Word: litany
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...final Syrian checkpoint is at Zahrani, twelve miles north of the Litani River. There a large color poster of President Hafez Assad beams down at the red-bereted paratroopers. South of the checkpoint the road is deserted. The fields are desolate, showing no sign of care or life. Even the crows have flown to richer lands...
Lebanese leftist troops guard the bridge over the Litani, a slow-flowing, dark green stream. No sign or marker indicates that this is the "red line"; the Israelis have warned the Syrians to stay north of it. Beyond doubt, the Syrians are heeding the warning. The Lebanese troops, young, unshaven, carefully check the trunk of our car. Satisfied, they wave us on with a tired look in their eyes...
Meanwhile, the Syrians have looked the other way as the Palestinian command in West Beirut sent troops, ammunition and food supplies south across the Litani River. One of the Christians' goals in the recent fighting was to break out a route to the sea and establish a base near the Israeli border to receive supplies by ship from Jounieh in the north. That failed...
...army arrives-that could take two to three weeks-three battalions of 350 men each will patrol a six-mile-wide zone along the Israeli border. They will man checkpoints and replace P.L.O. combatants in that area. The agreement is that the Palestinians will then pull back to the Litani; they say they will obey the rules. After all, they point out, it was the Palestinians who first suggested the new arrangement in the south several months...
...seeing artillery on the stony ridges around them. Already, though, a few people are going back to look over their houses-or what is left of them. They are not sure they will stay, but, if the weather permits, they will let their children swim in the Litani River, just as they used to in better days...