Says Lewis Didn’t Lie About Invasion : State Dept. Backs Envoy in Disputing Sharon Story

A new debate has erupted over Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the State Department made the unusual move Friday of stepping in to rebut charges made by former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel W. Lewis touched off the furor by disclosing that Sharon had told American diplomats in December, 1981--six months before the war began--that he was considering a massive invasion of Lebanon that would include an assault on the capital of Beirut.

The United States objected vehemently to the idea, Lewis said.

His account confirmed earlier reports that Sharon had discussed his plans with the Americans before some members of Israel’s Cabinet knew of them and called into question the contentions of some U.S. officials that they knew nothing of Israel’s invasion plans beforehand.

Sharon, now Israel’s minister of trade and commerce, accused Lewis of lying. “What Samuel Lewis said, to say it in a nice way, are things that have no truth,” he said.

That prompted the State Department to issue an unusual statement in defense of its ambassador. “We can confirm that Ambassador Lewis has described the U.S. position on this matter with complete accuracy,” spokesman Edward Djerejian said Friday. “We strongly object to any suggestion to the contrary.”

A senior State Department official said later that Sharon had presented the invasion scenario to U.S. presidential envoy Philip C. Habib on Dec. 14, 1981, as “his personal concepts” and that Habib’s response was “vehement, official and negative.”

Following that meeting, the official said, “the U.S. government was in frequent contact with the Israelis at all levels . . . seeking assurances that Israel would not invade.” Another official said President Reagan sent a personal message to then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin urging him to exercise restraint.

But Begin’s Cabinet approved the invasion on June 5, 1982, the day before it took place, after a Palestinian terrorist shot Israel’s ambassador to London. “There was no prior knowledge by the U.S. government of the decision to go to war,” the senior State Department official said, although he acknowledged that it was clear “that military action was likely.”

At the time, Begin said the invasion was intended to penetrate only 40 kilometers (25 miles) into Lebanon, to eliminate Palestinian guerrilla positions that had bombarded northern Israel. After the Israeli army pushed beyond that line to Beirut, Sharon and others contended that they were merely responding to the tactical situation on the ground--an explanation initially echoed by then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.

‘A Hypothetical Plan’

Lewis first disclosed the details of Sharon’s 1981 meeting with Habib in an Israeli television interview broadcast Thursday and repeated the account in a meeting with American reporters in Tel Aviv on Friday. The basic elements of the meeting were disclosed in a 1984 book by Israeli journalists Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, but had never been officially confirmed until now.

“Sharon did present a hypothetical plan of a Lebanese intervention,” Lewis said Friday. “It was not a detailed operational plan, but clearly presented what came to become Operation Big Pine ,” the military code name for the attempt to drive the Palestine Liberation Organization out of Beirut and install a pro-Israeli regime.

Lewis said he did not attend the meeting, but reviewed notes taken by two of his assistants who were present.

‘Tried to Head Off’ War

“We tried to head off the outbreak of war in Lebanon,” the ambassador said in carefully chosen phrases. “We were unsuccessful.”

Lewis and other U.S. officials were emphatic in insisting that the Reagan Administration tried to dissuade Begin from invading Lebanon and gave no “green light” to the attack.

In May, 1982, they said, Sharon met with Haig in Washington and again outlined the idea of a drive to Beirut. Lewis said Haig told Sharon that while no country could dictate to another how it defended its own people, Israel should be certain its actions were “commensurate in the eyes of the international community with the threat.”

Haig and other U.S. officials have since said that this was intended as another warning against an invasion, but according to some Israeli reports, Sharon chose to interpret it as U.S. support for an attack that could be portrayed as a limited action.

Sharon Faults Lewis

Sharon charged Thursday that Lewis, who is leaving Israel next week after eight years as ambassador, was “the main architect” of “the Americans’ failure in Lebanon.” Sharon has long complained that the United States should have directly supported continued Israeli army action in Lebanon to destroy Palestinian and Muslim forces and to prop up a pro-Israeli Christian regime.

In his remarks Friday, Lewis said he considered the invasion “not just as a misadventure, but as a tragedy . . . and certainly a damaging episode for the United States.” After the invasion, the United States sent Marines to Lebanon in an attempt to support the government there but withdrew them after about 300 were killed in terrorist attacks and guerrilla combat.

Asked who was responsible for the debacle, Lewis indirectly blamed Sharon, its designer and major proponent, but also faulted the Reagan Administration for failing to restrain the Israelis.

‘Basic Misconceptions’

“It was a failure largely because of basic misconceptions from the start and the failure along the way by various parties, including ourselves,” he said.

He said the war in Lebanon had also seriously damaged the prospects for an overall Middle East settlement, which he said seemed promising in 1981. The war “made it impossible for Israel or the United States or Jordan to seek a way to continue progress,” he said. In that sense alone, he added, “Lebanon was a great setback.”

Lewis also told reporters that “time is begining to run” on the chances for a peace settlement, although he said he saw “some very modest hope” that Israeli-Jordanian negotiations could soon begin with the participation of Palestinian representatives.

Doyle McManus reported from Washington and Kenneth Freed from Tel Aviv.