Gemayel Narrowly Escapes Injury When Rockets Strike Palace Office

Lebanese President Amin Gemayel narrowly escaped injury Wednesday when rockets fired from a Muslim area struck his private office at the presidential palace in suburban Baabda.

The office and a reception room were wrecked and the president, who was eating lunch in an adjacent dining room, was showered with glass, palace spokesmen reported. The building sustained “considerable material damage,” but no one was hurt, according to Beirut radio.

Police also reported that in neighboring Yarze, two shells exploded a few yards from the main entrance to U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew’s residence. No casualties or damage were reported.

Half an hour after the incident at the palace, Gemayel left for Damascus for summit talks with Syrian President Hafez Assad. They were expected to discuss Lebanon’s future in the wake of fighting in Beirut’s Palestinian refugee camps and the imminent completion of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

British Teacher Killed

Meanwhile, in the mainly Muslim sector of the capital, officials at the American University of Beirut reported that a British teacher employed at the university has been found dead, shot six times in the head.

The terrorist group known as Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) said it killed the educator, identified as Denis Hill, adding that he had attempted to escape from its forces.

Islamic Jihad, a Shia Muslim group loyal to Iran, also said it carried out the kidnaping Tuesday of David P. Jacobsen of Huntington Beach, Calif., director of the American University Hospital here. The group added in a telephone call to news agencies that it abducted two French journalists missing since Sunday.

The trip to Damascus by Lebanon’s Christian president for his ninth summit conference with Assad reflects the growing role that Syria is now playing in Lebanese internal politics. Lebanon’s Muslim leaders visited Assad a week ago for similar talks.

As the Voice of Lebanon, the radio station of Gemayel’s Christian Falangist Party, remarked Wednesday, this summit is “considered particularly ticklish” because of the fighting taking place in the three main Palestinian refugee camps just south of Beirut.

More Than 400 Killed

The fighting began May 15, and its immediate cause is in dispute. Forces of the Shia Muslim militia Amal are besieging Palestinian guerrillas holed up in the camps of Sabra, Chatilla and Borj el Brajne. More than 400 people have been reported killed.

Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal and a close protege of Syrian President Assad, said that Amal wants the camps placed under Lebanese authority to prevent the Palestine Liberation Organization from re-establishing a political power base in Beirut, which was the case before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon three years ago.

The Shia militia is apparently concerned that PLO activity could trigger new Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Syria has blamed the fighting on PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s efforts to gain a foothold in the Lebanese camps. The state-owned Damascus newspaper Tishrin commented Wednesday, for instance, that Syria “wanted to put out the fire lit by Yasser Arafat.”

Assad has been at odds with Arafat since 1983, but the antipathy has intensified since Arafat signed an agreement with Jordan’s King Hussein to coordinate peace moves toward Israel.

Problems for Syria

The fighting in the camps has proved an embarrassment for Syria, however, because reports of massacres in the camps have rallied a number of prominent Arabs to Arafat’s cause.

In addition, members of a Palestinian anti-Arafat alliance known as the National Salvation Front, set up in Damascus with Syrian assistance, have joined Palestinians in the camps in battling the Shia militiamen, creating the spectacle of two nominal allies of Syria slowly devastating each other.

More than a dozen shells fired by the anti-Arafat Palestinians fell on Beirut’s airport Wednesday and others dropped on the mainly Shia suburbs, reportedly in an effort to relieve the pressure on the camps.

A Lebanese analyst suggested Wednesday that the fighting in the camps may paradoxically be related to the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which is expected to be completed in the next few days.

The Shias, who predominate in southern Lebanon, have despised the Palestinians for years because of the power they exercised over their areas and the retaliation that they provoked from Israel.

Message to Israelis

According to the Lebanese source, the Syrians know that the Israelis, who launched their invasion of Lebanon in 1982 ostensibly to rid this country of Palestinian fighters, are watching the battle in the camps very carefully.

If the Syrians provide all-out support for Amal and Berri, this thinking goes, that may convince Israel that it no longer need to depend on the South Lebanon Army, a ragtag Israeli-sponsored militia in southern Lebanon, to defend the border area against Palestinian attack because Amal will do the job.

On the other hand, the analyst said, Syrian support of Berri might cause the Israelis to boost support for the South Lebanon Army and its commander, Maj. Gen. Antoine Lahad.

In addition to the problems of the “war of the camps” and the Israeli withdrawal, Assad and Gemayel will reportedly discuss plans to send Lebanese army troops to the embattled town of Jezzine, where South Lebanon Army troops are holding out with thousands of Christian refugees against encircling Muslim forces.

Syrian Troops

Gemayel is also expected to discuss with Assad the current speculation in Beirut that Syria will send troops further into Lebanon. Officials in Damascus have generally dismissed the report. Syrian forces now occupy part of the Bekaa Valley in the eastern section of Lebanon.

Assad, for his part, is reportedly interested in moving ahead with political reforms that would end Christian domination of the country’s politics.