Lebanon
Cross against crescent
A correspondent
In the past two weeks the urban civil war in the Lebanon has claimed 3,000 dead. The fighting between Christian and Moslem private armies has also done enormous physical .damage to the capital, wrecked the country's delicate constitutional balance, and gravely damaged Lebanon's unique positions as the hub of Arab banking, trade, and tourism.
For the past thirty years Lebanon has cheerfully sat on a whole series of Middle Eastern fences. While other Arab States were convulsed by internal coups or wars with Israel, the collective genius of the Lebanese people for shrewd business deals, lavish hospitality, and readiness to sup with the devil with spoons of varying length has turned their small country into a model of laissez-faire Victorian free enterprise. It became a democracy (the only one in the Arab world), a lure for tourists, a thriving entrepot for the vast Arab hinterland, and an international financial centre with a vital role to play in the recycling of Arab oil wealth. Lebanon was all things to all men: a refuge for a small army of Arab political exiles, an Arab Fleet Street whose presses were for hire to the highest bidder, a haven, however reluctant, for Palestinian refugees and commandos, and — until five years ago — a peaceful neighbour of Israel. But Humpty Dumpty's ego trip is over and he has fallen off the fence with a resounding crash. He can never be put together in his old form.
His fall was prompted by the pill and the Palestinians. The 1943 National Pact which created the framework of the modern Lebanon split power between Christians and Moslems in the ratio of five to four. Since then the Moslem birthrate has outstripped that of the Christians and the Moslems outnumber the Christians by about three to two. But they have been denied their due share of political power and of the nation's wealth.
A quarter of a million Palestinians have lived in Lebanon since the 1948-48 Arab-Israeli war, the middle-class integrating successfully and prospering but many of the poorer ones festering in camps, resentful and resented. Since 1970, when King Hussein crushed fedayeen power in Jordan, the commandos have sought in Lebanon both a political base and a launching pad for raids into Northern Israel. The Christians have been equally determined to deny them the right to operate in Lebanon outside the authority of the State.
The Christian Establishment could probably have coped successfully with either problem in isolation. But the volatile mixture of Moslem "have-nots" and Palestine commandos seeking a secure power base has blown up in their faces. In the past year the balance has titled dramatically against the Christians. The Moslems hold South Lebanon — Sidon is effectively a Palestinian-administered city — most of the fertile Bekaa valley, with control of the supply route from Damascus, and much of the North. Three-quarters of the port city of Tripoli is in Moslem hands, although there has been vicious fighting in this area with Christian gunmen from the nearby hill town of Zghorta. The worst atrocities of the civil war have taken place in the Tripoli area; in one incident alone the Christians murdered more than one hundred Moslems.
The Christians still dominate "The Mountain" — the Lebanon range between Zghorta and a point south of Beirut where they have a string of easily fortified towns and villages. They hold some key sectors of Beirut and, although they lost the prosperous Kantari area to the Moslems in the last two weeks' fighting, the Phalangist militia holding the luxury hotel area on the seafront has denied the Moslems the breakthrough to the sea which would have cut the Christian area of the capital in two. Some Christians see a solution to the-crisis in partition, although this has not been openlY advocated by the leaders of their community. With some reshuffling of population Beirut could be shared and the Christians would occupy the Mountain and the coastal strip it dominates. The human problems involved in such a restructuring of the country would be enormous. But, given Moslem goodwill, such a rump Christian State might be viable, playing the role of a Hong Kong to the China of the Moslem hinterland.
At the other extreme the Moslems could seek a final solution at gunpoint by trying to smash the resistance of the Christian militia in all-out war. The scenario for such a drama would be appalling. The Christians, with the sea at their backs and no line of retreat, would fight ferociously for survival. The Armenian, Greek Orthodox, and other Christian communities which have so far given largely tacit support to the mainly Maronite militia forces of Pierre Gemayel and Camille Chamoun would be forced to join their co-religionists in an uglY and anachronistic war of Cross against Crescent.
Foreign intervention would become a real possibility, and one full of danger for the whole Middle East. Israel, fearing the danger to its northern flank from Moslem victory, might be tempted to move up to the Litani River to create a buffer zone. Syria would be under pressure to make a pre-emptive move into the same area as well as to back the Moslems openly against the Christians. The United States, which landed Marines in Lebanon in the 1958 civil war and has already given a "hands off" warning to the country's neighbours in the current crisis, would have to weigh the ygly alternatives Of letting the Christians be oxrerrun or intervening to hold the ring. Such intervention would demolish overnight the fragile edifice of Middle East peace which Dr Kissinger has been trying to create. Most probably, in a country that was created by and has thrived on compromise, the warring parties will pursue a middle course. By last weekend the two sides had fought themselves to a standstill in Beirut and were taking a breather to rest their men, resupply with munitions, and stock up with money and food. Everyone expects another round soon but the peacemakers are pinning their hopes on the winter rains which come at the end of this month. An uneasy winter truce could give time for some form of mediation, aimed at achieving a compromise whereby the Christians would make enough concessions to satisfy the Moslems without at the same time irreparably weakening their own position. Unfortunately no one has yet been able to devise a formula for a compromise that would seem remotely acceptable to either side. The last think anyone can predict with confidence in the battle of Beirut is a victory for commonsense.
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