TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/82/82marine

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                ╫+                                                            ╚September 6, 1982

MIDDLE EAST

The Marines Have Landed


And the situation is well in hand as the P.L.O.'s exodus
proceeds apace


The ships were just offshore, riding at anchor, gray silhouettes
of power in a classic setting of blue sky, bright sunshine and
white clouds. At daybreak on Wednesday morning last week,
precisely on time, 800 U.S. Marines landed at Beirut Port.
Their mission: to assist, with 800 French and 500 Italian
troops, in the task of evacuating 7,000 Palestine Liberation
Organization guerrillas from the Lebanese capital. After the
Marines landed, they soon had the situation well in hand. Said
White House Spokesman Larry Speakes the next morning:
"Everything is going according to plan."

Speakes was referring not only to the arrival of the American
forces but to the whole elaborate process of removing the P.L.O.
fighters from Beirut. By Saturday at least 6,000 of the
Palestinians had been evacuated by sea or land to other Arab
countries, and the rest of them were expected to leave by the
end of this week.

The Lebanese crisis was by no means over. The country still
contained an estimated 60,000 Israeli soldiers and perhaps half
as many Syrian troops, and the two armies might yet wage a
full-scale war with each other on Lebanese soil. Last week, in
fact, sporadic fighting broke out between the Syrians and both
the Israelis and the Christian Phalange forces, which are
closely aligned with the Israelis. The Lebanese Parliament had
elected a new national president, the leader of the Christian
Phalangist forces. Bashir Gemayel, who was despised by many
Lebanese Muslims as an "Israeli stooge." But the Israeli siege
of West Beirut was over, and the domination of Lebanon by the
P.L.O. was at an end.

The Marines who disembarked in Beirut quickly took over the port
area from the French units that had been there since the
previous Saturday. First ashore was the flag-bearer, Lance
Corporal James Dunaway, of Hattiesburg, Miss., followed by 200
men of Company E of the 32nd Marine Amphibious Unit. A Marine
emblem pinned to his shirt. U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib,
who had negotiated the agreement between Israel and the P.L.O.
that led to the Palestinians' withdrawal, stepped forward to
greet Marine Colonel James Mead, commander of the volunteer
force.

Mead's men were armed with M-16 rifles, M-60 machine guns,
mortars, antitank rockets and antitank missiles. But Mead, 47,
a strapping 6-ft. 6-in. Bostonian, assured reporters that he
has "not anticipating any use of weapons, because we are here
as peace keepers." He added, "Obviously, we'll use whatever we
have in the unlikely event that we must defend ourselves. I
must defend myself and my men." Mead was also greeted by
Colonel Souhail Darghouth, commander of the Lebanese army units
in the port area. "Ahlan we sahlan," said the Lebanese colonel.
Habib, who has known a smattering of Arabic since his
childhood, told Mead, "It means you are welcome here."

The Reagan Administration went to considerable lengths to assure
both Congress and the American public that U.S. troops were in
no real danger. Reagan explained that the Marines would play
"a crucial role in achieving the peace that is so desperately
needed in this long-tortured city." The President alluded to
the fact that, 24 years ago, a force of 14,000 Marines had been
sent to Lebanon by Dwight Eisenhower to support a beleaguered
government, and that they had suffered a few casualties. This
time, declared the President, " want to emphasize that there is
no intention or expectation that U.S. armed forces will become
involved in hostilities," except perhaps for what he called
"isolated acts of violence." To the Marines involved in the
mission, the President radioed a rousing message: "You are
about to embark on a mission of great importance to our nation
and the free world...You are asked to be, once again, what
Marines have been for more than 200 years: peacemakers."

By the end of the week, the President had reason to be pleased
with the progress of the evacuation. To be sure, there were
some hitches. The Israelis complained that, in violation of the
agreement, the first group of P.L.O. evacuees had been allowed
to take their jeeps with them. The Lebanese protested that the
Israelis were objecting to the placement of French peace-keeping
forces in central Beirut. More serious was the fighting between
Syrian and Israeli forces near the Beirut-Damascus highway in
central Lebanon. This caused the P.L.O. to postpone a
withdrawal over that route.

To solve the problem, Envoy Habib flew to Tel Aviv for a talk
with Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who has directed the
Israeli military operation in Lebanon. At the meeting, Sharon,
who refuses to describe the removal of the P.L.O. guerrillas
from West Beirut as an "evacuation," asked Habib bluntly," How
is the expulsion going?" Replied Habib: "The evacuation is
proceeding according to plan." Habib then asked Sharon to make
sure that the Israeli and Christian forces allow the P.L.O.
convoys to pass safely along the highway to Damascus. As a
result of the meeting, the overland evacuation of the P.L.O. to
Syria began on Friday when a convoy of trucks carrying
celebrating guerrillas made the 70-mile trip to the outskirts
of the Syrian capital.

For the departing Palestinians, it was a time of brave words
and wrenching farewells. In hundreds of cases, men left for
unknown destinations, leaving wives and families behind. P.L.O.
Chairman Yasser Arafat called the long siege of Beirut and the
evacuation "a victory for the resistance." The P.L.O. did
manage to sustain the sense of an honorable retreat, with flags
flying and the endless cannonades and thunderous volleys of
rockets. The departing guerrillas and the friends who saw them
off fired their automatic rifles and machine guns so furiously
that a U.S. Marine said he felt as though he were on a firing
range. Stray bullets killed 17 and wounded at least 42 more.

Nonetheless, the celebrations continued. When a shipload of
guerrillas reached the Syrian port of Tartus, they were greeted
by shouts of "Victory!" and "Palestine!" Five sheep were
slaughtered on the dock and skinned to provide a carpet for the
visitors to walk upon as they came ashore. When a four-year-old
Palestinian boy in Beirut asked his father, "Why is everybody
shooting?" he was told, "To celebrate a great victory." To
which the boy replied, "But if the soldiers won, why are they
going?" The answer, only partly obscured by the fanfare of the
occasion, was that they had no choice; the Israelis had forced
them out.

Day after day, the exiled P.L.O. left Beirut for Syria, for
Jordan, Sudan, Tunisia, North and South Yemen. Some 185 wounded
guerrillas embarked on a Red Cross vessel bound for Cyprus and
Greece. Conspicuous among the countries that had not agreed to
accept a significant number of P.L.O. evacuees was Egypt, which
had been asked by the U.S. to take a group of 3,000
Palestinians. The government of President Hosni Mubarak
refused, saying that the removal of the P.L.O. from Lebanon
should be linked with diplomatic steps toward a comprehensive
settlement of the Palestinian problem. Explained an Egyptian
official: "When we signed the Camp David peace treaty, we were
accused by other Arabs of only being concerned about a partial
solution," that is, of getting the occupied Sinai back from
Israel. "We do not want the same accusations to be leveled
against us again." In the end, the Egyptians agreed merely to
provide medical care for some of the Palestinian wounded and to
pay canal tolls for the five ships scheduled to carry P.L.O.
guerrillas to the Sudan and the Yemens.

In Tunisia, President Habib Bourguiba welcomed a contingent of
1,100 Palestinians who arrived Saturday by sea. The Tunisians
had been busy last week erecting a tent village near Beja, 60
miles from Tunis, for the guerrillas. They were also
refurbishing the Salwa Hotel at Borj Cedria, 16 miles southeast
of the Tunisian capital, so that the tourist report might serve
as either a temporary or permanent headquarters for Yasser
Arafat and 100 or more of his colleagues. The hotel contains a
luxury suite for Arafat, a not altogether appropriate residence
for a man of spartan taste who sometimes prefers to sleep on the
floor. Arafat's movements last week were something of a mystery.
The Lebanese radio announced Saturday that he had sailed with
some of his men that morning for Cyprus and from there would
continue to Tunis, but his actual departure from Beirut was not
confirmed. Once the evacuation is completed, some diplomats
speculated, the P.L.O.'s fighting units would be based in
Damascus, while Arafat would make his own headquarters in
Tunisia.

In the devastation of Beirut, there were some signs of an easing
of tensions. Barricades were beginning to come down. The
Italian forces, wearing white helmets adorned with black
feathers, were a highly visible and almost festive presence.

In Israel, there were indications that the almost universal
condemnation the Israeli government has received abroad for its
siege of West Beirut had made it ore truculent than ever. A
case in point was the Israeli reaction to the Reagan
Administration's plan to reassess the Camp David accords in the
hope of reaching a settlement on the problem of Palestinian
autonomy. A high Israeli official last week blustered that, if
the U.S. were to try to "amend" Camp David, Israel would simply
annex the West Bank, as it had wanted to do all along. That
drastic step would create havoc in the Middle East, and the U.S.
had no intention of letting it happen. But in the meantime,
Washington policymakers had a more immediate problem to think
about: how to negotiate the withdrawal of Syrian and Israeli
forces from Lebanon before open warfare breaks out between them.

--By William E. Smith. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington
and William Stewart/Beirut.