Word: syrians
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...bring out, especially in observers. Both wars have been remarkable for their displays of weapons and tactics. The effects of Argentina's Exocet missiles are still benumbing to consider. The story, when finally told, of how the Israelis adapted their E-2C Hawkeye surveillance planes to take out the Syrian MiGs is bound to enter national legend. Descriptions of what the new equipment can do are spellbinding: ECMs, HUDs, jamming and antijamming devices; "smart" bombs and "tracer lines." So graceful are the arcs on the maps, so precise the computers, it is mortifying to note how easily one gets caught...
...make a mockery of their efforts. The 60,000-strong Israeli force, still trying to consolidate its control over southern Lebanon, advanced to the outskirts of Beirut. There the Israelis linked up with Christian Phalangist allies to impose a stranglehold over 6,000 Palestinian guerrillas and 1,500 Syrian soldiers trapped inside the western part of the city...
After discussing strategy with Phalangist leaders over tea at Baabda's town hall, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon issued a call for Syria's 85th Brigade to withdraw from the Beirut vicinity and join the bulk of Syrian forces in the Bekaa Valley to the east. Damascus abruptly rejected the demand, insisting that unlike the Israeli occupation troops, Syrian forces had been dispatched to Lebanon as part of an Arab peace-keeping contingent in 1976 with the approval of the local government. Sputtered an angry Syrian official: "We do not, I repeat, do not tolerate ultimatums from that...
...Syrian rebuff effectively ended a tenuous four-day truce between the two armies. Heading north from their fortified positions in Baabda, Israeli armor cut the Beirut-Damascus highway just west of Jamhur, less than a mile from Syrian tank and infantry posts. By seizing Beirut's surrounding hilltops, the Israelis choked off all main supply and exit routes for the Syrian and Palestinian units remaining in the capital...
...television networks-each with as many as five crews in the field-managed to send film out daily by satellite from an east Beirut ground transmission station. The unofficial rules for Beirut-based correspondents were grim, however: stick together, do not go out at night, and never photograph Syrian troops, who detained several photographers and reportedly pistol-whipped two. By contrast, the propaganda-wise Palestinians were eager to please, providing military guides to protect reporters. Los Angeles Times Correspondent David Lamb summed up the journalists' dilemma with a comparison to Viet Nam, which he had also covered: "There...