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BEIRUT HIT BY 11-HOUR AIR RAID; EVACUATION TALKS ARE HALTED; 'OUTRAGED,' REAGAN CALLS BEGIN

By JOHN KIFNER, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (NYT) 1011 words
August 13, 1982

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 12 - Israeli jets bombed west Beirut for 11 hours today, and the Lebanese authorities responded by suspending the negotiations on the withdrawal of Palestinian guerrillas from Lebanon.

The key Lebanese intermediary in the negotiations, former Prime Minister Saeb Salam, called the special United States envoy, Philip C. Habib, as the Israeli jets were overhead and told him to ''go home,'' according to a source involved in the negotiations.

The official Lebanese negotiator, Prime Minister Shafik al-Wazzan, said after a brief meeting with Mr. Habib, ''I have told Philip Habib that I cannot carry on in these talks while these thousands of tons of explosives are wreaking mass destruction in my city, my capital.'' He added, ''I did not break up the talks, but I have told him I cannot carry on and hold him as well as the United States responsible for the consequences.'' Heaviest Sustained Raids

The bombing runs, carried out by Israeli jets attacking singly and in pairs, started just before 6 A.M. The attacks - the heaviest sustained air raids here thus far - were halted by an Israeli ceasefire around 5 P.M. The bombing touched off a stormy Cabinet meeting in Israel and brought a stern warning from President Reagan to Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

(The Associated Press quoted the police as saying that the bombings killed at least 128 people and wounded 400. There was no indication as to whether the victims were civilians or guerrillas.) Bombing Follows Shelling

Whether the talks would remain suspended was an unanswered question tonight. At one point earlier today, before the talks were halted, Prime Minister Wazzan announced that he was resigning, but he continued in his post to function in office and the negotiations went on.

The bombings came after heavy artillery barrages that began Wednesday afternoon and lasted until the early hours of the morning. They came as journalists on the Christian side of the green line that divides this embattled city reported a second day of extensive Israeli deployment of troops and vehicles in the northern coastal and mountain areas, including the ports of Dbayieh, Junieh and Byblos and the bluff of Aqura.

This would put the Israelis about five miles south of the lines of the Syrian troops who control the northern part of the country around Tripoli, above the territory carved out by the Phalangist militiamen, who are allied with Israel.

The bombings were concentrated on targets that have been hit routinely by Israel: the chain of Palestinian refugee camps on the southern fringe of the city and the Fakhani neighborhood, where the P.L.O. maintained its central offices.

In addition, the jets struck at a number of other targets, including the cosmopolitan Manara area along the coast, where a Syrian-backed militia, locally known as the ''Pink Panthers'' for its members' raspberry-colored fatigues, had taken up residence.

The Israeli purpose in the repeated Israeli raids on the already devastated Palestinian areas, analysts suggested, was to level them so completely that no one would ever be able to live in them.

The virtually permanent refugee camps had been a means of forging Palestinian nationalism, a constant reminder of statelessness. 'A Terror Campaign'

The operating room of the Berbir Hospital in west Beirut reportedly took a direct bomb hit, and a physician at the hospital, Dr. Amal Shamma, said early this morning that the already badly damaged hospital had also been heavily shelled during the night. It is near the Museum Crossing on the green line where Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas have been fighting for the past few days.

''Every hospital in Beirut has been shelled,'' said Dr. Shamma, an American-educated woman who has been patching the wounded here for the last seven years. ''This is part of a terror campaign.''

The Lebanese police said Israeli jets divebombed areas surrounding the Soviet Embassy compound in Corniche Mazraa and the oceanside residential neighborhoods of Rouche and Ramlet al Baida.

Former Prime Minister Salam, meeting with reporters in his walled mansion tonight, repeatedly charged the United States with responsibility for the Israeli bombing. He also contended that Israel was ''procrastinating'' in the negotiations. 'Enough, Stop'

Prime Minister Wazzan said the Lebanese Government and the Palestine Liberation Organization had given ''all the concessions requested from us and we had even reached the stage of defining the P.L.O.'s departure routes.

''What is the meaning of all these thousands of destructive explosives,'' he asked, ''especially at a time everyone knows everywhere we are very close to a peaceful solution. Enough, stop this wholesale devastation.''

An Israeli military spokesman told reporters in Maronite Catholic east Beirut that Israeli forces and positions had been ''intensively reinforced.''

''We have finished a very intensive buildup in and around Beirut as part of a large operation,'' Col. Yeheil Ben Zvi said, ''if and when we have to attack.''

Asked what reinforcements were involved in what he termed preparations for a ''military option,'' Colonel Zvi said, ''You name it - infantry, armored units, logistics, everything that would be necessary.''

Some of the bombs struck in Sunni Moslem residential neighborhoods and at least one hit a barracks of the elite Lebanese police unit, Squad 16.

From a rooftop a few blocks away, the Israeli jets could be seen swooping down on the Fakhani district - already an unrecognizable ruin of twisted and flattened buildings - dropping rack after rack of bombs.

At least three times an antiaircraft missile was fired at the jets, leaving a white trail across the sky but falling harmlessly behind.


 


THE DAILY JOURNAL VANPOEM
 

As One Put Naked Into a Cigarette Boat

Continue chiding, since it's part of the new aesthetic,
and parcel to our coming home, as if
we'd disappeared into the burning bush
that calls to those who sit vacantly in parlors
awaiting a fate freighted with song and dance.
I stroll while staring and raging
with difficulty at the stubborn sky.

On my honor I step a little distance
from behind the curtain, only to disappear
the moment no birds sing, which occurs frequently.
Leaves dustier than furniture, the sound
of sleeping grating through the cosmos,
my footstool, my only talisman.
It's been real, arguing on your behalf.
Gray cobweb shadow, falling, floundering,
finding a place to not be shy and think
boldly about the oldness of beauty, a place
to rest its weary insubstantial head.

It may be that I stand on the threshold
of the checkout line, unsure of what
to be impulsive about, which momentous emptiness
to spontaneously identify my alienation with,
what kind of languor to slide into

before being reduced to grubbing for credentials,
locked in that tumid late-afternoon skin,
effervescing in its sea of dreams.
And all the things hearkening back to it,
the boat ride to breaker beach
there at the end of one world
where it paid to rage at the stammering waves
that kicked and screamed solely for my benefit,
staged objections to the inexorable fact of me.

Look: I've installed a turnstile in my kitchen,
so your picture-postcard of desolation has no power over me.
In this doggy-dog world land is made motionless
and the broads are standing on the wharves
with some of that sipping whisky on those silver trays,
which we'd be a bear to pass up. You speak
of the old gods who've washed up on shore,
but I don't see them, don't hear their hue and cry,
though their maze awaits us, will amaze us.
Here, let me get this little rock out of my damn shoe.
Then we can talk about paddling off to parts unknown.

 
Van Foreman
 
 

 


 

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