I The Results of the P.L.O.’s Decisions
Once the P.L.O. finally decided to accept Habib’s terms at the end of July the consequences of this decision began to take shape. Strictly speaking, these are not part of the story of P.L.O. decisionmaking during the 1982 war: once the Palestinians had made their decision, events left their hands and took their own course. But because of the great importance for the Palestinians and the P.L.O. of some of the consequences which ensued, they must at least be touched on.
These consequences included negotiations with Philip Habib to secure U.S. guarantees for the safety of the Palestinian civilian population after the withdrawal of P.L.O. forces from Beirut; the intense Israeli military pressure applied throughout the last few weeks of the negotiations; the conclusion of the U.S.-Israeli-P.L.O.-Lebanese agreement and the evacuation of P.L.O. and Syrian forces from Beirut; and finally the flagrant violations of these accords which followed soon afterward. Most notable among these violations were the Israeli army’s invasion of Beirut after the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, and the subsequent Sabra/Shatila massacres of September 16–18.
For Palestinians who remained in Lebanon, and for those who departed with the P.L.O. evacuation, the momentous events of the preceding months were overshadowed by the massacres, the betrayal of the assurances for the safety of the Palestinian civilian population made by Habib, Israel, and the Phalangists, and the failure of the P.L.O. leadership to secure the guarantees for which it had held out so long. It is impossible to deal fully with these important topics here, for together they constitute the beginning of what is in effect another narrative: that of the Palestinians and the P.L.O. after the 1982 war. A brief discussion of them will nevertheless serve both as an epilogue to this account of wartime decisionmaking, and as an introduction to the story of the uncertain world which faces the Palestinian people in the wake of the war—a story which remains to be told.
II U.S. Guarantees for the Safety of Palestinian Civilians
From an early stage in their negotiations with the United States, P.L.O. negotiators were preoccupied with securing firm guarantees for the security of the Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in Beirut who would be left at the mercy of the Israeli army and its Lebanese allies after a P.L.O. evacuation. Concern about this problem was heightened by the harsh behavior of Israeli forces toward Palestinian civilians in occupied South Lebanon, and by the massacres of Druze civilians in the Shouf in late June by the LF after the IDF facilitated their entry into the region. This preoccupation eventually became a central focus of the concerns of the P.L.O. leadership.
Although the P.L.O.’s 11-point plan of early July was seen as no more than a negotiating ploy to stave off inevitable concessions to Israel and the United States, its terms were inspired largely by a desire to secure ironclad guarantees for the safety of the P.L.O. civilian population in the context of a full or partial P.L.O. evacuation. Among the provisions designed to achieve this end were those calling for Israeli withdrawal five miles from Beirut, for international guarantees for the safety of the Palestinian camps, and for the establishment of a U.N.-controlled (rather than U.S.-dominated) buffer force between the two sides. In the end, the balance of forces between the P.L.O. and Israel, and the stubborn resistance of the U.S. to any scheme which did not give it a central role, doomed this proposal. But P.L.O. leaders and Palestinians in Beirut felt strongly that this approach would have provided far more solid guarantees for their safety than the one being proposed by the U.S.
Even before they finally reconciled themselves to the fact that their own 11-point plan was unrealizable, the P.L.O. leadership set about obtaining clear and unequivocal guarantees from Philip Habib. This was an exceedingly difficult task for many reasons. One was that the U.S. envoy was being asked to guarantee not the behavior of his own country, but rather that of its most independent-minded ally, Israel, and of the Phalangist-dominated Lebanese Forces. Neither had a reputation for responsiveness to the pleas of Americans or others for good behavior when the well-being of Palestinian civilians was at stake.
In the minds of those on the Palestinian side throughout these negotiations was the specter of Tal al-Za‘tar. There, after a three-month siege, and in spite of the collapse of the camp’s defenses and the presence on the scene of representatives of the International Red Cross, the Lebanese right-wing militias had perpetrated a large-scale massacre on August 12, 1976. Many hundreds of people had been killed after the fall of the camp, nearly all of them noncombatants.
1 In view of this tragic history, what the Palestinians feared was that after the departure of P.L.O. forces the IDF would allow these same militias to finish in the refugee camps of Beirut in 1982 what they had started at Tal al-Za‘atar and other Palestinian camps in 1976.
After repeated, insistent P.L.O. requests, Habib eventually expressed his government’s willingness in principle to provide the required guarantees regarding the safety of the camp population. However, as late as August 2, the P.L.O. transmitted to Paris the draft of a 13-point plan received from Habib which failed to clarify the nature of these guarantees. By its terms, rather than having clearly specified responsibilities for the protection of Palestinian camps the projected multinational forces [MNF] were to perform “such duties as were assigned by the Lebanese government,” and were to arrive only after the P.L.O. evacuation had begun, leaving a period of dangerous vulnerability to Israeli moves before their arrival.
2Finally, in answer to a Palestinian proposal dated August 3, which insisted on definite U.S. guarantees as part of any evacuation accord, Habib responded positively. The text of the U.S. message, the first documentary evidence which could be found explicitly offering such guarantees, reads: “Regarding U.S. Government guarantees as regards security for the departing Palestinian forces along with the security of the camps. Comment: We will provide these guarantees.” The P.L.O. was clearly satisfied, responding immediately: “We record the importance of the U.S. provision of guarantees … ensuring the safety of Palestinian camps.”
3Even after this major hurdle had been cleared, a variety of other important details remained to be worked out between the U.S., Israel, and the P.L.O. Among them was the issue of when the MNF was to arrive, a serious matter in view of the P.L.O.’s fear that the Israelis might try to exploit any gap between the commencement of a P.L.O. departure and an MNF arrival to finish off their enemies. The principle of MNF arrival simultaneously with the commencement of the P.L.O.’s departure was finally accepted by the U.S. on August 4. This same day witnessed the last major Israeli attempt to advance, combined with intense bombardments of West Beirut. Because of the fierceness of the Israeli attacks, communications between East and West Beirut were repeatedly interrupted. As a result, both Brigadier Qureitem, the main Lebanese military intermediary between the P.L.O. and Habib, and former Premier Sa’eb Salam had difficulties in relaying important proposals to the U.S. side, and reported this to the P.L.O.
4Nevertheless, by August 4 agreement had been reached on the points of contention. This was summed up in a U.S. memo of that date to the P.L.O. which stated: “We appear to be in agreement on U.S. assurances about the safety of … the camps … Points of Agreement [include] U.S. guarantees governing the safe passage of the departing Palestinian forces as well as the Palestinian camps.” A later memo added: “We also reaffirm the assurances of the United States as regards safety and security … for the camps in Beirut.”
5 The final text of the agreement, finalized on August 11 (and only slightly modified in its final published form of an exchange of notes between the Lebanese and U.S. governments on August 18 and 20) put the U.S. security guarantees for the camps as follows:
Law-abiding Palestinian non-combatants remaining in Beirut, including the families of those who have departed, will be authorized to live in peace and security. The Lebanese and U.S. governments will provide appropriate security guarantees … The U.S. will provide its guarantees on the basis of assurances received from the government of Israel and from the leaders of certain Lebanese groups with which it has been in contact.
6
III The Effect of Israeli Military Pressure
Guarantees for the camps had been the main thing the P.L.O. was seeking after a certain point in the negotiations. Once they had been received, and once the other matters at issue (such as the arrival date for the MNF) had been settled, nothing stood in the way of the finalization of the accord on P.L.O. evacuation, an end to the siege, and a peaceful resolution of the crisis—nothing, that is, except the apparent desire of Sharon and the IDF to prevent a negotiated evacuation of P.L.O. forces from taking place at all.
Such concerns about Sharon’s intentions were not confined to Palestinians, who had every reason to be suspicious of him. They were shared by many observers at the time, including Habib himself. He declared in a postwar interview that it was his belief that Sharon always wanted to enter West Beirut, planning to avoid a politically unacceptable level of IDF casualties by using Phalangist military forces in the assault if they could be persuaded to go along.
7Habib added: “Sharon wanted to get the P.L.O. fighting men. He would love to have gotten them, and he had a pretty broad definition of fighting men, including the political cadre.” Habib stated that he strongly believed that Sharon would have aborted the evacuation agreement had he been able to. This he would have done via his usual tactic for disrupting the negotiations, as described by the U.S. negotiator: “Sharon didn’t want a ceasefire. He would find a reason to move, the other side would fire, and shooting would start again.”
8These repeated Israeli escalations, whether intended to interrupt the negotiations or not, were described as an obstacle to his efforts by Habib: “I did not feel the shelling and bombing were helpful. The P.L.O. had made its decision [by late July in his estimation], and it was not necessary.”
9 Although the P.L.O. was convinced that, on many occasions, Israeli military pressure was used by Habib as a lever to extract concessions, according to the U.S. envoy himself this was not always the case. Speaking more than two years after the event, Habib stated that it had been his belief that Sharon had some sort of understanding with Haig over Lebanon. He added that until the former Secretary’s departure from the State Department, he found it exceedingly hard to move Washington to restrain Israel or to support his own efforts.
10 Perhaps not coincidentally, Haig’s departure from his post toward the end of the first week of July marked the beginning of a period of relative restraint on the part of the Israelis, who did not use their air force for several weeks, and made no attempts to advance on the ground until the last ten days of July.
It was toward the end of this latter period, when Habib argued that the P.L.O. had finally come around to accepting the basic outlines of the U.S. plan (a conclusion which is supported by most of the evidence presented in the preceding pages) that he felt his efforts were most obstructed by Sharon’s obstinate desire to win an absolute victory over the Palestinians. The impression left by Habib’s remarks is that Washington was incapable of stopping Sharon, even after the departure of his ally Haig, without the direct intervention of the President with Begin.
11 This did not take place until August 12, at the end of a three-week crescendo of Israeli escalation, and following a day of nonstop aerial bombardment of West Beirut.
In terms of stated U.S. and Israeli objectives, the suffering inflicted on the city and its inhabitants in the course of this application of Israeli pressure against the P.L.O. was totally unnecessary, since these objectives had been met once the P.L.O. accepted the Habib plan in late July. This is the inescapable conclusion from the remarks of Habib himself, and was apparent to many observers at the time. Not surprisingly, the Israelis then and their defenders since have argued that far from obstructing Habib’s efforts, the IDF was supporting them with its military pressure.
12 As is clear from Habib’s own words, this self-serving argument is baseless.
According to Hani al-Hassan, quite the contrary was true: far from rendering the Palestinians more amenable to U.S. or Israeli terms, military pressure markedly increased their unwillingness to compromise. He affirmed further that it became a conscious policy of the P.L.O. negotiators to withhold concessions when they were under heavy Israeli attack (he cited as examples June 25 or July 4, when previous P.L.O. concessions were withdrawn). Conversely, the P.L.O. would moderate its demands in periods of calm, such as during the relative lull which followed the failure of the Israelis to advance at the airport and the Museum in early July (at which point al-Hassan says the P.L.O. purposely reduced its terms from 26 points down to 11).
13While this may be an exaggeration, it noteworthy that when asked for the main reason the P.L.O. accepted the Habib plan at the end of July, virtually every P.L.O. leader interviewed stressed that it was the absence of hope for better terms, the lack of “horizons” in the words of Abu Lutf, which played the key role.
14 Although Yasser ‘Arafat confirmed that the P.L.O. was sensitive to Israeli military pressure, he referred specifically to the IDF advance to the edge of Shatila camp on August 4, by which time the P.L.O. had already accepted the Habib plan.
15 By way of contrast, the same battle was cited as an example of how little effect Israeli advances had on P.L.O. morale by Abu Iyyad, who stated that Israeli military pressure was less important in P.L.O. decisionmaking than the Lebanese, Arab, and international situations.
16IV The Habib Plan is Implemented
In spite of intensive IDF military pressure during the last weeks of negotiation, and notwithstanding Washington’s reluctance to stand up to Sharon and the Israelis, agreement between the different parties was finally reached on August 11. After a few more days of minor modifications of the terms, it was published on August 20, and its implementation began on the following day with the arrival of the initial French contingents of the MNF, and the departure of the first units of the P.L.O. by sea. The evacuation was completed on September 1, two days ahead of schedule.
A variety of problems arose during the evacuation, as the Israelis quibbled over points in the agreement, and repeatedly held up the movement of P.L.O. forces from Beirut until they could obtain satisfaction. Even earlier, however, serious misgivings about provisions of the agreement began to be voiced, particularly with regard to the crucial question of guarantees for the safety of the Palestinian civilian population to be left behind after the evacuation.
One of the first such expressions of concern came from the French, who during the latter phases of the negotiations had played a less prominent role than in the earlier stages, but who had always considered this a question of the utmost importance. Upon receiving the text of the draft agreement from the P.L.O., they asked regarding the issue of guarantees for Palestinian civilians: “How can what is mentioned here be guaranteed? … It is imperative that the U.S. alone obtain all guarantees and assurances from Israel and the Phalangists. France is going to insist on this point with the Americans.”
17 The P.L.O. fully shared this French concern. ‘Arafat responded to the message from Paris the next day, at the height of the Israeli bombardment of Beirut: “The P.L.O. insists that France shoulder its real official and moral responsibility in this regard.”
18In fact, as a result of the agreement the P.L.O. had already acquiesced in, there was little France could do, beyond exhorting the United States to be faithful to its promises. For thanks largely to the diligence and single-mindedness of Habib, the final agreement was an American one, the final guarantees were American, and the forces introduced to Lebanon to implement it were American-dominated. The proof of this was to come when the United States decided unilaterally on the precipitate withdrawal of its forces from Beirut, largely for domestic political reasons, obliging the forces of France, Italy, and Britain to withdraw immediately thereafter.
What had taken place was exactly what the French and the P.L.O. had warned against and tried to avoid throughout the first six weeks of the negotiations. The U.S. had succeeded in confining the definition of the conflict, and the negotiations to end it, to the technical question of a P.L.O. withdrawal from Beirut. This was seen in Washington as virtually the sole task of the MNF,
19 and once this evacuation had taken place, U.S. troops were almost immediately removed. Thus, instead of there being a truly international force stationed on the spot with a clear and irrevocable mandate to protect the camps and prevent Israeli violations of the agreement, once the MNF withdrew there was nothing standing in the way of Sharon and his implacable desire to enter Beirut.
After the withdrawal of the MNF, only two things in theory restrained the IDF from entering Beirut and allowing the barbarities against the camp population which virtually everyone in Lebanon fully expected if Israel’s Phalangist allies were allowed to have their way. These were the written word of the United States of America to an organization it did not recognize (never delivered formally, but rather embodied in an exchange of letters with the government of Lebanon), and the manifestly uncertain will of the Reagan administration to keep the promises made by its envoy.
In the event, both paper promises and American will were to prove insufficient following the killing of Bashir Gemayel. Unaffected by the existence of these commitments, and even before the President-elect’s body had been found, the IDF began preparing to enter the city, and Israeli generals began discussions with their Phalangist allies over the entry of the Lebanese Forces into the now-defenseless refugee camps.
V. The Massacres
Asked whether the U.S. had failed to keep its word to the P.L.O., and whether Israel had violated the commitments it had made to the United States when it entered West Beirut, Philip Habib later answered, “Of course.”
20 A White House statement of September 16 affirmed that Israel’s entry into West Beirut was “contrary to the assurances given to us,” while a statement by the President two days later demanded an immediate Israeli withdrawal.
21 But by then it was too late for the victims butchered in Sabra and Shatila from the evening of Thursday September 16 until the morning of Saturday the 18th.
Ariel Sharon’s libel suit against
Time magazine once again touched on many of the issues initially raised at the time of the massacre and again when the Kahan Commission delivered its report. In spite of this extensive attention, a number of points have been overlooked in the discussion of this question. One is the matter of Israel’s commitment not to enter Beirut in the first place, and the guarantees the United States received from Israel as to the safety and security of the civilian population of the refugee camps.
According to Ze’ev Schiff’s account of the discussion of Israel’s entry into Beirut which took place between Sharon and Habib’s replacement, Ambassador Morris Draper, on September 16, the Defense Minister stated that “new circumstances” made it necessary for the IDF to violate its pledge and enter the city. Draper apparently made no mention of Israeli promises regarding the welfare of Palestinian civilians, nor of the U.S. commitments to the P.L.O. in this regard.
22 This is not surprising, and not only because the burly Israeli general seems to have been his usual intimidating self during this interview. Since his own government gave these U.S. commitments virtually no public attention in the aftermath of the August 20 accords, Draper can be forgiven for failing to mention the matter to Sharon. Even after Israel entered Beirut, there is no reference to U.S. commitments to the P.L.O. in the context of the evacuation accords in six statements by the State Department, the White House, and the President himself.
23The language of the U.S. pledges to the P.L.O. is clear and damning: “Regarding U.S. Government guarantees as regards security … of the camps, … We will provide these guarantees”; “We appear to be in agreement on U.S. assurances about the safety of … the camps”; and “We also reaffirm the assurances of the United States as regards safety and security … for the camps in Beirut.”
24 More unequivocal language would have been impossible. Yet these were confidential commitments, offered during the bargaining process, recorded on plain white paper rather than official stationery, and never made public by the United States. (Copies were later given to foreign journalists by P.L.O. leaders, and can be found in the P.L.O. archives.
25)
In public, the clear and explicit U.S. guarantee of the safety of the Palestinian civilian population embodied in the published August 20 evacuation agreement was virtually ignored in U.S. official statements at the time and afterward.
26 Furthermore, no mention was made by anyone on the U.S. side of any of the confidential pledges to the P.L.O. in this regard. Instead, in August there was self-congratulation and satisfied mutual backslapping in Washington over the fact that the United States had finally solved the core of the problem as described by itself and Israel—the presence of the P.L.O. in Beirut—by obtaining its evacuation.
Then, when reality intruded itself, when Israel did what so many had feared it would and had tried to obtain guarantees against, when Israel’s allies were sent into the camps to perpetrate the very acts the P.L.O. had negotiated for weeks to try to avoid, there was apparent shock and surprise in Washington. Although a series of statements was made concerning the situation, and commenting—lukewarmly at first, and then increasingly stiffly—on the Israeli occupation of the Lebanese capital, there seems to have been little realization on the part of U.S. officials in Washington of the enormity of what was happening.
27 In the event, no practical measures were taken by the U.S. to stop the tragedy of the massacres until it was too late. And at no stage did any U.S. official in the many statements made at this time admit that the U.S. had promised to prevent just such an eventuality, that it had broken its word, and that it bore a major share of responsibility for what had happened.
In addition to the clear American responsibility for what happened, several other parties must share the blame. Israel’s role goes far beyond the indirect responsibility and sins of omission attributed to seven Israeli officials by the Kahan Commission. No Israeli official who had had anything to do with the Phalangists could possibly have had any illusions as to what they would do if introduced into a Palestinian refugee camp; moreover, the historical record was full of bloody examples. The most notable of these, Tal al-Za‘tar, had been witnessed by two IDF liaison officers, according to a statement by Sharon in the Knesset in reply to the attacks of his critics after Sabra and Shatila.
28 The Kahan report itself is replete with testimony regarding Phalangist intentions and actions regarding the Palestinians as they were revealed to Isreali officers in 1982.
The argument that the camps were full of “terrorists” left behind by the P.L.O. is often adduced in explanation of Israel’s actions. It requires an assumption of gross incompetence on the part of Israeli military intelligence to believe that the IDF did not know that there were no P.L.O. fighters there. In fact, as is acknowledged by most sources,
29 there were none. Those men who had remained behind in the camps were Palestinians legally resident in Lebanon, many of whom were part-time members of camp self-defense militias. The Israelis knew perfectly well that they were incapable of offering serious resistance, as is evidenced by the introduction into the camps of a tiny force of a few hundred Phalangists. Clearly, the P.L.O. combatants who for two months had held several divisions of the IDF at the gates of Beirut would have made short work of such a force. But these battle-hardened fighters were gone, as the Israelis knew well. Sending the Phalangists into the camp could only have had one logical objective: the perpetration of a massacre.
Much can be said about the responsibility of others for Sabra and Shatila. Sharon and his accomplices are not the only ones who have gotten off easily: those Lebanese who actually perpetrated the massacre have never been fully identified, let alone made to pay for their crimes. In addition to those bearing direct responsibility, there are others indirectly at fault. Among them are the French, who saw this tragedy coming more clearly than any other external power, and warned against it in vain, but in the event were powerless to stop it. Many Arab states interceded with Washington at various stages of the war, and played a role in obtaining some of the U.S. guarantees which were violated. They were in a position to know what Sharon and the Phalangists were capable of, and had been repeatedly warned of the possibility of a massacre. None of them did anything effective to intercede with their friends in Washington in the more than two days after Bashir Gemayel’s assassination and before the massacres began.
There remains one more party whose responsibility must be defined: this is the P.L.O. itself. It can be argued, and has been by many Palestinian critics, that the P.L.O. leadership was remiss in accepting U.S. guarantees from Habib which were flimsy, and ultimately proved worthless. Further, the massacres raise the question of whether the P.L.O. would not have been better off holding out for better terms no matter how great the Israeli pressure. The argument is that however much more human suffering might have been incurred during a continuation of the fighting, it could not have been greater than that inflicted during the massacres.
These questions have not, by and large, been raised in the course of the public disputes within the P.L.O. since 1982. The reason is simple: every major Palestinian leader, from the traditional Fateh leadership to Habash, Hawatmeh, Jibril, Abu Saleh, and Abu Musa, was in Beirut and played a role in the decisions which led to the P.L.O.’s withdrawal. Not all were satisfied with the results of the negotiations with Habib, but none raised his voice in opposition at the time, and little has been heard from any of them in this regard since. These criticisms of the failure of the P.L.O. leadership to protect their defenseless civilian followers left behind in Beirut have come rather from some of those who remained in Lebanon, or from Palestinians living far away and who could not understand why the P.L.O. ever agreed to leave Beirut in the first place.
Were the decisions taken by the P.L.O. during the 1982 war justified? Could another outcome have been achieved? There is no easy answers to these questions, and there can be no definite ones. In view of what we have already seen, all that can be said with certitude is that the P.L.O.’s original June 1982 decision in principle to withdraw from Beirut was taken under the most intense pressure. This came not only from Israel, the United States, the Lebanese government, and the Phalangists. According to those who took the decision, the most significant pressure came from the P.L.O.’s Lebanese allies on the left and among the Muslims. The effect of this pressure was powerfully reinforced by the almost complete lack of Arab support for the P.L.O. It is difficult to see how the P.L.O. leadership could simply have resisted such pressure in June 1982 without making any concessions whatsoever.
Should the P.L.O. have held firm to the position that having conceded the principle of withdrawal it would withdraw only under certain circumstances? This is an even more difficult question to answer. For over a month, the P.L.O. tenaciously insisted on just such a position. From late June until the end of July, the Palestinians attempted to achieve as a quid pro quo for their withdrawal both concessions “on the ground” (matching Israeli withdrawals, a U.N. buffer force, and binding international guarantees), and political compensation in the form of P.L.O. involvement in Middle East peacemaking efforts based on a modified version of SC 242 (the Franco-Egyptian draft resolution) or at least a dialogue with the United States (the efforts made by Khaled al-Hassan in Washington). As we have seen, these efforts failed: Israel was intransigent about the terms being demanded on the ground, the United States was insistent on refusing any U.N. involvement or any political compensation for a P.L.O. withdrawal, and the Arab states which were necessary intermediaries in this process proved to be less than whole-hearted in their support of the P.L.O. negotiating position.
In view of all this, should the P.L.O. simply have tried to hold out longer, rejecting those elements of the Habib terms which were unsatisfactory, and gambling on its ability to resist and on the possibility that U.S., or Israeli, or international, or Arab public opinion would force a change in the situation? A few in Beirut argued for this at the time. But to most it did not appear to be a viable option, and the decision of the P.L.O. leadership not to risk such a choice was generally, if unenthusiastically, approved.
In favor of such an option were a number of factors, among them the high state of morale of the Joint Forces and their plentiful supplies of food, fuel, and ammunition; the difficulties faced by the IDF in fighting in heavily built-up areas (its only advances on August 4 had been in the last remaining open areas around Beirut not yet occupied, while all the attacks along built-up axes had failed); the deep divisions inside Israel over the war, and the conflicts which had already arisen even within the Cabinet about Sharon’s waging of it; and finally the growing unease of American public opinion over the failure of the Reagan administration to restrain Israel.
Other factors mitigated against such a choice, among them: after their advance of August 4, the Israelis were perilously close to dividing Beirut up into a number of separate islands of resistance; the IDF had shown itself willing to inflict enormous damage to the city and suffering on its inhabitants; Sharon was apparently impervious to domestic Israeli restraints, as was Israel itself to American pressure; the Reagan administration was highly reluctant to put effective pressure on Israel; and most importantly, the P.L.O. would be running a tremendous risk if the gamble failed.
Although many Palestinians asserted that a continuation of the conflict without a resolution was in the P.L.O.’s favor, by early August it was clear that this was a shortsighted argument. The West Beirut siege perimeter was not large, nor were there indefinite resources to defend it; and there were limits to the support such a last-ditch stand would have had from various constituencies, whether Palestinian, Lebanese, Arab, or international. Via the Habib accords, at least the P.L.O. leadership was assured of the continuation of the core of the Palestinian national movement and the safety of its leading members. The spreading out of the departure of P.L.O. forces over many days ensured that even a major Israeli violation of the agreement would not have affected more than a fraction of the P.L.O.’s manpower. Turning their backs on the accord and holding out for better terms would have risked not only the lives of those in the camps of Beirut (who in the end did suffer) but also the fighters, the cadres, the documents, the leaders, and the symbols accumulated by the Palestinian people for well over a decade. It is difficult to see how responsible political leaders could have made any choice other than the one they did, cruel though its results proved to be in the end.