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Confident Christians. Behind the lines in "Christian Lebanon," TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn reported last week following a visit there, life is peaceful and even pleasant. The Christians' Phalangist Party has become the ad hoc government and is running the zone as well as any part of Lebanon has ever been governed. In Maronite towns, there is no garbage littering the streets. Gas costs less than one-fifth the price charged in West Beirut; bread prices are controlled and pegged to prewar levels. The Phalangists have established their own police force, courts and jails, and they operate intercity buses, supermarkets, medical centers and a telephone service. The distribution of gasoline, imported from Rumania, is so efficient that traffic jams clog the little towns along the coast.
The Christians are so confident of their strength that they have begun to talk—once again—of a possible reconciliation with the Moslems. But that will take time; the war has been vicious and memories are stark. At one point on his tour of Christian Lebanon, Wynn was escorted through the ruined Jisr Basha refugee camp. He reported: "I was led behind the camp church by a Christian officer and to a once sealed concrete room that had been smashed open by a shell during the fighting for the camp. 'This is what the Palestinians did to our people,' he said, pointing to a pile of human skulls, bones and rotting clothing heaped inside. 'They kidnaped our people and dumped them into this dark chamber already crowded with corpses and left them there to die.' "