Pullout From Lebanon Near : Israel’s New Defenses in North Fail to Calm Settlers

Two weeks before what is being called its final withdrawal from Lebanon, the Israeli army is pushing to complete new security arrangements on both sides of the international border.

Despite these preparations and promises of millions of dollars of additional aid from the government, though, Israeli residents along the country’s northern frontier remain nervous.

“I am very afraid about the future,” said Metulla Mayor Yossi Goldberg in an interview Wednesday. “And so are all of the people along this line from Kiryat Shemona to Nahariya.” The two towns anchor a 45-mile line reaching almost from Israel’s eastern border to the Mediterranean.

Regarding an Israeli government decision announced 10 days ago to funnel an additional $200 million to these northern communities, Goldberg added: “Today, it’s only a declaration. . . . They want to help, but today all they have are good intentions.”

Despite residents’ fears, however, Israeli and U.N. military sources say that since the most recent Israeli pullback from the area around Tyre at the end of April, there has been a sharp decrease in the number of attacks by local guerrillas on the occupation army and allied forces.

A total of 650 Israeli soldiers have died in the nearly three-year-old Lebanon war, including 50 this year. However, the last Israeli fatality was more than three weeks ago. And last week, the army’s Northern Command had one night with no reports of attacks against Israeli or allied troops or any other hostile incident.

“It was the first time in three years,” a Northern Command officer said.

A spokesman for U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon ascribed the change to a decision by Amal, the principal Shia Muslim political and military organization in southern Lebanon, to hold off on any further attacks until Israeli intentions become clearer.

Israel decided last month to complete the withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon by early June. And Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said then that the plan is to leave no permanent Israeli troop presence north of the international border.

He added, however, that Lebanese militias and civil guards equipped and financed by Israel will maintain a narrow “security zone” north of the boundary, with backup as necessary by Israeli troops.

Playing Down Incidents

Israeli officials insist that no deal has been made with Amal, but they are clearly encouraged by the drop in attacks and are eager to play down the seriousness of incidents that do occur in this tense transitional period.

On Tuesday night, for example, the army reportedly tried to persuade Israel radio not to report that an army ambulance was fired upon, possibly from Lebanese territory. Later, the army said that the ambulance driver had fired the shots. Military sources said the effort was intended to head off any possible panic in the northern settlements.

A major reason Israel gave for its June 6, 1982, invasion of Lebanon was to protect its northern settlements, a collection of small cities, villages and communal farms, from terrorist attacks by Palestinian forces across the frontier.

The Israeli forces’ current pullback has renewed fears by border residents that the attacks, which ended with the invasion, will start again once the troops come home.

A tour Wednesday of the entire northern border--known as the Purple Line, after its color on Israeli maps--showed some of the results of the nearly $130,000 per mile spent so far to ease residents’ concerns and to prevent infiltration.

In some places, three barbed-wire fences run parallel within a few feet of each other, all electrified and equipped to trigger alarms if touched. Near settlements and in strategic sections, the fence is illuminated by powerful spotlights.

Ditches to stop would-be suicide car bombers are being dug at a number of sites. One two-mile trench defines a section of the border at Metulla, Israel’s northernmost settlement. Two tractors were digging a second three-foot-deep moat near Avivim on Wednesday.

Military sources say patrols have been increased along a dirt road that skirts the border fence. The army is also providing additional guards to the settlements and training residents in defense and survival techniques.

Metulla Mayor Goldberg, chairman of an association of border town officials, said his concerns go well beyond border security. “My problem is how to give the people as normal a life as possible.”

Referring to meetings the local officials have had with government leaders, Goldberg said: “We asked for shelters. We asked for fence. We asked for an economic future for the people here. We asked for housing for young couples.”

In the last round of heavy rocket attacks in 1981, three-quarters of the almost 20,000 residents of the nearby city of Kiryat Shemona fled. Now, with the area suffering severe economic problems, Goldberg fears that even a minor border incident would trigger panic and a final mass exodus.

He said he hopes that when and if the Israeli Cabinet releases the $200 million in special aid to the northern settlements, some of the funds can be used to create jobs and build low-cost housing as incentives for residents, particularly young people, to remain in the area.

Israeli military sources concede that the border security arrangements can do nothing to prevent what is probably the biggest threat to the towns just south of the border--rocket attacks like those in 1981 and 1982, just before the invasion.

Even the Israeli-created security zone cannot guarantee the safety of the settlements against such attacks, since the towns are within range of the Katyusha rockets in the hands of Palestinian guerrillas and Lebanese militias operating north of the buffer zone.

Israel has publicly threatened to pursue a “scorched-earth” policy of retribution raids as far north as Beirut if such attacks occur.

In addition to threats, Israel is hoping that a largely Christian Lebanese militia, called the South Lebanon Army, and friendly civil guards in the southern-most Lebanese villages will discourage attacks.

On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces began passing out identity cards to any of the 150,000 Lebanese residents of the security zone who asked for them. The army said that its motive in issuing the cards was to allow unhampered travel for the residents within the zone and to make it easier for them to get permits to travel north.

Meanwhile, U.N. sources said there is still considerable skepticism among the Lebanese that Israel will really pull out all of its troops.

The sources said Israel is investing considerable money and material in major defensive installations about six miles north of the border crossing at Rosh Hanikra on the Mediterranean coast. “It doesn’t look to me like they’re going to pull all the way out,” one U.N. official said.

This official added that unless the Israelis withdraw completely, Amal will lose control over the situation in the south and will be unable to prevent renewed attacks.