Word: lebanon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...shaky ceasefire, as cease-fires always seem to be, took hold in Lebanon last week, but East Beirut was a smouldering ruin. In that battered section of the city, once home to 600,000 Maronite Christians, rescue workers picked through the rubble in search of the dead and dying. Glassy-eyed survivors crept cautiously out of basement shelters, scurrying back to safety when Syrian snipers cut loose with automatic weapons. A number of would-be refugees, seeking to join the exodus that has emptied East Beirut of more than two-thirds of its residents, were mowed down by Syrian machine...
...commandos will be the backbone of a new Syrian-controlled antimilitia alliance comprising leftist Lebanese Muslims, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization and an army commanded by pro-Syrian Christian for mer President Suleiman Franjieh. The Arab League mandate under which the Syrian peace-keeping force has occupied Lebanon since 1976 will be reviewed on Oct. 28. If the league orders Damascus to withdraw its troops, the new force could still press the offensive against the Christian militias with Syrian arms and ammunition...
...providing counsel and logistical support. Christian officers of the Lebanese armed forces turned over to the militiamen an arsenal of U.S. weapons that had been destined for the country's moribund, ineffective army. Contemplating the grim fact that more than two dozen armed factions are now operating in Lebanon, Militia Leader Chamoun asked pointedly: "What is Lebanon - a sovereign state or a whorehouse...
Neither the Christians nor their foes are backing away from the prospect Of more slaughter. "As long as the Syrians are in Lebanon, there is no peace," warned Chamoun last week. Equally adamant was Syrian President Hafez Assad, who insisted that his troops had opened fire on the Christians in order to "establish the authority of the Sarkis government." But when the Lebanese President proposed that a buffer force of Lebanese soldiers be deployed between the Christians and Syrians, Assad had a brusque reply: "There is no Lebanese army, and what there is represents the Christians." After Sarkis completed...
...effort to stiffen Assad's resolve to stay on in Lebanon, Iraq's radical regime offered last week to send its own troops to the Golan Heights. Assad, who has quarreled bitterly with the Iraqis, was bound to reject their dubious offer. His determination to solve his Lebanese dilemma was probably hardened by the success of the Camp David peace talks, which foreshadowed a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. Such a development would leave Israel free to concentrate its massive firepower on Syria and other "rejectionist" Arab states...