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Yet the invading Israelis were greeted with enthusiasm in towns populated by Christian Lebanese, who hate the Palestinians and view them as occupying forces. At the same time, Israeli intelligence made contact with Christian Lebanese leaders in the north and asked them not to seize the occasion of the fighting in the south to launch new attacks against the Syrian army and Palestinian fighters in Beirut and the north; if they did, it might force Syria to respond to the Israeli invasion. The Syrians were disinclined to do so, since their forces are no match for the Israelis', but at week's end Syria sternly demanded that Israel withdraw from Lebanon. All week long, Israeli missile boats delivered military supplies to Christian forces in northern Lebanon; they returned with Christian soldiers for military training in Israel before joining Christian units in southern Lebanon.
Strangely, the return to militancy created an atmosphere that both the Israelis and the Arabs seemed to find easier to live with than the ambiguity of the period following Sadat's initiative. The Palestinians were returning to their traditional role with undisguised relish. Said a top P.L.O. commander in Lebanon: "There are no rules any more. The only answer left is in our gun barrels."
To Westerners, the Palestinian stance may seem hopelessly wrongheaded and self-destructive. After all, a return to terrorism by the P.L.O. tends to undermine Sadat, even though he has maintained steadfastly that he would make no deal with the Israelis without a provision for some sort of Palestinian homeland on the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians simply do not believe him, apparently, and their present view is born of a rising desperation. "They are running out of space," reports Correspondent Brelis. "Having been expelled from Jordan by King Hussein in the early 1970s, they find themselves no longer welcome in Lebanon. Having been battered by the Lebanese Christians and even their Syrian sponsors in the Lebanese civil war, they now find themselves being pummeled by the Israelis, while Syria's 30,000 troops in the country just lean on their weapons. They face a grim period simply remaining intact in Lebanon. If terror helps them to keep their cause alive, then terror is thought to be justified."
As the Palestinians perceive the situation, by charging into Lebanon the Israelis have lost whatever chance they had of gaining Arab recognition beyond what they have already received from Cairo. If Israeli retaliation against Palestinian terrorism grows more ruthless, the Palestinians argue, Jerusalem will gradually lose its remaining Western support.
A P.L.O. official in Beirut suggests sardonically that the next step will be Israeli settlements in south Lebanon. "Or it may be an archaeological dig," he adds slyly, referring to the illegal Jewish settlement at Shiloh in the West Bank that the Begin government persists in pretending is there for archaeological pursuits.
"But what matters," he continues, "is that such steps as these show the world that Begin remains an expansionist." Some of the same grumbling can be heard in Cairo, where a ranking Egyptian official observes: