Israel Approves Lebanon Pullout : 3-Stage Withdrawal to Start in Five Weeks; Completion Date Left Open

The Israeli Cabinet voted Monday night to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in three stages, with the first stage to be carried out within five weeks. It left open the question of when the pullout will be completed.

Under a compromise formula aimed at overcoming hard-line resistance to the original withdrawal plan presented by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Cabinet will decide separately on the timing of each subsequent stage of the phased pullout.

“The choices were difficult; the decision was courageous,” Rabin said after the meeting.

He said he was satisfied with the decision even though “I know we still have a difficult road in front of us in carrying it out.”

Prime Minister Shimon Peres said just before the meeting, “I think we have worked out a proposal which represents an optimum of our two main goals--namely, to bring our boys back home and to ensure the security of the northern part of Israel.”

16 Votes For, 6 Against The Cabinet vote was 16 to 6 in favor of a phased withdrawal to the border, with support cutting across party lines, Cabinet sources said. It came after almost 12 hours of debate that began Sunday.

Missing for the vote Monday was the man who was the driving force behind Israel’s June, 1982, invasion of Lebanon and subsequent occupation of the south of the country--former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who is now minister of trade and industry.

Sharon was in New York, where a jury began deliberating whether Time magazine libeled him in an article dealing with his role in the September, 1982, massacre by Lebanese Christians of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps near Beirut.

Israel television reported that Sharon telephoned Peres before Monday’s vote to express his opposition to the withdrawal plan. He asked that a negative vote be recorded in his name, but Israeli Cabinet procedure does not permit such absentee voting.

In another development, the army announced that roadside bombs killed two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon on Monday and wounded seven. The fatalities were the 605th and 606th for Israeli forces in Lebanon since the invasion began.

Demonstration Outside

While the Cabinet debated, members of the Peace Now movement demonstrated outside the prime minister’s office in favor of pulling Israel’s troops out of Lebanon.

A government statement, read to reporters Monday night by Cabinet Secretary Yossi Beilin, said the withdrawal will begin with evacuation of the area around the southern Lebanese port of Sidon and redeployment of Israeli forces to the area around Nabatiyeh and along the Litani River, about 15 miles south of their present positions.

Throughout the phased withdrawal, the government statement emphasized, Israel “will do everything necessary to protect the northern border.”

Critics of the withdrawal argued that it is a dangerous gamble and could leave Israel’s northern settlements vulnerable to renewed terrorist attack from southern Lebanon.

By withdrawing in stages, Peres told the foreign press, Israel hopes to keep alive the chance of making new security arrangements in southern Lebanon.

Israel favors negotiated arrangements to protect its northern settlements from the threat of renewed terrorist activity from southern Lebanon and to prevent an outbreak of sectarian bloodshed among the region’s mixed Shia Muslim, Druze and Christian populations in the void that might be left by an Israeli pullout.

‘An Orderly Arrangement’ In reports from southern Lebanon, Israel radio and television said last Friday that Christian forces in the south, which have been allied with Israel, are particularly concerned that they will come under attack once the Israeli troops have gone.

“You’re the only insurance policy the Christians have,” Israel radio quoted a Christian leader in Sidon as saying. “Today, you are running away, but you ought to know the chances are good that anyone who cooperated with you will be butchered.”

Peres told the correspondents that Israel’s idea is “to withdraw in stages, each stage short enough so we shall not have to fortify our lines and long enough so the other countries will have a chance to enable an orderly arrangement in Lebanon.”

Peres said Israel will return Thursday to the suspended withdrawal negotiations at Naqoura, Lebanon, to officially notify the Lebanese and the United Nations of its decision to pull back. However, he held out little hope for those negotiations.

“Unless there will be a change in the Lebanese position, which unfortunately depends completely upon the Syrian position, I do not see that much will happen in Naqoura,” Peres said. “I think the talks in Naqoura will die away when all of us will learn that they don’t produce anything which is helpful to either side.”

Israel suspended its participation in the two-month-old Naqoura talks last week after failing to get what it deemed a satisfactory Lebanese response to Israel’s proposals for a redeployment of U.N. troops in southern Lebanon.

5 Weeks for Planning Rabin said Monday night that he hopes that Lebanon and the United Nations will use the coming five weeks to plan an orderly takeover of the areas abandoned by Israeli troops. Whether they do or not, he said, will have no effect on Israel’s commitment to withdraw.

The government statement said the second stage of the withdrawal will pull Israeli troops out of the eastern sector of the occupation zone, near the Syrian border, to positions around the town of Hasbayya. Israeli troops now occupy part of the Bekaa Valley and the Jabal el Barouk Mountains, which reach nearly as far north as Beirut.

In the third stage, Israeli troops will pull back to the border “in coordination with” the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army. Israel expects the Christian-led South Lebanon Army to control the region just north of the border, and it has pledged to support the Lebanese if necessary.

Rabin said Monday that the government will not hesitate to send troops back into Lebanon if Palestinian guerrillas attempt to re-establish themselves on territory abandoned in the withdrawal.

Peres said that the timing of the withdrawal beyond the first phase “will be played by ear.” The goal, however, is reportedly to complete the second stage, in the eastern sector, this spring and to pull out all the troops next fall, except for a small group of advisers attached to the South Lebanon Army.

According to Cabinet sources, six ministers favored a simple redeployment to the south, with no specific commitment to an eventual return to the border.

The six are all of the Likud bloc of Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who is also the alternate prime minister. They included Shamir; Moshe Arens, a minister without portfolio; Chaim Corfu, minister of transportation; Moshe Katzav, labor and welfare minister; Moshe Nissim, justice minister, and Avraham Sharir, minister of tourism.

Two other Likud men in the Cabinet, David Levy, a deputy prime minister and minister of housing, and Gideon Patt, minister of science and technology, voted with the majority.