Kieron Moore puts the tragedy in Lebanon in the context of its recent entanglement in international conflict

LEBANON has been put on the rack again. Thousands have died, thousands have been wounded, and many thousands have had to flee from their homes.
I've been trying to telephone friends in Beirut but without success because no calls are going through.
I was in the Lebanon just over a year ago and so it's only natural that I should be concerned about the friends I made during my stay, hut I also wanted to talk to them before writing this article.
I suspect that many Lebanese will look on the shocked reaction to the Israeli invasion of the leaders of the big powers, of Arab leaders, and even of the UN as pure hypocrisy.
One can hardly blame them. Fur sometime it hasn't been a question of whether Israel was going to move into Southern Lebanon, it was simply a question of when, unless the big powers did something to prevent a. And they didn't.
What makes many Lebanese angry and bitter is the way their country was dragged into a conflict that had nothing to do with them; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And how did it come about? Firstly because Lebanon took pity on Palestinian refugees who fled from their homeland after Israel became a state and allowed them into their country; they even welcomed them.
But then, more and more Palestinians refugees began to arrive, and there was a massive influx after King Hussein turned his Bedouin troops on the Palestinians in Jordan.
The Palestinians had created a very effective army in Jordan which posed a definite threat to the King. There was a fierce and bloody conflict and the Palestinian army was ruthlessly destroyed in what became known as the Black September battle. There was a mass exodus of Palestinian refugees to Southern Lebanon.
As far as many Lebanese are concerned Jordan and other Arab states found it convenient to 'export' the Palestinian problem to their country.
But to keep in their good books, Arab money flowed to the Palestinians and most of this money was used to gradually create what was effectively a well equipped army, even if the world press continued to refer to PLO guerillas.
In the Lebanon it is, claimed that the presence of this Palestinian army was a major factor leading up to the civil war in 1975 which tore the country apart.
For years the Lebanese people which comprise Christians, Sunnite Muslims, Shi-ite Muslims and Druzes had found a workable Way of living together in peace.
This beautiful little country had become the Switzerland of the Middle East. Some say that the Sunniters saw the Palestinian army which was Muslim as a way of changing the balance of power; others say that Syria, which had always considered Lebanon as part of a greater Syria and had therefore never recognized its independence, used the Palestinian presence to create trouble. Whatever the cause was, it led to a bitter civil war between the Muslims and the Christians, with the Palestinians on the Muslim side.
An Arab peace-keeping force was sent to the Lebanonandsome kind of cease-fire was arranged; a cease-fire that has been broken again and again over the years.
The peace-keeping force was mostly Syrian. Large areas in Southern Lebanon were now in the hands of the Palestinians, including the coastal towns of Tyre, Sidon and Damour.
Damour had been a Christian town of 20,000 inhabitants. — By the time Palestinians had taken it not one inhabitant was left; they were either dead or had become refugees in their own land.
It is also claimed that not one wall was left standing.
The Palestinians linked up with various left-wing Lebanese groups, each with its own private army, and together they have controlled West Beirut since the cease-fire.
Sections of East Beirut and areas of the country to the east of the city stayed in the hands of the Christians. But there was a division among the Christians too, between the followers of exPresident Chamoun and a splinter grouip to the north of Batroun led by ex-President Frangie.
Frangie has his own private army, the Maradin, and also has close links with Syria. The main Christian army is the Kataeb which is under the command of Bashir Gemayel. The media usually refers to the Kataeb as a right-wing Phalangist army but this is misleading as it far more broad-based than that.
Then of course there is Colonel Haddad's 'army' controlling a small pocket of territory near the Israeli border.
Col Haddad claims he represents Freed Lebanon, but he wouldn't have survived without Israeli help.
There is also a UN force in the south, placed there with the intention of keeping the Israelis and the Palestinians apart. The rest of. the country has been under the control of the Arab 'peace-keeping' force, but in effect that has meant under the control of Syria because the few participants from other Arab countries which were in the force have mostly been withdrawn. And of course the Syrians and the Palestinians have worked closely together.
And now this appalling cataclysm has hit that strife-torn country. The immediate reaction of many people is an outright condemnation of Israel but of course Israelis will refuse to accept the blame.
They maintain that it is still the declared intention of the PLO to push them into the sea; that there has been a totally unacceptable increase in armaments among the Palestinians, posing an ever growing threat to their northern settlements; that there had to be 'a final solution' to the Palestinians in Southern Lebanon.
There is a tragic irony in the fact it was Adolf I litler's attempt to have 'a final solution' to the Jewish question, ending in the holocaust, which led to the founding of Israel as we know it; that it was the founding of Israel which led to the suffering of the Palestinians, and the sufferings of the Palestinians which led to the terrible suffering of the Lebanese people.
In all these conflicts most of those who have suffered have been innocent victims who, if given a choice, would want nothing to do with war.
Will their voice ever be heard? Will this latest suffering also be in vain, or will -it finally make the Arab world accept that Israel has a right to exist, and that this in turn will make Israel see that the Palestinians must have a homeland of their own, of which the West Bank must form a part? . I pray God that it will make both sides see that this is only final solution if there is to be peace. Even if I can't speak to my friends in the Lebanon I'm sure they join me in that prayer.