Middle East Aftershocks in Beirut

A new drama appeared to be building around an increasingly battered and bomb- shocked Lebanon late last week. It was a development that began not in the hills and valleys of southern Lebanon, where withdrawing Israeli forces faced violent resistance from Shi’ite Muslim militants, but off the Spanish island of Majorca in the western Mediterranean. There, on Thursday evening, two nuclear-powered American warships, the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and the guided-missile cruiser Mississippi, cut short a visit so abruptly that more than 100 crew members were left behind. For 24 hours, the U.S. would say only that the ships were “at sea in the western Mediterranean at this time.” By week’s end it seemed that the ships were in fact heading toward the coast of Lebanon, where they would “show the flag,” as a senior Administration official put it. If necessary, they would also be available to evacuate the estimated 1,400 Americans left in Lebanon.

Earlier in the week, 36 Americans working with the United Nations forces in southern Lebanon were pulled out. Threats against Americans had increased as the Shi’ite-dominated resistance movement became more active in the region. The warnings also coincided with a U.N. debate over a Lebanese-sponsored resolution condemning Israeli actions during the current withdrawal. Since the U.S. is virtually certain to veto the resolution, the Administration was clearly well-advised to take steps to minimize the risk of retaliation.

The American warships had been out of Majorca for less than a day when the apparent object of their mission, Beirut, became the scene of one of the worst acts of carnage since the truck-bomb explosions of Oct. 23, 1983, when 241 U.S. and 58 French servicemen of the multinational peacekeeping force perished. On Friday, not far from a crowded mosque in a densely populated Shi’ite Muslim suburb of the Lebanese capital, another car bomb took its toll, killing 75 people and injuring more than 250. The blast damaged an eight- story apartment building as well as the mosque, where worshipers were gathering for prayers.

The explosion occurred near the home of one of Lebanon’s Shi’ite religious leaders, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a pro-Iranian cleric with close links to the extremist Hizballah (Party of God) organization. The sheik was unhurt, but five of his bodyguards were killed. Hizballah, which is believed to have been responsible for the truck bombing of the U.S. Marine headquarters as well as attacks on two U.S. embassy buildings in Beirut, has recently been trying to capture the leadership of Lebanon’s Shi’ite community with a call for the establishment of an Islamic republic in the country. The group has many enemies, ranging from the Christian Phalangist party to the relatively secular, mainstream Shi’ite Amal movement. Syria, despite its close ties with Iran, is also less than happy over Hizballah’s recent attempts to stir up trouble in Lebanon. Thus, as in so much of the devastation that has racked Lebanon over the past decade, there was no shortage of suspects.

The blast climaxed a week of violence in areas of southern Lebanon from which the Israeli army is now withdrawing. The second phase of that pullback got under way last week, in line with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ determination (see interview) to bring home the last Israeli soldier from Lebanon by this summer. As Shi’ite resistance flared in the south, Israel adopted an iron-fist policy. Its troops clashed sporadically with Shi’ite guerrillas and at one point fought a two-hour pitched battle with Lebanese soldiers and more than 100 Amal militiamen. The Israelis also mounted search- and-destroy operations against Shi’ite villages east of the port of Tyre in an attempt to reduce the level of guerrilla activity.

Shortly after one such foray early last week, a bomb exploded above a Shi’ite meeting hall in the village of Marakah; a dozen Lebanese died and 20 were injured. Among the dead were two leading members of the resistance, including Mohammed Saad, 25, who had coordinated guerrilla activity against Israeli troops in the Tyre region. Saad was reputed to have been responsible for rigging a suicide car bomb that demolished an Israeli headquarters in Tyre in November 1983, killing 60 people, including 28 Israelis.

The Israelis blamed local factions for the Marakah blast; the Lebanese insisted that the Israelis were responsible. The government of President Amin Gemayel noted that Israeli troops had occupied the village only two days before the explosion and suggested that the bomb had been planted before they withdrew. Warned Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s minister for the south and the leader of Amal: “Very soon the resistance will bombard the Israeli villages of Galilee each time a Lebanese village is touched.” The Israelis plan to defend their northern settlements in the future with a mobile force based on their own side of the border.

If the Israeli withdrawal led inevitably to the deterioration of security in southern Lebanon, it may also have helped inspire the flurry of peacemaking efforts currently in progress in several Arab capitals. With the end of Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in sight, Arab leaders over the past month have offered initiatives aimed at reviving the long-dormant Middle East peace process. Jordan’s King Hussein and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, agreed last month to form a joint Jordanian-P.L.O. delegation for future talks on a settlement. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has a peace plan of his own and whose long-frozen relations with Israel have thawed somewhat, met with Hussein last week in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada. The two did not agree on all details, but their governments seemed closer to forming a common negotiating front than they had been for many years. Said Hussein: “I believe this is the last chance for peace.”

This week Mubarak is in Washington for meetings with President Reagan and other Administration leaders. High on Mubarak’s list of topics will be an appeal by Cairo for an increase of $870 million in U.S. aid to Egypt over the current level of $1.99 billion for fiscal 1985. The U.S. will try to hold the line on the aid allocation to Cairo because it is also trying to persuade Congress not to grant Israel $800 million in additional aid for 1985; the Administration is not convinced that Israel has done enough to shore up its troubled economy.

In addition, Mubarak will ask the U.S. to meet with a joint Jordanian- Palestin ian delegation as a step toward direct talks that would also involve Israel; if successful, the process could lead, according to Mubarak’s plan, to negotiations by all concerned parties under United Nations auspices. Since neither Israel nor the P.L.O. is prepared to negotiate directly with the other, the Mubarak proposal envisages the Palestinians in the delegation as independents acceptable to the P.L.O. but not necessarily affiliated with it. Such an arrangement, Mubarak hopes, would overcome the P.L.O.’s refusal to accept any Palestinian delegation in which it was not represented; so far, however, Arafat remains opposed to this aspect of the Egyptian plan. The Reagan Administration will presumably welcome the Mubarak initiative, though it remains skeptical about the Arabs’ ability to deliver on so sensitive a diplomatic effort.

If the Mubarak scheme turns out, against most expectations, to be successful, it could cause friction within Israel’s national unity government. Prime Minister Peres supports the Egyptian proposal as an honest undertaking, while Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the Likud bloc, has dismissed it as “a public relations ploy” and expressed fear that a resulting “wave of euphoria” could be dangerous to Israeli security. Countered Peres in the Knesset last week: “I don’t understand why, when the subject of peace is raised, some people shudder.”