by David Landau
Haig believed with Begin and Sharon that sustained, relentless Israeli pressure in Lebanon would bring about the PLO’s departure. The secretary designate, George Shultz, was not convinced.
Begin, however, relished the moment. Addressing the Knesset on June 29, he insisted that the IDF was “near Beirut … at the gates of Beirut” but absolutely not in Beirut. “I’ve said all along that we don’t want to enter Beirut, neither west Beirut nor east Beirut. We totally didn’t want to. And we still don’t want to today. But, for God’s sake, you are all experienced people; I appeal to you as a friend to friends, as a Jew to other Jews.… [A]s a result of developments … we are deployed today alongside Beirut, and the terrorists are trapped within.… Mr. Speaker, happy and fortunate is the nation that has such an army; happy and fortunate is the army that has such a general as Raful as its commander; and happy and fortunate is the state that has Ariel Sharon as its defense minister. With all my heart I say this.”19
Habib was working on a package that was to include a U.S. Marine presence in Beirut to ensure—and also protect—the PLO’s departure. Sharon inveighed against this on the grounds that even after the evacuation some PLO men would be left behind and would need to be flushed out. But the marine presence would prevent or impair that necessary activity.20
The PLO for its part, gradually acquiescing in the eventual likelihood of its being forced out, demanded Israel’s withdrawal, too, and the deployment of a multinational force in Beirut to defend the Palestinian communities living in the sprawling refugee camps in the south of the city after the fighters had left.f
A cabinet communiqué at the end of July proclaimed that “Israel is willing to accept a cease-fire in Lebanon, with the explicit condition that it be absolute and mutual.” With breathtaking chutzpah, it went on to announce that “the Government of Israel is of the view that measures should begin, through the Lebanese government, to provide accommodation for refugees in Lebanon, in preparation for the winter months,” and that “the cabinet decided to establish a ministerial committee … to elaborate principles, ways and means for a solution of the refugee problem in the Middle East through their resettlement. The committee will be aided by experts and will submit its recommendations to the cabinet.”
By the first week of August, Israel was facing the full fury of an American president who felt his friendship had been betrayed. On August 2, in the Oval Office, a somber foreign minister Shamir listened while Reagan railed over television footage from Beirut “of babies with their arms blown off.” The previous day, Israel had bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut for ten straight hours. “ ‘If you invade West Beirut, it would have the most grave, most grievous, consequences for our relationship,’ the president told Shamir and added, ‘Should these Israeli practices continue, it will become increasingly difficult to defend the proposition that Israeli use of U.S. arms is for defensive purposes.’ ”21
The crisis escalated further that same night when Habib called the State Department, as Shultz recalled,
screaming in rage…[that] the IDF shelling was the worst he had seen in eight weeks of war … Begin was calmly denying that any shelling was taking place; this had just been confirmed by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon … The United States was being fed hysterical, inflated reporting, Begin said.
[Charles] Hill [a foreign service officer] relayed this to Habib. “Oh, yeah?” Habib said, and held his tacsat earpiece out the window so that we could hear the Israeli artillery firing. Hill counted eight shells within thirty seconds from IDF artillery batteries located just below Habib’s position … Meanwhile, back in Israel, Ariel Sharon was on the phone to Bill Brown [the deputy chief of mission], heaping scorn on our reports: they are false, hysterical, unprofessional; the IDF has done nothing like what is being claimed, Sharon said.22
Sam Lewis picks up the story. “Shultz’s U.S. Marine Corps background kicked in at that point; his face turned almost purple as he told Shamir just what Habib was personally watching; he also told him to set the Prime Minister straight and see to it that the bombardment ceased forthwith.” Reagan wrote to Begin warning that the relationship between their two nations hung in the balance.
Begin’s gushing reply, comparing Arafat holed up in West Beirut to Hitler in his bunker in 1945, left Reagan cold. Begin for his part was heard to mutter in regard to the American president, “Jews bend the knee only before God.”23
IDF troops were dispatched to Jounieh on August 8 deliberately to harass and disrupt the landing of the first units of the multinational force (MNF), which was to comprise American, French, and Italian troops. American helicopters tried to ferry the French troops ashore, but Israeli jeeps raced around the designated landing pad to prevent them from doing so. Presumably, this was Sharon’s way of underscoring his continued objection to the MNF deploying in Beirut before the PLO had left.
Habib had managed to find safe havens for the PLO men in Tunisia and several other Arab countries. On August 10, Israel received a draft of Habib’s proposed “package deal” for finally ending the war. In a compromise between Israeli demands and Palestinian fears, it provided for the evacuation by sea of part of the PLO a few days before the deployment of the MNF. After that, the remainder of the PLO and the Syrian troops in Beirut would be evacuated from Lebanon under MNF supervision. The PLO was to be allowed to carry its small arms, but heavy weapons would be handed over to the Lebanese army. The MNF would remain in Beirut for one month.
Sharon was unhappy with the timetable and wanted assurances that if the evacuation stopped, the MNF would be withdrawn. The cabinet decided to accept the package “in principle.” But in defiance of the cabinet’s decision in principle, the air force was ordered to prepare another massive bombardment of Beirut. In addition, large forces of long- and medium-range artillery were deployed around Beirut. They were instructed to prepare to lay down a “rolling screen of fire” on the Palestinian southern suburbs, a bombardment more concentrated and devastating than even the air force could deliver. On August 12, this vast firepower began to rain down on the city. The IAF flew more than a hundred bombing sorties. Civilian casualties mounted by the hour.
Reagan called Begin and spoke, deliberately, of a “holocaust.” Begin instinctively bridled. Reagan did not back off and gave Begin an “ultimatum” to stop the bombardment forthwith. Begin reported back to the president that the bombing had stopped at 5:00 p.m. The cabinet had also decided, he said, that any further use of the air force would require the prime minister’s personal approval. Sharon was no longer empowered to bomb Beirut.
Begin’s public clipping of Sharon’s wings reflected a bitter debate inside the cabinet room, the angriest and bitterest since the war began. Minister after minister accused Sharon of deliberately seeking to upend the American-mediated package deal.
There had been earlier signs of a weakening in Sharon’s all-powerful position. On July 30, the housing minister, David Levy, pointedly asked Begin at cabinet if he knew about certain troop movements around the Beirut airport, and Begin replied: “David, I always know about everything. Some things I know about before, and some things after.” Sharp-eared ministers discerned a note of exasperation in his voice.24
A week later, Minister of the Interior Burg asked Begin about the call‑up of a reserves paratroop brigade (his son’s) at short notice. He feared it meant the army was preparing to storm West Beirut, with the inevitably high loss of life that that would entail. He warned the prime minister that his party, the National Religious Party, would leave the coalition if that happened. Begin said he knew nothing about the call‑up and hadn’t approved it. He called Sharon, who readily confirmed that he had approved it. After all, he explained, the two of them had discussed the prospect of storming the city, albeit as a last resort if the diplomacy failed, and calling up reserves for this eventuality was “obvious.” “Obvious? What do you mean obvious? How can you do that without [my] approval? So many people know and the prime minister doesn’t know!” Sharon apologi
zed profusely.25
Outrage over the bombings put paid to any lingering solidarity in the Labor opposition with the government at war. Yitzhak Rabin, Labor’s premier defense spokesman, had supported the siege of Beirut, including the cutoff of water, much to the chagrin of his own party doves. Now the doves called for Sharon’s dismissal and for a commission of inquiry to be set up to investigate the war.26 Sharon for his part began accusing the opposition of cynically exploiting the war for political ends. Labor was “marshaling all its great media strength and international resources … to unseat the government—and all this while Israeli forces were in the field in mid-battle. It was unprecedented and, to anyone with a sense of Israeli political history, unbelievable.”27
On August 21, the evacuation of Beirut began. It lasted for twelve days, and by the end 14,298 armed men had been ferried out of the city. More than 8,000 of them were PLO men and the remainder Syrian soldiers. Another 664 women and children were evacuated with them. Some 8,150 of the evacuees were taken out by sea, to Tunisia and seven other Arab countries (Syria, North Yemen, South Yemen, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, and Jordan). The rest went overland, along the Beirut–Damascus road, with Israeli soldiers shouting obscenities at them from the hillsides.
Whether the Israeli military pressure or the dogged American diplomacy was the primary reason for Arafat’s agreement to go, Sharon felt vindicated. “This mass expulsion was an event whose importance could hardly be exaggerated. Here was the first step in what I saw as a process that would lead to a peace treaty between ourselves and the new Lebanese government. Hardly less significant, the PLO’s defeat [opened] the possibility of a rational dialogue between ourselves and Palestinians not dedicated to our destruction.”28
Even the evacuation occasioned a furious altercation between Israel and America, an altercation that, incredibly, almost turned violent. The casus belli was a number of jeeps that the departing Palestinians had loaded onto a ferry that was part of the evacuation fleet. Sharon ordered the evacuation stopped until the jeeps were off-loaded: the agreement permitted personal weapons, not jeeps.
“Sam Lewis approached Begin about it,” Shultz writes, “and the prime minister exploded: ‘They are not an army! They are rabble! Let Bourguiba [the president of Tunisia] take them in and buy them Cadillacs.’ We told the Israelis that the ship was going to leave … The Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed our naval assets in the area to prepare to defend the car ferry, and themselves, against Israeli attack … Lewis told Begin we would give the order to sail, and we hoped that Israel would not try to block the ship’s departure … The ship sailed.”g
On Monday, August 30, Arafat embarked on a Greek freighter, escorted by the Greek warship Croesus. The Sixth Fleet provided air cover. Israeli marksmen stationed on nearby rooftops had the PLO chairman in the sights. But Begin was personally committed to Reagan to let him sail unharmed.
Meanwhile, on August 23, Bashir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon by the parliament. He made a point of declaring, both before and after his election, that he had not colluded with the Israeli invaders and that he did not propose to sign a peace treaty with Israel.29 This left the Israelis still divided along the lines that had evolved over the previous two years. Many of the army commanders had little faith in Gemayel and his Phalange. They felt their view was amply borne out by the Christians’ stolid reluctance to take any serious role in the fighting over the past three months or even to say anything publicly that would sound like support for the Israeli goals (which were, after all, their own goals, too). Key members of the Mossad, however, as well as Begin and Sharon and Chief of Staff Eitan, continued to believe that once Gemayel was firmly installed, he would conclude a formal peace accord with Israel that would have important political and economic repercussions throughout the Arab world. They suspected that the Americans, and specifically Habib and his deputy, Morris Draper, were advising Gemayel to avoid openly friendly relations with Israel.30
Begin’s—and Gemayel’s—painful awakening came on the night of August 31, in the northern border town of Nahariya, where Begin and his wife were briefly vacationing in a pointed demonstration of how quiet and peaceful the border area was now. Gemayel arrived for a meeting with the prime minister at a nearby military base. It ought to have been an occasion for mutual congratulation and heartfelt, if discreet, celebration. Instead, the president-elect encountered a cold and sullen Begin, who barely returned his embrace and immediately launched into a grudging congratulatory speech replete with heavy hints about the need now to pay outstanding bills.
They then retired to a separate room, with only a handful of advisers on each side. But Begin’s tone and tenor did not change. “Where do we stand regarding the peace treaty?” he began truculently. Gemayel tried to answer discursively, explaining that he absolutely did want “real peace, in the long term” but that he wasn’t the sole decision maker. There was a government and a parliament. It would not do to rush things, either politically or militarily.
Gemayel spoke about an “order of priorities” that he had discussed with the Americans. The main thing now was to get the Syrians and the Palestinians out of the Beqáa and out of the north of the country. Begin interrupted. He wanted a firm deadline for signing a peace treaty. He suggested December 31. Gemayel balked. He would need at least a year, he said.
“From the moment Gemayel was elected,” Yitzhak Shamir recalled years later, “he no longer wanted to be an ally. He evaded and equivocated, and ever since then Begin was not the same man. It was a grievous blow for him to see that after all our help, the man was disloyal.”31
Both Sharon and Eitan (separately) visited Gemayel during the following fortnight in an effort to patch things up. Sharon dined at the Gemayel family estate at Bikfaya on the evening of August 12. “The atmosphere was especially warm,” he wrote. “I knew the first item of business was to allay the hard feelings that had developed between Bashir and Begin at … Nahariya. The chemistry that night had not been good.” It was different now. “Bashir and his wife, Solange, were happy and obviously excited about the inauguration, and a feeling of intimacy pervaded the room as Bashir and I sat down to talk over the steps he planned to take as president.”
The ironic truth is that it wasn’t Gemayel’s extreme caution—not to say his pusillanimity, or even infidelity—that blackened Begin’s mood on that fateful night in Nahariya. That had occurred earlier in the day, in a terse meeting with Ambassador Lewis, who arrived in Nahariya to deliver in letter form and verbally an entirely unexpected American plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The bottom line was that Israel must eventually cede much of the West Bank and Gaza and in the meantime must stop its settlement building. “It was as if he had been hit in the solar plexus with a sledge hammer,” the Foreign Ministry director, David Kimche, recalled, describing Begin’s reaction.32 Begin himself muttered through clenched teeth, “The battle for Eretz Yisrael has begun.”
Almost as if to mock Begin, or to take revenge on him, the American plan stressed repeatedly that it sought to build on “the opportunity” offered by the Lebanon War. The war had demonstrated two key things, Reagan wrote:
First, the military losses of the PLO have not diminished the yearning of the Palestinian people for a just solution of their claims; and, second, while Israel’s military successes in Lebanon have demonstrated that its armed forces are second to none in the region, they alone cannot bring just and lasting peace to Israel and her neighbors…
Palestinians feel strongly that their cause is more than a question of refugees. I agree. The Camp David agreement recognized that fact when it spoke of “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements …”
The United States will not support the use of any additional land for the purpose of settlements during the transitional period. Indeed, the immediate adoption of a settlement freeze by Israel, more than any other action, could create the confidence needed.
This, ironic perhaps in terms of American pol
itics, signaled Reagan’s endorsement of the plain, straightforward reading of the language of Camp David, the reading of his unloved predecessor, Jimmy Carter. And now—most ironic of all in hindsight—Reagan offered his solution: no Palestinian state; no Israeli annexation; but Palestinian self-rule under Jordan. The irony lies in the sad fact that a Likud-led government in Israel today, let alone a more dovish government, would grab at these terms with both hands—if only they were still available.
Begin rejected them with both hands. He cut short his holiday and convened the cabinet for a somber session ending with a bitterly truculent communiqué. “The positions conveyed to the Prime Minister of Israel on behalf of the President of the United States consist of partial quotations from the Camp David agreements, or are nowhere mentioned in that agreement or contradict it entirely … Were the American plan to be implemented, there would be nothing to prevent King Hussein from inviting his new-found friend, Yasser Arafat, to come to Nablus and hand the rule over to him.”
Instead of concocting this casuistry, designed to perpetuate the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, a more farsighted leader would have been devising urgent plans to end the IDF’s occupation of Lebanon, and most especially of Beirut. As Chaim Herzog writes, the terrible and tragic events that were now to take place in Beirut