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Just how edgy the region had become was dramatized when Damascus announced that antiaircraft guns had fired at a Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter jet on a reconnaissance mission over Syrian-held positions in eastern Lebanon. The plane, one of four on patrol at the time, was not hit and flew safely back to the Eisenhower. Although U.S. officials down-played the incident, it was reportedly the first time the Syrians had fired on U.S. warplanes.
Even the Soviet Union, which has bankrolled Syria's arsenal, expressed alarm over the spreading violence. At a banquet honoring Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam in Moscow late last week, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko said that "we consider as extremely urgent the need to overcome strife and restore unity in the ranks of the Palestinian movement." The message to Assad: ease up on Arafat.
The P.L.O. chairman's decline began in the summer of 1982, when the Israeli army routed his troops in southern Lebanon and drove Arafat and his fighters out of Beirut. His dalliance with King Hussein of Jordan last April over President Reagan's September 1982 peace initiative, which called for the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to be linked to Jordan, enraged Assad and convinced him that Arafat must be reined in. The chance came in May, when Arafat promoted several controversial commanders within Al-Fatah, the guerrilla group that he founded and that still accounts for about 80% of the P.L.O.'s strength. Fanned by Syria, the rebellion in Arafat's ranks spread during the summer. In June, the Syrian President expelled Arafat from Damascus; gradually, troops loyal to the P.L.O. chief were pushed out of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and into Tripoli. In September, Arafat slipped into the city to prepare for a rumored Syrian offensive.
On Nov. 3, the rumors turned into fact. At 5:30 a.m., as the city slept, Syrian artillery shells slammed into the refugee camps of Baddawi and Nahr al Barid on the outskirts of Tripoli. Three columns of attackers advanced on Arafat's forces, trapping the chairman and his men between the hills and the sea. The rebels included not only Fatah dissidents but guerrillas from Syrian-and Libyan-sponsored factions within the P.L.O. Though Damascus denied direct involvement, Syrian guns and tanks supplied the firepower while Syrian Defense Minister Major General Mustafa Tlas coordinated strategy with Abu Mousa.
Two days after the beginning of the offensive, Nahr al Barid fell and the noose tightened. Last Monday, Arafat and his top advisers moved into Tripoli, igniting fears among the populace of 500,000 that the city would soon be swallowed up by the fighting. The Arafat loyalists set up artillery and rocket launchers in a grove of orange trees near the waterfront quarter and fired at the troops advancing on Baddawi, a dreary, ramshackle warren of cinder-block houses that normally is home to 10,000 people.
Life in the city ground to a virtual halt. In between bouts of shelling, people rushed out to buy food and find water. Streets were deserted save for motorists looking for an open station and their share of increasingly scarce gasoline. The highway to the south, though guarded by Syrian troops, remained open, allowing thousands of people to stream out of the city and away from what they feared would be a final siege.