his two-year- old son from the balcony to his death? (Abu Jihad was at that time, 1966, in a Syrian prison when his son, Nidal, fell from the balcony. The Syrians let him out to attend his son's funeral).

Some of the accounts in the book sound like, but may not necessarily be, special pleading from the sources themselves. One Israeli officer, for example, is quoted as disagreeing with the prevailing view that the Syrian army in Beirut would not fight and 'reminded his colleagues that the Syrians had been stationed in Beirut for years . . . the 85th Brigade was an infantry regiment, and the natural tendency of the infantry is to dig in, not to run'. Three months later, the authors tell us, this 'proved to be exactly accurate'. (I suspect could win a bottle of champagne by betting that the source for that story was not one of the officers who got it wrong.) The authors leave the nagging impress- ion that Major General Yehoshua Saguy, Chief of Army Intelligence, must have been a source. On at least half a dozen occasions mentioned in the book, his Cassandra-like predictions are ignored: Saguy told the General Staff that a 'clash with the Syrians was unavoidable', despite Sharon's assurances that Syria would not fight; that Lebanon's Christians 'won't intervene, won't do a thing' to help Israel; that 'whoever reaches Beirut, like it or not, will be touching upon the basic problem of 1948'; and that 'the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) could expect a military victory over the terrorists, (but) that did not mean an end to the PLO'. Despite making Saguy's case, the authors do not let him off the moral hook. They write that in Cabinet sessions he 'never allowed himself to speak as pointedly or forcefully as he did before the General Staff . . . His tragic flaw . . . turned Saguy into an accomplice in Sharon's effort to divide and rule.'

The authors pay tribute to the 'inordin- ate courage' of the Palestinian defenders in Lebanon, although as Israelis they describe them freely as terrorists without any qual- ification or explanation. Their concern is always for Israel first, and the Lebanese and Palestinian victims of the invasion second. When they write about the siege of Beirut, they tell about its horror: the 36 air bombardments on 9 August, 16 on the 10th and 11th, and finally 72 unrelieved sorties on 12 August — 'Black Thursday', when at least 300 people, overwhelmingly civilians, died. But the focus of that horror is on the souls of the invaders and the conclusion they draw is aimed at the hubris of the `The 60,000 shells and countless bombs that rained down on Beirut had not buried the PLO.' (Newsweek correspon- dent Tony Clifton, who covered the siege from the inside, gives a more compassion- ate picture of what it was like for the Lebanese and Palestinians in his book God Cried.) Israel's Lebanon War does not neglect the American role in the invasion, from Covert support at the beginning, to mediator seeking a way out when Sharon's Plan began to go wrong. The authors quote a letter from Sharon to his patron Alexan- der Haig, whose forced resignation in the third week of the invasion made him the first of many political casualties of the war. Sharon wrote, 'I wish to express to you my deep appreciation for your understanding and your determined stand in the struggle against international terrorism . . . You are entitled, Mr Secretary, to be proud of Your achievements.' Whatever American pride remained be- fore the PLO withdrawal from Beirut disappeared in the massacres that followed at Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee C,,,a,n1Ps. According to Schiff and Ya'ari, Sharon was particularly insistent that the Multinational Force (the American-French- Italian force which had overseen the PLO departure) should not remain in Beirut more than 30 days. Behind this insistence was the unvoiced plan that the Phalange and Lebanese Army could then go in and see to the removal of all the armed Palestinians in west Beirut.' Sharon, they say, appeared to be com- mitted to this plan, which explicitly violated Israel's agreement with the United States not to enter west Beirut, even before the assassination of President-elect Rashir Gemayel on 14 September. The authors state that the 'liquidation campaign' which culminated in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, had already begun in south Lebanon under Lebanese Forces' officer, Elie Hobeika. (The authors use the term 'Lebanese Forces' and 'Phalange' interchangeably, though the first is a

Military organisation and the second a separate political party). The authors suggest that Sharon clearly supported the Lebanese Forces' entry into the camps, but they do not say that he spoke to Bashir's father and brother about 'revenge', the subject of Sharon's libel action against Tune magazine. But the evidence they present, if the unnamed sources can be

relied upon, is sufficient to condemn Sharon. They claim that Eitan warned Sharon: 'They [the Lebanese Forces] are

thirsting for revenge, and there could be torrents of blood.' Shortly after the warning, the Lebanese Forces began their slaughter under the light of Israeli flares.

As the murdering drew to a close, an Israeli intelligence officer told his men that there were, despite Sharon's insistence, 'no terrorists in the camp; Sabra is empty.' All the dead were civilians or a few brave youngsters who tried to defend their fami- lies. There are more thorough accounts of the massacre, including Amnon Kape- liouk's Sabra et Chatila: Enquete sur un Massacre; and there are better criticisms of the Kahan Commission Report on the massacre, including the one in Noam Chomsky's Fateful Triangle: The US, Israel and the Palestinians. But Schiff and Ya'ari describe well the scenes in the Israeli command post, the confusion among Israeli soldiers and the shock in Israel when the story was reported. Theirs is first-class journalism, although they neg- lect to mention how popular the invasion was in Israel before the massacres at Sabra and Shatila.

On the evidence presented by Schiff and Ya'ari, it is hard to escape their verdict: 'Very few members of Israel's political and military establishment are entitled to con- sider themselves exempt of responsibility for this war that all have come to rue.' There is one point in Sharon's favour which the authors do not, however, dis- cuss. Israel in 1982 faced a choice: to accomodate the PLO and begin negotia- tions which would lead to a Palestinian state (albeit one with no more independ- ence than a South African Bantustan) or destroy the PLO. No one in Israel's politic- al establishment wanted to choose the former option. So, they went along with the war. And the war, as the authors know, is not over yet. The only difference is that the Israeli army has Lebanese, as well as Palestinian, enemies to fight.