In Lebanon, Life and a Hatred of Israel Go On

This is a country under threat of war? The airport is crowded with travelers coming into, not leaving, Lebanon. Elegant, bejeweled women play cards in the luxurious lobby of the Vendome Hotel. Young people party at the Hard Rock Cafe and stroll nonchalantly on the famous corniche overlooking the Mediterranean.

Despite three consecutive nights of Israeli bombing raids and the destruction of three key power plants in response to growing attacks by Hezbollah fighters, the Lebanese do not appear to be in a mood to bow to Israeli demands that their country restrain the Shiite Muslim group.

The dimmed lights over much of the country notwithstanding, most Lebanese sound all the more determined to continue on the path of resistance to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that has lasted more than 20 years, especially with expectations growing that their perseverance is paying off and that the Israelis will have no option but to withdraw from their land.

Warned by Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy on Wednesday that “the soil of Lebanon will burn” if Hezbollah dares to fire rockets into northern Israel, Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss was dismissive.

“The threats we heard . . . are not new. They represent Israeli terrorism which Lebanon has been subjected to, beginning with occupation and ending with bombardment and murder,” he said in a statement. “In making these threats, he reminds us of the genocide mentality that characterized Nazism in Hitler’s time.”

Political analyst Tewfik Mishlawi said the Israeli bombings, after two decades, just don’t cut it anymore with most Lebanese.

“I think it is having less and less effect because maybe they are getting used to it, or they have become indoctrinated that this is what they have to face in order to have their land liberated,” he said.

The Lebanese government believes it is on strong moral ground, in part because Hezbollah has refrained from firing its Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.

By not attacking Israel, Hezbollah is viewed here as having abided by the April 1996 agreement hammered out at the end of Israel’s “Operation Grapes of Wrath.” That air, sea and artillery campaign, also launched with the stated aim of compelling Lebanon to restrain Hezbollah, drove an estimated 500,000 Lebanese from their homes in the south of the country and killed 200 people.

The agreement--which had maintained a modicum of order along the border for the past four years--obliged both sides to confine their combat to the occupied zone of Lebanon and to avoid any attacks on civilian areas.

To the Lebanese, therefore, the Hezbollah assaults that have killed six Israeli servicemen on Lebanese soil in the last two weeks were fully in keeping with the rules--while Israel’s response of bombing civilian power stations deep inside Lebanon was a clear violation.

Israel, however, disputes that it was the first to abrogate the agreement, accusing Hezbollah of mounting its recent attacks on Israeli forces from within civilian settlements, which Hezbollah has denied.

In Washington on Wednesday, President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright blamed Hezbollah for the deteriorating situation.

“I think it is clear that the [Israeli] bombing is a reaction to the deaths in two separate instances of Israeli soldiers,” Clinton said. “What we need to do is to stop the violence and start the peace process again, and we’re doing our best to get it started.”

At a separate event in Washington, Albright seemed to justify the Israeli attacks.

“Basically, what the Israelis have done is to send a very strong signal about the fact that they don’t want this escalating,” she said. “They are hitting power stations, and I think that they are sending a very strong signal.”

Mishlawi, the analyst, suggested that even if Israel takes another course and mounts a stronger bombing campaign, it is unlikely to deter the Lebanese majority from supporting Hezbollah.

“The people have been convinced by their leaders that there is no going back, there is no submission to Israeli demands,” he said, although they know that it means enduring “darkness, infrastructure destruction and all sorts of things.”

“People are not very happy about that, but they are gradually realizing that this is the price to pay,” said Mishlawi, who publishes the Middle East Reporter newsletter from Beirut. As a result, “the Hezbollah operations are getting wider and wider sympathy and support.”

The immediate effect of the bombings has been to severely reduce electrical supplies at a time when Lebanon was just getting back to normal from earlier Israeli strikes, both last summer and in 1996.

Power was cut off completely to some areas around Tripoli and Baalbek, while in Beirut many neighborhoods are getting electricity only a few hours a day as authorities try to ration supply.

Some residents said they saw the timing of the raids--the same week in which Beirut had scheduled a shopping festival designed to restore some of its prewar allure as an international travel destination--as highly suspect.

“They always choose just the right time to do it,” said Rula Nasir, a British teacher now living in Lebanon.

Despite the outward bravado shown by many Lebanese in the face of the bombings, Nasir said she senses that her Lebanese students are very nervous, even terrified, because they see Israel as unpredictable and vindictive.

But that just makes the Lebanese more defiant, said her colleague Irfan Rahman, also British. “They just hate the Israelis more and more every time,” he said.

Along Hamra Street, the main avenue of downtown Beirut, it was business as usual Wednesday night, with some shops, bars and restaurants open until midnight.

Rafak Rizik, proprietor of the Roi de Frites sandwich shop, said he could keep operating normally because he had a generator.

“No one is afraid,” the white-haired man asserted from behind his cash register. “We lived in a 17-year civil war, so this is nothing.”

Judging from newspaper commentary Wednesday, some people are viewing the latest round of conflict with Israel as a necessary catalyst to get the real game going: resumed negotiations between Syria and Israel for a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal both from Lebanon and the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967.

“It is clear that neither Syria nor Israel wants to halt the negotiations,” Mahmoud Souaid wrote in Beirut’s Al Mustaqbal daily. “Both sides will take care not to let the mutual acts of pressure go beyond the sphere of controlled calculations.”

He even suggested that Syrian President Hafez Assad might do what the Israelis are demanding--rein in Hezbollah--when it suits his purposes to bring the Israelis back to the negotiating table.

“The resistance doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Its political calculations--and actions on the battlefield--have to take into account [Syria’s] current political needs,” Souaid said.

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Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.

* CLAMORING FOR A PULLOUT

Israeli commentators, politicians and even troops called for withdrawal from Lebanon. A16