U.S. warships arrive, Israel and Syria mobilize, and Arafat is cornered
On one afternoon the barrage grew so ferocious that rockets hailed down at the rate of 60 a minute. For several terrible hours, every second brought a flash of light from Syrian positions south and east of Tripoli, then a dull thump and a puff of smoke as the shells hit targets in the Baddawi refugee camp and the lower slopes of Turbul mountain north of the Lebanese city. Every so often a round strayed and hit Tripoli itself, crashing into a building or cratering a street.
Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, seemed to be everywhere, showing up at the city's Islamic Hospital to console victims, inspecting loyalist redoubts, embracing fellow refugees as if the end had come. Sometimes it almost did: 90 seconds after an Arafat visit in the district of Al Zahriyeh, a shell whooshed in and destroyed the spot on which he had been standing. Nonetheless, the grizzled warrior vowed to keep fighting. "I cannot leave while my volunteers are facing death daily," Arafat said. "I am not a President. I am a freedom fighter."
For more than a week, the durable chieftain and some 4,000 diehard supporters fought off a savage offensive by an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Syrian-backed guerrillas in and around the northern port city of Tripoli. According to Abu Mousa, leader of the rebel faction that mounted the assault, it was meant only to persuade Arafat to enter a "dialogue of reform" with P.L.O. dissidents who oppose his policies. The battle, in reality, was nothing less than a crude move by Syria to squelch Arafat once and for all and seize control of the P.L.O. Faced with the gloomy choice of fleeing Lebanon or surrendering, Arafat elected to stay and wage battle. Yet no matter how long he holds out, the siege last week seemed to presage his eclipse as a prime player in Middle Eastern politics. His predicament leaves the future of the P.L.O. cloudy and serves as a sad reminder that despite Arafat's years in power, the Palestinian people are no closer to realizing their dream of a homeland than they ever were.
The showdown in Tripoli was played out against a backdrop of rising tensions. Two U.S. aircraft carriers, the Independence and the Kennedy, joined the Eisenhower off the coast of Lebanon last week. Israel, meanwhile, announced a mobilization drill of its reservists; the last time a public call to duty occurred was in 1978. Both countries described their actions as routine, but the activity fed speculation about possible retaliation for the suicidal attacks against the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut* and an Israeli military base in Tyre. In response, Syrian President Hafez Assad placed his country's armed forces on alert too, including the calling up of an estimated 100,000 reservists. Washington and Jerusalem both publicly assured Assad that they had no intention of attacking Syria, but a suspicious Assad surely noted that the U.S. and Israel had agreed to forge closer strategic ties and that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir would be visiting Washington shortly after Thanksgiving to discuss the details.