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Major Haddad insisted that the area under his control was "clean from terrorists." How long it will stay that way remains to be seen. Both the Palestinians and the Syrians, who occupy much of northern Lebanon, opposed the withdrawal arrangement because it entrenched the Christians in a buffer zone along the Israeli border that had previously been a Palestinian stronghold. The Syrians in time are expected to help the Palestinians in their struggle with the Christians. "We will not accept a reactionary fascist presence in the south," said a high-ranking officer of the Palestine Liberation Organization last week. "As [P.L.O. Leader Yasser] Arafat says, they are there illegally, and we will do everything in our power to make their lives very uncomfortable." The unlucky ones, once again, are sure to be the Lebanese villagers. Said a 78-year-old farmer near Naqura, where the Christians took over an Israeli post: "I only wish they would all get the hell out of here and leave this land to the people of Lebanon. We have become prisoners of a bunch of foreigners."
Even as the Israelis left southern Lebanon, the Syrian army was moving to stop an ominous outbreak of bloodletting among Christian factions in northern Lebanon. Bitter rivalry between the three chieftains, former President Suleiman Franjieh, Pierre Gemayel and Camille Chamoun, has been festering for months. Franjieh and his followers have close ties with Syrian President Hafez Assad, while Gemayel's Phalangists and Chamoun's Freedom Party have increasingly become pro-Israeli and anti-Syrian.
On the morning of the withdrawal, some 200 armed Phalangists descended on the resort village of Ehden, 60 miles north of Beirut, where Tony Franjieh, 36, the eldest son of Suleiman Franjieh and commander of his father's private army, was vacationing. The Phalangists opened fire on Franjieh's house with rockets and guns, killing him, his wife and daughter, and 35 other people. The speculation was that Gemayel, whose 15,000-man private army is the strongest among the three factions, was out to destroy both the Franjieh and Chamoun clans in the hope of taking over as undisputed leader of the Christian side.
Late last week the Christian divisions were also showing up among the Lebanese force in the south, where some units rebelled against Major Haddad's command. In the wake of the massacre, 10,000 Syrian troops moved into position in the north. In running fire fights with the Phalangists, they killed an undisclosed number of Christians and took some prisoners as well. In Damascus, the Syrian press implied that Jerusalem had plotted Franjieh's murder to cover up its handing over of the strongholds in southern Lebanon to Christian forces.