From: UPI
Subject: Israelis weigh painful options in Lebanon
Reply-To: ayman@umich.edu
Organization: United Press International
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:55:45 GMT
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	JERUSALEM (UPI) -- As the army continued beefing up its troop presence
along the Lebanese border Wednesday, Israeli leaders pondered the
hazards of another plunge into a country they refer to as ``the morass.''
	Witnesses in southern Lebanon said some 600 Israeli soldiers backed
by 80 Israeli-made Merkava tanks, military vehicles and heavy artillery
crossed the Lebanese border beginning at dawn into the ``security zone''
border strip. 
	Israel established the security zone in 1985 with the stated
intention of stopping attacks on its northern border towns.
	But after repeated barrages of Soviet-made Katyusha rockets crashed
into northern Israel Monday and Tuesday in an escalation of tensions
with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia, leaders from both the right and
left wing of the political spectrum agreed that the 9-mile-deep zone was
not enough to secure the vulnerable Galilee panhandle.
	Where the politicians differed was whether the additional security
steps should be diplomatic or military.
	The government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has sought to strike a
balance between the two, protesting the Hezbollah attacks to Syria and
Lebanon at the Arab-Israeli peace talks in Washington, while massing
troops and issuing tough statements that a ground offensive would be
used to stop Hezbollah if the warnings did not.
	``As in the past, the government will decide whether to act, when to
act and how to act,'' Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur told the
Knesset, Israel's parliament. ``In order to defeat terror we will use
the ways and means we deem appropriate,'' he said.
	Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, meanwhile, said Israel was determined
not to allow the Lebanese tensions to upset the fragile Arab-Israeli
talks.
	``You must act against Hezbollah using the appropriate means and
conduct the peace talks with the sides interested in peace,'' he said.
	In addition to their concern that a major military operation could
cripple the talks, the specter of Israel's disastrous 1982 invasion of
Lebanon seemed to hover over the country's decision-makers.
	It was the threat of Katyushas that provided the official reason for
the invasion, ordered by the hard-line government of Menachem Begin. The
move spun beyond an offensive against Katyusha-firing Palestinian
guerrillas into a full-blown war. It culminated in a massacre of
Palestinians by Israel's Lebanese Christian allies in the Sabra and
Shatilla refugee camps.
	And ultimately it failed to resolve the Katyusha problem, as
Hezbollah replaced the Palestine Liberation Organization as a major
force in the south. Six hundred and fifty-seven Israelis lost their
lives in the fighting, which left scars on Israeli society similar to
those incurred during America's experience in Vietnam.
	``The situation today is not similar,'' Peres said. ``Then the
problem was with Palestinians and the PLO. Hezbollah is smaller and more
integrated with the civilian population. We have to adjust our means to
the new situation.''
	Rafael Eitan, hard-line leader of the Tsomet party, says another
ground operation offering the only lasting hope of stopping the rocket
barrages.
	``As long as our settlements are in danger and our children are in
danger we have to expand the security zone so they (Hezbollah) will not
be able to fire,'' said Eitan, who was Israel's army chief during the
1982 war.
	Getting Syria, whose army controls wide areas of Lebanon, to curb
Hezbollah will be no simple matter, according to Moshe Maoz, an academic
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
	``Hezbollah has a lot of motivation to fight, especially against the
security zone,'' he said. ``The Syrians take advantage of this to give
Israel the message that only they can stop Hezbollah on condition that
Israel pay a price named the Golan Heights.''
	Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 war, and
has refused to specify withdrawal arrangements from the strategic
plateau until Damascus expresses its readiness to sign a peace treaty.
	But Yanush Ben-Gal, a general who served under Eitan during the 1982
war, urged that diplomatic means be used this time to defuse the
Katyusha threat. ``The courage of showing restraint,'' he said, ``is
often a greater thing than the courage to go into battle.''

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