Syria-Lebanon Pact Sparks Strong Warnings by Israel

JERUSALEM — A broad cooperation treaty between Syria and Lebanon has prompted strong warnings from Israel, where officials believe that the pact allows Syria an important new military foothold in Lebanon and threatens to upset the new strategic balance in the postwar Middle East.

The treaty, combined with reports of a recent buildup of Palestinian and Iranian-backed militia forces near the Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon, brought strong hints from Israel that it will retaliate against any threat to its security along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

“The south is increasingly armed and becoming increasingly dangerous,” government spokesman Yosef Olmert said. “We shall not allow the buildup in south Lebanon to be used against us and our vital interests. This is something that has to be made absolutely clear. . . . We are closely monitoring the situation, and we know what we have to do to protect vital security interests of Israel, if need be.”

Israel already has communicated its concerns to Washington about the new treaty, signed Wednesday by Lebanese President Elias Hrawi and Syrian President Hafez Assad, which calls for close cooperation between the two countries in security, foreign policy, economy, trade and culture.

Israeli officials compared the pact to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait and said it amounts to a Syrian takeover of Lebanon. They said the agreement effectively sanctions a permanent and unlimited Syrian military presence in Lebanon and could allow Syria to conduct air force operations or move missiles into Lebanon.

“We have a new order in this part of the world, and it isn’t a good order at all, because the Syrians are in the process of swallowing up Lebanon and in effect putting an end to Lebanese sovereignty,” Defense Minister Moshe Arens said Wednesday.

“If this new order, in quotation marks, will bring about a worsening of the security situation, a danger to the civilian population in the northern part of Israel, then this is certainly something that we don’t intend to live with,” Arens said.

At stake, from the Israeli view, is the future strategic landscape of the region in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. Having established superiority over Christian forces in Lebanon during the heat of the Gulf crisis, they say, Syria with the new treaty has the capability of including all of Lebanon within its strategic buildup against the only other remaining military power in the Middle East, Israel.

Particularly alarming to Israeli officials are Syria’s recent purchase of 300 modern, Soviet-built T-72 tanks from Czechoslovakia and its purchase of improved, extended-range Scud-C missiles from North Korea. Israeli intelligence reports indicate that Syria took delivery of 60 to 80 of the new Scud missiles in early March and is expected to receive the launchers soon.

Syria is negotiating with China to purchase M-9 ground-to-ground missiles with a range of up to 500 miles. The missiles carry a one-ton conventional warhead, compared to the quarter-ton warheads of the Soviet-made Scud-B missiles launched by the Iraqis during the Gulf War.

Against a backdrop of lagging peace negotiations in the Middle East, in which it appears that Syria would not be a partner to any proposed peace talks with Israel, Israeli officials say there are new reasons for concern about Syria’s intentions in Lebanon.

“The question is, what kind of balance is reached between the two strong elements that are left after the war? I think Lebanon is a key test of the balance of terror, or balance of interests,” said a Jerusalem-based political analyst familiar with government thinking.

Since Israel withdrew most of its forces from Lebanon in 1985 after a three-year occupation, the two sides have maintained an unofficial set of “red lines” in Lebanon under which it was understood that Syria would not move significant numbers of its 40,000 occupation troops south toward Israel or interfere with Israeli air operations in the south.

Israel, in order to protect against cross-border guerrilla incursions into northern Israel, maintains a 440-square-mile security zone in southern Lebanon patrolled by 1,000 Israeli soldiers and 3,000 members of the South Lebanon Army, armed and paid by Israel.

Syrian and Lebanese officials say the pact, signed Wednesday, represents a natural follow-up to the 1989 agreement signed in Taif, Saudi Arabia, under which Syria was expected to help the new, post-civil-war Lebanese government disarm the country’s numerous sectarian militias and extend its authority over all of Lebanon. The Taif agreement envisioned that the two countries would have a strong and special relationship, officials said.

“We say that we are one people in two separate states,” Syrian President Assad said after signing the treaty. “What is between Syria and Lebanon was not made by us. It was created by God. We have the same history, geography and blood.”

Christian leaders in Beirut denounced the treaty, saying it put Lebanon under Syrian domination and infringed on its sovereignty, but Lebanon’s Syrian-backed President Hrawi dismissed their doubts.

“To those who are expressing doubts, I say Lebanon is bigger than their doubts. With the will of everybody, Lebanon will remain a nation for all Lebanese people,” he said. The agreement must still be ratified by the parliaments of both countries.

Not all Israelis are convinced that the new cooperation pact is necessarily bad for Israel. Syria, although one of Israel’s most enduring foes, could represent a more stable force in Lebanon than the various terrorist factions. For years, the terrorists have turned Lebanon into a confusing and violent stew of guerrilla activity for which no one could seemingly be held accountable, some Israelis said.

Perhaps more important, some Israelis are arguing that allowing Syria hegemony in Lebanon effectively legitimizes Israel’s presence in the southern security zone, a kind of unspoken diplomatic tit-for-tat that could quell continuing Arab demands for complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

“Unless the Syrians decide on an all-out war, they will not try to push us from southern Lebanon,” said one Israeli analyst. “This is part of the unwritten understanding. It becomes a permanent situation.”

A focus of rising Israeli concern, however, is reports that Palestinian and Muslim guerrilla groups have stepped up their presence in southern Lebanon near the security zone.

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim organization that is believed to hold most of the Western hostages in Lebanon, is now much more heavily concentrated in areas normally dominated by the Lebanese army and by the U.N. peacekeeping force in the region, Israeli officials say.

The Palestine Liberation Organization has moved south from its stronghold in Sidon into Tyre, where there are now an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 armed PLO guerrillas, they said.

“There is definitely reinforcement of armed elements in southern Lebanon whose raison d’etre is to attack Israeli targets,” Olmert said. Any sustained increase in attacks from southern Lebanon will prompt an Israeli response, he said.

On Saturday, Israeli warplanes raided a base of the Syrian-backed Amal militia in southern Lebanon, killing an Amal leader and two suspected Palestinian terrorist commanders. Eight people were wounded in the attack.

And on Wednesday, two Lebanese women were killed and a third seriously wounded when an Israeli tank on the border of the security zone suddenly opened fire, dropping three shells into the onion field where the women were working, Israel Radio reported.

News service reports from Lebanon said the shelling was apparently in retaliation for a rocket attack from the Shiite militia-held village of Shakra against the Israeli force stationed in the buffer zone.

Israeli officials denied a CBS news report that 2,000 Israeli troops had been mobilized at the border and were crossing into Lebanon in tanks. An army spokeswoman called the report “ridiculous.” Timor Goksel, spokesman for the U.N. peace force, also said he had no knowledge of any Israeli troop movement.

Israeli officials say the agreement with Syria is alarming not in the present situation but in what it could portend for the future.

For Israel, the most important part of the agreement between Syria and Lebanon is a clause determining that a Syrian force can remain in Lebanon by agreement of both sides, and also without limitation as to place, composition or size. That provision, they believe, would allow Syria at some future point to deploy troops or missiles along the Lebanese border with Israel. Strategically, it would allow Syria to open a front against Israel from the Golan Heights to the Mediterranean Sea.

“The concern is, will they have a growing appetite in the future?” explained one analyst. “The two forces, Israel and Syria, are always looking at each other not in the context of what is happening, but what will happen next.”