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In his campaign for secularization, Jumblatt sees the Maronite Christians as the principal enemies. He complains that "they want to dominate the country. Instead of displaying the great values of Christianity—love, charity, justice—they act like the petty old Christian sects of the Byzantine era, who quarreled about the sex of angels or whether Christ was of one or two natures and executed those who lost the argument." At the same time, he points to his home region as an example of how the country's religions can live together. In the mountainous Chouf, where in more peaceful times he ruled from the picturesque town of Mukhtara, are Druze villages, Maronite villages and mixed Druze-Maronite villages, all of which still enjoy a relatively tranquil life despite the civil war.
The National Movement that Jumblatt heads also cuts across sectarian lines. It includes his own Progressive Socialists, as well as Communists, several groups of Nasserites and followers of the new renegade "Lebanese Arab Army." It also has the backing of the leftist Syrian Popular Party, headed by Inam Raad, a Christian, and including a sizable number of other Christians.
Despite Jumblatt's acceptance of the ten-day "freeze," he clearly intends to carry on his struggle against the obsolete sectarian political system that led to the civil war. "A false compromise is a bad compromise," he told Correspondent Wynn. "Somebody must win, and somebody must lose. We must go ahead to a real evolution of the country."
A TRAGEDY IN GALILEE
It was the bloodiest week ever in relations between the Arabs and Jews of Israel. In twelve hours of confrontation, six Israeli Arabs were shot dead, scores suffered gunshot wounds and 288 were arrested. Stones hurled by enraged Arabs injured 38 policemen. The clash between Israeli fellow citizens in the Galilee area was uglier and more violent than the recent troubles on the Israeli-occupied West Bank (TIME, March 29); in fact, only two Arabs have been killed and a few wounded on the West Bank since February. At week's end, Israeli Arabs and Jews alike were desperately trying to assess how the violence would affect what had long been regarded by Jerusalem as the special relationship between the two communities (see following story).
Tension began mounting at the beginning of February, when the Israeli Cabinet announced plans to expropriate 1,500 acres of Arab-owned land and 1,000 acres of Jewish-owned land in northern Galilee for a new housing project. The government pledged that landowners would be compensated in cash or new land and that 1,200 apartments in the new settlement would be reserved for Arab families.
The Arabs strongly opposed the project. They doubted that they would ever move into new apartments, since Israel's history offers almost no examples of Arabs being welcomed into Jewish communities. Many Arabs suspected that the real motive of the multimillion-dollar project was to encourage Jewish settlement in Galilee. The area is now 48% Arab; since the Arabs have a birth rate twice that of Israeli Jews, they will soon become a majority. That fact has disturbing political implications for the Jews of the region, who have long urged the government to encourage Jewish settlement.
In a show of opposition to the expropriation plan, Tawfiq Zayad, the