No one leaves Lebanon
Charles Glass
Beirut 'No government is unwilling to make allies. But when these allies send large armies, over which it has no control, to in- vade its territory, expecting to be fed and housed and provided with every amenity, then it questions whether the alliance is worthwhile.' Stephen Runciman, A History of the Crusades, volume one, (Penguin Edition, 1980), page 116.
T ebanon's Christians are learning for the J../ third time since 1969 something that the Byzantine Emperor Alexius 1 could have told them in 1096: alliances with large foreign armies have their drawbacks. Alex- ius watched Crusader armies arrive from the Christian, if still barbaric, West to save the East from Islam. First came Peter the Hermit and his 20,000 ragged followers who reached the town of Semlin on 20 June
1096. After a minor dispute with local in- habitants, Peter attacked the town and kill- ed its 4,000 Hungarian citizens. Then he crossed the River Save to pillage and burn Belgrade. The Crusaders had many eastern co-religionists to kill before they reached the infidel, who was still many miles away in the Holy Land. Within eight years, the Crusaders would sack Constantinople itself, toppling the throne of their Byzan- tine ally, desecrating the church of St Sophia and bringing to an end nine cen- turies of civilised Christian rule in the East.
Lebanon is occupied, but its President Amin Gemayel promised his countrymen at a parade this week commemorating the 1945 hand-over of the French garrison to the Lebanese state that he would liberate the entire country from Israel, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Presi- dent Gemayel did not mention how each in- vader arrived. The PLO came first. In 1969, President Charles Helou, a Maronite like every president since the French mandate came to an end, signed an agreement in Cairo which virtually ceded south Lebanon to armed Palestinians. To this day, no one knows why he did it. Some people in Syria and Egypt were urging him to, but the pressure was not great. The only assump- tion is that he was trying to ingratiate Lebanon with the Arab states, who had never given the Palestinians anything other than false hope and empty rhetoric.
Next came the Syrians — 'Les amis qui vous veulent bien', as Pierre Vallaud called them in his Le Lilian au Bout du Push' — who arrived in 1976 at the request of the then president, Suleiman Franjieh, and with the connivance of the Phalange Party, whose side Syria had belatedly taken in the civil war. The Syrians came as peace- keepers, bearing the imprimatur of Henry Kissinger, to deliver the Christians from the PLO, which they never really did.
Finally, last summer, Israel invaded. This was to be, again with the blessings of an American secretary of state, the deus ex rnachina to end Christian travails for ever. Bechir Gemayel and his Lebanese forces, the combined Christian army he created out of the Phalange and its allied militias, welcomed the Israelis as saviours come to expel Syria and the PLO from Lebanon. This they neglected to do in the northern half of the country, where the Syrians sit in occupation and the PLO factions shoot at each other. Everyone comes to Lebanon; no one leaves.
Now the Christians, and especially Presi- dent Gemayel, are relying on the United States to end the occupation of Lebanon by Israel and also by the PLO and Syria. It has taken the Christians only a year to turn on their Israeli benefactors, about the same length of time it took them to reject the PLO and the Syrians. The issue that has revealed, rather than caused, the divergence of Israeli and Christian interests is Israel's order to the Lebanese forces to evacuate one of their seven military bases in the south. The base, or encampment, or posi- tion, or whatever military term describes it, is really a rambling stone villa near the village of Kfar Falouse in the countryside, surrounded by vines and pine trees. Its value to armed people seems to be that it sits ona hilltop and overlooks most of the Christian villages in the area east of Sidon. If it were not a militia barracks in occupied territory, it would be a nice place for a pic- nic. In fact, hundreds of Lebanese Chris- tians went up there for a picnic the day the Israelis announced they wanted the Lebanese forces to leave. They sang and danced, enjoyed their sandwiches, and when the five o'clock deadline for evacua- tion came and went without an Israeli force appearing, they went home. They carried their three flags — of Lebanon, of the Phalange Party, and of the Lebanese forces — along with photographs of the martyred Bechir Gemayel as they went.
The Israeli army waited for four days after the deadline to strike. They sent a tank and a few soldiers into the grounds of the villa and told the Lebanese forces to leave. The civilians rallied to the militia, saying they would lie under the Israeli tanks rather than let their armed protectors leave. The Israelis had a dilemma, not their first in 35 years of statehood, on their hands: they could simply back down, which would mean not only losing face, but permitting a militia over which they have little or no con- trol to operate behind their lines; or they could force the Lebanese troops out, possibly costing them the good will of the south's 200,000 Christians. This good will should be important to the Israelis in an area where most of the people, Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims, hate them and where they are ambushed or bombed every other day. They don't need to add all those Christians to their list of enemies.
Some miles away in Jezzine, I asked an Israeli officer why his army was willing to risk alienating the affection of its only friends in Lebanon. 'We don't have any friends in Lebanon,' he said. 'They're all the same, the Lebanese.' Perhaps he is right. Perhaps none of them enjoys foreign oc- cupation, whether by ostensible friends or foes. The Muslims of Tripoli in the north began telling the Syrians there the same thing years ago. The Israelis continue to support Major Saad Haddad and a plethora of small village militias, preferring dependents in the south to allies.
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