Debate Over Pullout From Lebanon Roils Israel

As yet another Israeli soldier was killed Sunday on Lebanese soil, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to halt the growing call for Israel to end its costly occupation of southern Lebanon.

The latest death, in a predawn attack on an Israeli army outpost by Iranian-backed Lebanese guerrillas, hit home in a nation that has been burying the victims of last week’s triple suicide bombings in central Jerusalem and a disastrous Israeli commando raid in Lebanon.

Four people were killed along with the bombers in Thursday’s attack in Jerusalem; a few hours later, 12 soldiers died in the botched Lebanon operation.

As the Israeli Cabinet convened to discuss the latest attack and last week’s double blow, politicians from across the spectrum--including such longtime hawks as Cabinet Minister Ariel Sharon--called on the government to reexamine the policy that keeps about 1,000 Israeli troops inside Lebanon.

But Netanyahu tried to quell the growing debate, telling his ministers that their “rash” discussion of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon could provoke further attacks by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, according to a Cabinet statement.

The government insists that Israel must continue to occupy a 9-mile-deep swath along the Lebanese border to protect northern Israeli communities from cross-border attacks by Hezbollah and other Islamic militants, though the military losses from this occupation, especially recently, have far exceeded any harm caused to civilians by rocket attacks or raids.

“I’d be the first to want to leave Lebanon, but I don’t want to leave it in such a way that Lebanon follows me into the north of Israel,” Netanyahu told Fox Television in an interview Sunday.

Still, the push for a Lebanon pullout is growing--and in some surprising quarters.

Sharon--a hard-line former general who spearheaded Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon with thousands of troops and was forced to resign as defense minister after a massacre in Palestinian refugee camps--suggested in a commentary published Sunday that he might support a withdrawal from Lebanon, even in the absence of a peace agreement with Syria.

Syria, with more than 35,000 troops in Lebanon, is the main powerbroker there and is a key backer of Hezbollah.

Writing in the daily Yediot Aharonot, Sharon said the government had two options: To use its air force for increased attacks in Lebanon or “to withdraw from southern Lebanon, on the basis of our own decision and timetable . . . without any political negotiation between ourselves and Syria.”

Foreign Minister David Levy also called for a “thorough assessment” of the situation in Lebanon, and several Cabinet ministers asked for a special session to discuss the matter.

Meanwhile, encouraged by a poll showing that more than half of Israelis support the idea of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, opposition Labor Party legislator Yossi Beilin announced this weekend that he will form a political movement to urge an immediate pullout. One natural constituency is likely to be the mothers of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, many of whom have come out publicly in recent months in favor of such a withdrawal.

“More and more people are beginning to understand that we cannot go on like this,” Beilin said.

But not all members of the Israeli left support the idea, any more than the Israeli right uniformly opposes it. Yossi Sarid, leader of the leftist Meretz Party, on Sunday repeated his rejection of the idea of a unilateral pullout. Given Syria’s key role in Lebanon, Sarid said, Israel must reach a peace agreement with Damascus before calling its soldiers home.

Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon was based on the idea that control of the border area was crucial to protect civilians in northern Israel from attack. The strip, which Israel describes as its security zone, was established in 1985 when the majority of Israel’s troops pulled back across the border.

But many are growing impatient with the mounting toll in Lebanon, with commentators increasingly comparing Israel’s role there with that of the United States in Vietnam. With the suicide bombings in a pedestrian mall and vegetable market in Jerusalem, the losses in Lebanon have left Israelis feeling depressed and vulnerable, their confidence shaken in the ability of the Israeli military and security forces to protect residents near the border and in Israel’s largest cities.

“It is as though Israel has lost its magic touch,” columnist Hemi Shalev wrote Sunday in the daily Maariv newspaper. “We have become a kind of King Midas in reverse, whose touch ruins everything.”

The latest casualty in Lebanon--a 22-year-old lieutenant killed in a mortar attack on his post early Sunday--occurred all too soon for Israelis after last week’s devastating loss of 10 Israeli fighters and a combat doctor in the failed raid. A 12th soldier is missing and presumed dead. So far this year, 30 Israeli soldiers have been killed across the border, and 73 others died in the crash of two Lebanon-bound helicopters in February.

David Bar-Illan, a key Netanyahu advisor, said a preliminary investigation into the deaths of the commandos pointed to an accident--an initial explosion mistakenly set off by one of the soldiers--as the primary cause of the fatalities. But Israeli television news reported that investigators believed that most of the soldiers were wounded by explosions and gunfire from the guerrillas.

The Lebanon debate, which dominated radio talk shows here Sunday, came amid other, equally troubling discussions--within the government and outside it--about the future of Israel’s 4-year-old peace process with the Palestinians.

After Thursday’s triple bombing in Jerusalem--the second deadly attack here in just over a month--Netanyahu said he would no longer honor Israel’s commitments to transfer more territory to the Palestinian Authority, as long as it refused to act more forcefully against Islamic extremist groups.

The Israeli army and security forces over the weekend rounded up more than 100 Palestinians suspected of involvement in militant groups, bringing the total number of arrests since the triple bombing to about 170.

But there is no indication that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat plans to act on Israel’s demands for a sweeping crackdown, what with the arrests of fewer than a dozen activists of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas reported in recent days.

An offshoot of Hamas claimed responsibility for Thursday’s mall bombings and for the July 30 market attack. But Netanyahu said he holds Arafat “indirectly responsible” for the bombings because he has failed to break the infrastructure of the militant groups.

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Arafat and other Palestinian officials, in turn, have accused Netanyahu of trying to destroy the failing peace process, which is based on the formula of trading land for peace.

At a summit in Cairo on Sunday, Arafat and Egyptian and Jordanian leaders demanded that Netanyahu fulfill Israel’s treaty commitments with the Palestinians, especially the return of occupied lands.

The attacks, and the mounting rhetoric, are likely to make even more difficult the daunting task facing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who is to arrive in Israel on Wednesday.

She has said that her two-day visit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the beginning of a weeklong swing through the region, is aimed at getting the peace process back on track.

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Israel’s Security Zone in Lebanon * What is the security zone?

It is a 9-mile-deep swath along the Lebanese side of the Israeli-Lebanese border patrolled by about 1,000 Israeli soldiers and by 2,500 allied militiamen called the South Lebanon Army.

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* What is its purpose

Israel set up the zone in 1985 as it withdrew from other portions of Lebanon it had occupied during a 1982 invasion. The zone is designed to try to protect Israel’s northern settlements from cross-border guerrilla raids and rocket attacks.

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* Who are the Isralis Fighting?

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, or Party of God, and the Amal militia have led the campaign to try to dislodge Israel and its militia allies from southern Lebanon.

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* What does Israel want?

Israeli officials in the past have said they will not withdraw troops from southern Lebanon until they gain a peace treaty with Lebanon and Syria. Syria dominates affairs in Lebanon and maintains 35,000 troops there.