(8 of 10)
All told, the withdrawal would affect not only the 6,000 P.L.O. fighters in West Beirut but most of the other 20,000 elsewhere in Lebanon. Jordan has reportedly agreed to take some 5,000 members of the P.L.O. who currently hold Jordanian passports. Egypt is said to be ready to take about 3,000, including the P.L.O. leadership, but is asking the U.S. to convene a conference on Palestinian rights as part of the deal. Cairo would presumably be the best headquarters for the P.L.O., since it has traditionally served as a base for Arab liberation movements. Besides, the Egyptian capital has more than 100 diplomatic missions with which the P.L.O. could keep in contact. Other P.L.O. guerrilla contingents may be sent to Syria, Iraq and Sudan, and a small group is likely to be left behind in Lebanon.
By week's end there were reports from both Beirut and Cairo that an agreement was in sight, and that the evacuation of the P.L.O. from Lebanon might begin within a few days. Possibly so, but a great deal still depended on how the Israeli government viewed the latest proposals, and how determined the U.S. was to press them on the Israelis.
All week long, world opinion had called upon the Israelis to ease up on West Beirut, with little practical effect. "We see the same pictures on television that you are seeing," a British government official told an American in London, "and we feel the same as you. Something must be done to stop it." In Rome, the Italian government complained of the "serious violations of the ceasefire" committed by the Israelis and firmly condemned "the repeated recourse to force." In Paris, a Quai d'Orsay spokesman suggested that France might support economic and diplomatic sanctions against Israel for refusing to comply with the U.N. resolutions calling for a stop to the fighting.
In Bonn, the West German government condemned Israel's march into Lebanon as a "flagrant violation of international law." After the assault on West Beirut, a government spokesman deplored "the heavy burdens and perils of the Lebanese people, whose sufferings cannot leave anyone unconcerned." Theo Sommer, co-publisher of Die Zeit, reflected on whether Germans, with their Nazi past, had a right to speak out against "the horrors of the Begin present." He concluded, "Even Germans can bluntly say, 'Begin's Lebanon war is unnecessary, it is inhuman, and ultimately it will bring about the exact opposite of what was originally intended."
In the face of such outspoken criticism, the majority of Israelis still supported their government's policies. Nonetheless, the small but articulate domestic opposition to the war, led by the Peace Now movement, staged a highly visible protest last week while Begin was holding a special Cabinet meeting. Some 2,000 demonstrators paraded outside Begin's office building Thursday evening, chanting, "Peace yes! Sharon no!" Among the demonstrators were the Israeli novelist Amos Oz and the former chief education officer of the Israeli Defense Forces, Mordechai Bar-On.