Withdrawal May Bring Attack, Lebanon Warns Israel

In an apparent attempt to rattle Israeli leaders, Lebanon’s defense minister said a unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon could put Syrian troops on Israel’s northern border and bring Tel Aviv within Syrian rocket range.

The deployment of Syrian troops in southern Lebanon is considered highly unlikely, but Defense Minister Ghazi Zaytar’s comments late Friday appeared aimed at fueling fears that Israeli leaders already have about a withdrawal without a prior agreement with Syria.

Israel wants Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon, to rein in guerrillas in southern Lebanon but has said it will withdraw by July even without a deal. Beirut and Damascus oppose a unilateral withdrawal and want it to take place within the context of an overall peace deal.

At a symposium in southern Lebanon, Zaytar raised the scenario of Syrian troops moving into the void left by Israeli troops. Some excerpts of the speech were broadcast on television Saturday. The excerpts did not diverge from the prepared text of his speech.

“Asking Syrian forces, which are legally stationed here, to accompany the Lebanese army to the vacated areas would be one of the important possibilities in case of such an Israeli [troop] redeployment,” Zaytar said.

“And it would not be difficult for any normal person to understand that this would bring Tel Aviv within the range of Syrian missiles,” he added.

An official statement from Zaytar late Saturday said his words about Syrian deployment toward the border with Israel were taken out of context.

The prepared text indicated that Zaytar was analyzing Israeli leaders’ concerns about the possibility that, with a unilateral withdrawal, Lebanon could ask Syria for help.

Syria has had 30,000 troops in much of Lebanon since 1976. Some are deployed in Sidon, on the coast 37 miles north of the border, and in the southeastern Bekaa Valley, 18 miles north of the border. Syria has not tried to move farther south.

The Lebanese government hasn’t said what it will do if Israel pulls out of the 9-mile-deep border zone it has occupied for two decades--even whether it will send the Lebanese army to fill the vacuum.

In Israel, Trade and Industry Minister Ran Cohen described Zaytar’s comments as a Lebanese-Syrian attempt to keep the border tense while avoiding peace talks. “This is a trick and an evasion of responsibility by the Lebanese government in connivance with the Syrian government,” he said Saturday.

If Israel pulls out of southern Lebanon, Syria would be deprived of a card in its on-and-off negotiations with the Jewish state for the return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War.