I was resigned to the intrusive nature of their job. From Massachusetts I flew to San Francisco to organize personal and financial matters for my new life in Washington. As I made these moves around the country, I was kept generally abreast of events in Lebanon.

Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, was reported to be jubilant about Haig’s resignation, seeing it as giving new life to the PLO presence in Israeli-surrounded Beirut. In contrast to pro-Israel Haig, I was being stereotyped as an Arabist, because Bechtel Corporation had big construction jobs under way in Saudi Arabia and around the Persian Gulf. The shift from Haig to Shultz, others speculated, might undermine the cease-fire by leading Israel to conclude that a negotiated departure of the PLO was now impossibleand that an assault to capture the city was the only way to finish off the Palestinian leader.

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At dawn on July 1 the White House had received an urgent, very restricted message from Phil Habib: the United States should insist on an unequivocal pledge from Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin not to invade Beirut and to allow efforts aimed at a political and diplomatic solution to proceed without any deadline whatsoever. If Begin refused, Habib recommended, the United States should stop all military supplies to Israel and support a UN resolution calling for Israel’s total withdrawal from Lebanon and for international sanctions against Israel. Haig differed sharply: take the pressure off the PLO and you founder in your diplomatic effort to get the PLO to leave.

To