With bombs and rockets, the Israelis tighten the noose on the P.L.O.
... Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down.
All across West Beirut, hour after hour, came the shattering detonations in crowded city streets, the crump, crump, crump of exploding bombs and shells, and then, after the brilliant flashes of red, the rising clouds of destruction.
The Israeli government insisted that it was not "the real thing"—the long-threatened Israeli invasion of the battered enclave of the capital by the sea. But to the 500,000 residents of West Beirut, as well as to the 6,000 Palestinian fighters hidden among them, it was as close to total onslaught as anyone could imagine. Twice last week the Israelis staged attacks on the besieged western areas of Beirut that in sheer destructive power, though not in casualties, wreaked devastation that stirred memories of the punishment inflicted on European cities during World War II and recalled the fate of Jericho, the enemy city that the ancient Israelites had laid waste. One observer, studying the wreckage, cited the sardonic words of a soldier quoted by the Roman historian Tacitus: "They made a desert and called it peace."
Lebanese authorities announced that the Israeli attacks on West Beirut, where only one in about 80 people is a Palestinian guerrilla, had killed 400 to 500 civilians and wounded 1,000 more, the heaviest casualty toll since the invasion began on June 6. After a brief ceasefire, some 10,000 Lebanese streamed out of the target area, wending their way through streets filled with debris and smoldering ruins, and found refuge in East Beirut or outside the city. The Israeli attacks, which aroused wide opposition around the world, came just as U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib reportedly was on the verge of working out an agreement for the Palestine Liberation Organization to evacuate Lebanon. The assaults also angered Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and thus jeopardized any resumption of the Camp David talks with Israel in search of a long-term settlement of the Palestinian issue.
In a sense, the clash between the Israelis and the P.L.O. seemed inevitable, given the implacable hatred and deep suspicion between the two old enemies and the nature of the stalemate in West Beirut. The Israelis, who had hoped for a quick victory over the redoubts of the P.L.O. in Lebanon, were impatient and angry. They did not believe that the P.L.O. leadership had yet accepted the fact it must leave Lebanon. They were furious at U.S. insistence that they must ease up on West Beirut at precisely the time when they thought sustained pressure on the P.L.O. was most needed. The P.L.O., more desperate than ever before, was negotiating the terms of its withdrawal from Lebanon. But the organization was also hoping that international condemnation of Israeli actions in Lebanon would give it a little breathing room.