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By late afternoon the government nervously imposed a curfew on all of Beirut. Children at the British School, used by the foreign community, were kept overnight. Authorities decided that they were safer sleeping in the basement than venturing into the streets to go home. Before the airport was closed, incoming tourists were conveyed into the city by armored police vehicles. Some motorists who ignored the curfew were hauled from their cars by troops and butted in the back with rifles.
With the streets eerily deserted except for government troops, Lebanese Premier Amin Hafez, accompanied by three Cabinet ministers and ten bodyguards, met with Fedayeen Leader Yasser Arafat, who had 50 armed guerrillas with him. During the night, on neutral ground at the Makassed Hospital, they worked out a cease-fire agreement under which the army hostages were released. Before dawn, however, heavy firing broke out anew at a Palestinian refugee camp at Dbayeh, across St. George's Bay. Soon sporadic shooting resumed in other areas and spread well beyond Beirut.
The most ominous flare-up occurred in southeast Lebanon, when some 1,000 fedayeen crossed over the border from Syria. The troops belong to a fighting unit known as the Yarmuk Brigade, which has the backing of the Syrian government. But after brief skirmishes with Lebanese soldiers, the Palestinian invaders withdrew. Their sortie seemed to have been a largely symbolic demonstration of support for their embattled brothers in Beirut.
The government lifted the curfew for two hours during the morning, and Beirut citizens made a quick run on foodstuffs. Lebanese television, which normally broadcasts only at night, stayed on all day. Instead of providing live coverage of the battles, though, it tried to divert viewers with cartoons and reruns of soccer matches and Hogan's Heroes. The radio carried army communiqués but dropped its usual programs of Arab music in favor of such soothing Western classics as Gounod's Ave Maria and Brahms' Lullaby.
Lull. The shooting did not noticeably subside until the government ordered rocket attacks by air on a Palestinian camp near the airport shortly before sunset on Thursday. Two Hunter jet fighter-bombers of the Lebanese air force made 14 low-level sweeps over the camp. It was the first time that Arab planes had bombed a Palestinian refugee camp. President Franjieh doubtless felt that the end justified his means. As smoke from the rockets rose over the camp, the ground fighting abruptly died down, not only in the camp area but, seemingly by coincidence, elsewhere as well. Soon after, another ceasefire agreement was reached.
Regardless of how long the ceasefire would last, major doubts already were raised about the future of the fedayeen. President Franjieh summed up their status in Lebanon bluntly. "I do not believe that any Arab government has given our brothers the Palestinians more than we have," he said. "We must therefore wonder: What do our Palestinian brothers living among us want of Lebanon? Do they want residence and hospitality? If this is what they want, they are welcome . . . Do they want coordination in the service of the common cause [the fight against Israel]? We also welcome this idea. But that there should be an occupation army in Lebanon is something that no Lebanese would accept."