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In effect, Cicippio's suspended sentence left his loved ones -- and the U.S. -- suspended as well. Behind Cicippio is a tattered line of 14 other Western hostages, eight of them Americans, still believed to be held in Lebanon. Other Americans continue to live and work in that shattered country despite official warnings issued by Washington in January 1987 that in effect they are on their own. So long as the U.S. and its citizens venture forth freely in the world, they will be vulnerable to extortion by kidnapers. Trying to come to terms with that implacable fact, Ronald Reagan stumbled and Jimmy Carter fell.
What should the U.S. do? There is an instinctive longing for the bravado of 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt was faced with the kidnaping of an American, Ion Perdicaris, by a Moroccan bandit named Ahmed Raisuli. Legend has it that Roosevelt pronounced a famous ultimatum: "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead." (It is less well remembered that Perdicaris was freed only after the Moroccan government paid ransom.) But a poll conducted last Thursday for TIME/ CNN by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman indicates substantial public recognition that a big stick may not be the answer to an explosive and delicate situation. Among those questioned, 45% said the U.S. should retaliate in this instance with military action and 39% said it should not. But when presented with an array of options, 58% of the respondents said the U.S. should negotiate with terrorist groups for the hostages' release, and between 45% and two-thirds rejected various specified U.S. military options.
The latest crisis was sparked by events in Lebanon that dramatized the difference between the Israeli and American responses to hostage taking. On July 28, two dozen Israeli commandos staged a daring raid into the southern Lebanese village of Jibchit. Their goal was to seize Obeid, 32, whom the Israelis identify as a spiritual and military leader of the Shi'ite fundamentalist Hizballah (Party of God), a group with close ties to Iran that is holding most of the Western hostages. The Israelis say they wanted Obeid as a bargaining chip to gain release of three Israeli military men taken prisoner in southern Lebanon in 1986.
The Israeli Cabinet approved the mission by a vote of 11 to 1 in June, after an earlier kidnaping failed to impress Mustafa Dirani, the man believed to be holding one of the soldiers. Last December, Israeli commandos seized Jawad Kasafi, a Dirani associate. But when Jerusalem offered a swap, Hizballah declined even to reply. Israel concluded it needed a bigger fish, and Obeid was selected.
The raid was carried out by two dozen members of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, which reports only to chief of military intelligence Amnon Shachak. As Israeli jets flew overhead to drown out the noise, a darkened CH-53 helicopter landed after midnight on the outskirts of Jibchit. Lightly armed with silencer-equipped Uzis, pistols and a few small explosives, the commandos crept toward Obeid's house in the center of the village. One team guarded the neighborhood while another raided the house and abducted Obeid and two men who worked as bodyguards. Another man was killed by the Israelis when he stepped out of a neighboring house. Obeid's wife, bound and gagged, was left in the house with his three children, who were untouched.