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Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir told the Knesset last week that if Syria did not pull its troops out of Lebanon now, "Israel will be free to act according to its interests." He meant that Israel would leave its troops in Lebanon as long as it saw fit, perhaps concentrating them in more defensible positions in the southern part of the country. By late last week most of the "clarifications" of the agreement that Israel had demanded had been sorted out, paving the way for a signing some time this week.
Most U.S. analysts played down the significance of reports that the Syrians and, by implication, the Soviets were preparing for war. Said a senior U.S. diplomat in Washington: "We think it's bluster and bluff to scare the hell out of Lebanon not to ratify the agreement with Israel, no more than that." A Western diplomat in Moscow noted that there was no sign that the Soviets had evacuated any dependents from Damascus. That, he added, was "the important thing."
The U.S. is convinced that Syria, even with its new Soviet-supplied equipment, could not win a shooting war with Israel, and, moreover, that it could not profit diplomatically from engaging in such a war. Nor does the U.S. see any signs that Israel might be preparing a pre-emptive strike, at least not yet. The Israelis are concerned about the military buildup in Syria. But they are also worried about the risk of greater casualties in Lebanon, and they are particularly interested at the moment in patching up their relations with the U.S. Indeed, suggests a Middle East specialist in Washington, a limited increase in tension may well bring Israel some unexpected political benefits on Capitol Hill. Last week the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to add $300 million to the Reagan Administration's request for $550 million in military grants to Israel in 1984. Only a few days earlier, the Administration had announced that it was ready to lift the ban, imposed after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon last June, on the sale of 75 F-16 jet fighters to Israel.
What the U.S. fears most in the current situation is an accidental conflict. Says former National Security Council Member William Quandt, now a Brookings Institution fellow: "This does not appear to be the kind of deliberate buildup that we saw in anticipation of the 1973 war. But the danger is that it will be like 1967, when there was no real intent to go to war, but tensions rose and rose to the point where no one could find a way to back down." Declared State Department Spokesman Alan Romberg last week: "We have repeatedly noted that with Israeli and Syrian forces juxtaposed in a tense situation, there is the persistent threat of renewed hostilities."
The U.S., in fact, hopes that the Soviet Union, whose main aim seems to be to rebuild its weak diplomatic position in the Middle East, will act as a restraint on Syria. The Soviets, according to U.S. thinking, would have little to gain from an outbreak of fighting between Syria and Israel. They could again be embarrassed militarily, as they were last year when the Israelis shot down about 100 of Syria's Soviet-made jet fighters.