Israelis Decide to End Pullout by Early June : Cabinet Votes to Finish Lebanon Involvement--Nation’s Longest Conflict--After Three Years

The Israeli Cabinet voted overwhelmingly Sunday to complete the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon by early June, officially ending this nation’s longest war more than three months earlier than the government envisioned as recently as the beginning of this year.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said the plan is to have no permanent Israeli troop presence north of the international border after the final pullout ending three years of conflict. However, Israeli-equipped and -financed Lebanese militias and civil guards will maintain a narrow “security zone” north of the boundary, he said.

Also, Rabin stressed to reporters after the seven-hour Cabinet debate, Israel will retain “freedom of military action . . . to do only what is necessary for the defense of our frontier,” both within the security zone and farther north.

Rabin said that Israeli military activity in Lebanon after the pullout will be proportional to the level of any terrorist activity directed at Israel’s northern settlements. “The less terror, the less Israeli activity,” he said.

South Lebanese resistance leaders pledged in interviews last week to keep up their attacks if Israel attempts to maintain a buffer zone in the country.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ coalition government approved a three-phase military withdrawal plan in principle Jan. 14 but left details of the second and third stages open for further Cabinet votes. Sunday’s decision was the first to fix a timetable for the third and final phase.

It came amid reports from Lebanon that an Israeli pullback from the area around Tyre on the Mediterranean coast appeared imminent. The army is expected to evacuate Tyre as part of the second stage of the withdrawal, now under way. This stage also affects Israeli positions atop Mt. Barouk and opposite Syrian troops in the Bekaa Valley.

A senior Israeli defense source said Sunday night that the army will be redeployed entirely within the southern Lebanon security zone by early May in preparation for the final pullout a month later.

Originally, officials spoke of completing the withdrawal by next fall. However, a sharp increase in the number of attacks on occupying Israeli troops by the Shia Muslim-led resistance movement in southern Lebanon and deepening opposition to the war at home influenced decision-makers to speed the withdrawal.

One anti-war group--Parents Against Silence--demonstrated outside the prime minister’s office Sunday as the Cabinet debated.

Although six ministers opposed the pullout plan when it was adopted in principle in January, only three voted against it Sunday, while 18 ministers voted in favor of the new timetable. Two of Sunday’s three negative votes--those of Ezer Weizman and Moshe Arens, ministers without portfolio--were cast because they oppose the proposed security zone.

3rd Vote Is Sharon’s

Sunday’s third negative vote came from Ariel Sharon, who was defense minister when Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982.

Known as the architect of the war, Sharon was forced out of his defense post in the previous Cabinet after an inquiry commission found him indirectly responsible for massacres by Lebanese Christians at the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps south of Beirut in September, 1982. He remained in that Cabinet, without portfolio, and took over as trade and industry minister when the present national unity government was formed last September.

A senior defense source said the security zone approved by the Cabinet on Sunday will range in depth from about five miles in the western sector of the current occupation zone to almost double that distance farther east. The primary threat to Israel in the west is seen to be terrorists acting individually or in small groups, while the well-trained and -equipped Syrian army divisions are stationed in the Bekaa Valley to the east.

Asked how Israel would respond to any Syrian move southward in the wake of the Israeli pullout, Rabin said Sunday: “Syria knows what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to Israel. I don’t see any point in elaborating.”

Sharon argued in Sunday’s debate that a 20-mile-deep security zone is necessary to protect the Israeli border.

Rabin said the security zone will be “based on the motivation of the various Lebanese people who live there--Christians, Druze, Shias . . .” and added, “They know that once terror will develop, they will be the first to suffer.”

The defense minister has warned before that Israel will respond with a “scorched earth policy” in southern Lebanon if guerrilla resistance follows the army across the border.

Primary responsibility in the security zone will rest on an Israeli-backed, largely Christian militia known as the South Lebanon Army. It numbers about 1,200 men and has links with units of the so-called Lebanese Forces, the military arm of Lebanon’s Falangist Party, the nation’s dominant Christian political force.

Additionally, the Israelis and their South Lebanon Army allies have established civil militias, made up of local residents, inside many villages within the security zone.

“We are not asking them to defend Israel,” Rabin said of the indigenous forces in the buffer zone. “We only ask them to maintain tranquility.”

However, the majority of the security zone’s residents are Shia Muslims, and Amal, the large Shia militia organization with headquarters in Beirut, has vowed to continue its opposition to Israeli influence in any part of the nation.

“We have the right to govern the last millimeter of our land,” said Dr. Ali Jaber, a physician and regional Amal political leader, in an interview last week. He and an Amal militia chieftain said they will fight the South Lebanon Army, which they consider an Israeli proxy.

While there may be no permanent Israeli troop presence in the security zone, Rabin said Israeli activity in the area will include occasional patrols. Also, he said, “we might be in need of certain observation points on a temporary basis--not only in the security zone.”

It is also expected that there will be a significant presence of Israeli plainclothes security forces in the zone.