A ceasefire, but both sides are prepared for further war
A shaky ceasefire, as cease-fires always seem to be, took hold in Lebanon last week, but East Beirut was a smouldering ruin. In that battered section of the city, once home to 600,000 Maronite Christians, rescue workers picked through the rubble in search of the dead and dying. Glassy-eyed survivors crept cautiously out of basement shelters, scurrying back to safety when Syrian snipers cut loose with automatic weapons. A number of would-be refugees, seeking to join the exodus that has emptied East Beirut of more than two-thirds of its residents, were mowed down by Syrian machine guns as they tried to cross the bridges leading to Christian strongholds outside the city. Five other people were wounded as they attempted to cross the "green line" separating Muslim and Christian sections of Beirut. In effect, East Beirut was under siege: the 30,000-man Syrian peace-keeping force kept 3,500 Christian militiamen and 150,000 civilians bottled up within easy range of the heavy artillery that had pounded the city in the worst week of fighting since the end of the civil war in 1976.
Even as intermittent bursts of cannon fire marred the uneasy calm, both the Christians and their enemies prepared for a new outbreak of fighting. From Damascus, convoys of Syrian trucks transported 8,600 heavily armed Palestine Liberation Army commandos to fortified positions in Beirut. The P.L. A. commandos will be the backbone of a new Syrian-controlled antimilitia alliance comprising leftist Lebanese Muslims, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization and an army commanded by pro-Syrian Christian for mer President Suleiman Franjieh. The Arab League mandate under which the Syrian peace-keeping force has occupied Lebanon since 1976 will be reviewed on Oct. 28. If the league orders Damascus to withdraw its troops, the new force could still press the offensive against the Christian militias with Syrian arms and ammunition.
Israel, too, was building up its Christian allies: the "Tigers" commanded by former President Camille Chamoun and the Phalangist fighters under Pierre Gemayel. By night, Israeli ships brought in arms, medical supplies and food to Jounieh, twelve miles north of Beirut. About 150 Israeli advisers — distinguishable from their Christian clients because they do not wear the pearl-handled revolvers and outsize crosses favored by the swaggering militiamen — were providing counsel and logistical support. Christian officers of the Lebanese armed forces turned over to the militiamen an arsenal of U.S. weapons that had been destined for the country's moribund, ineffective army. Contemplating the grim fact that more than two dozen armed factions are now operating in Lebanon, Militia Leader Chamoun asked pointedly: "What is Lebanon — a sovereign state or a whorehouse?"