Word: beirutization
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There was also confusion in Europe, as well as some annoyance at the vagaries of U.S. policy. Informed four to five hours in advance of the U.S. redeployment, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered the removal from Beirut of her country's 115-member contingent of the four-nation Multi-National Force. According to a Thatcher aide, the move was "not dependent on what attitude the United States took." Indeed it was not. TIME has learned that the British plan to distance themselves even further from current U.S. policy by withdrawing their MNF contingent to Cyprus...
...government and the announcement of the Marine redeployment. Said a London diplomat: "Now Soviet propaganda can have a field day with what is truthfully a humiliating defeat for American foreign policy." The French were even more critical, although their 1,250-member MNF detachment will remain in Beirut while President Francois Mitterrand seeks a U.N. replacement. Said a senior French spokesman: "We will either revive the idea of a U.N. force [in Beirut], or we will conclude that that is impossible and accept the consequences. We certainly won't put our troops on boats, to sit and watch...
...June 1982 Israel used them-as well as the attempted assassination of its ambassador in London-as a pretext to invade Lebanon. Instead of merely clearing the border area, as Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Defense Minister Ariel Sharon had promised, the army charged ahead to Beirut. The real aims of Israel's Peace for Galilee campaign: to destroy the P.L.O., humiliate the Syrians and reinforce Lebanon's Christian-dominated government...
...finally brokered an end to Israel's 40-day siege of Beirut, and effected a cease-fire to facilitate the forced evacuation from Lebanon of some 12,000 P.L.O. commandos. It then offered to contribute Marines to a multinational peace-keeping force that would act as a sort of police guard for the departing guerrillas as well as for the Palestinian civilians left behind in refugee camps. But the U.S. pulled out its troops after only two weeks. A traumatic series of events immediately followed: President-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated, Israeli forces occupied Muslim West Beirut, and vengeful...
...September, hoping to reduce their continuing casualties, the Israelis decided to withdraw from the Beirut area and the Chouf Mountains to a new line along the Awali River some 17 miles to the south. During their occupation, however, the Israelis had allowed Phalangist militiamen to move into areas of the Chouf previously controlled by the Druze. Fearing an outbreak of hostilities between the two factions, the U.S. urged the Israelis to delay their redeployment until the newly trained Lebanese Army could fill the vacuum. The Israelis postponed their withdrawal by only a few days. As soon as they pulled...