Once the U.S. said it was committing troops to Lebanon, the Soviet Union resumed massive arms shipments to Syria. The latter said it would not accept P.L.O. terrorists from Lebanon, and the P.L.O. reneged on the agreement with Habib. Israel hinted it would be staying in Lebanon at least through the coming winter. In his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State designate George Shultz spoke at length of the need to take into account the legitimate needs of the Palestinians. Under the circumstances, the P.L .0. decided to play for time. The Israel government realized that a prolonged siege would damage the country badly and create a serious public relations issue. On 12 July, a ministerial group decided to order the I.D.F. to break into Beirut. On 21 July, Sharon told a U.J.A. mission that Israel was still hoping for a diplomatic solution. Excerpts:
We will not accept... any solution that may hurt or harm us, in order to make it easier for somebody to solve it by negotiation or political means. If we would not have believed that this can be solved by negotiation or by political means, we would have done it militarily a long time ago.
We are not going to make any security arrangement but directly with the Lebanese government. We are not going to make any arrangements there through any third party. We appreciate... the effort that the American administration is doing... it's very important... but the arrangement of security will be done and signed between the State of Israel, or the Government of Israel, and the Government of Lebanon. That is the only effective arrangement that we can expect, the only one.
I won't say that it is not in our interest to know what kind of government will be in Lebanon. Will[it] be a government that supports the terrorists, or will it be a government that rejects the terrorists? Will [it] be a government that will agree to the Syrian presence - and, of course, behind this cover of the Syrians, the terrorist infrastructure will be built again - or it will be a government ready to resist the Syrian presence and to get up and say that we will not like the Syrians to stay in Lebanon? Is that not in our interest?
So meanwhile, we were the only ones - we were the victims of these terrorists for years and years - we were the only ones who were ready to give them a shelter. But III take a bit of this opportunity now to add one thing: We were the only ones, in the last seven years, that came to the rescue of the Christian community in Lebanon, that suffered... more than one hundred thousand people massacred; and they were fighting extermination. And no one, and all these television networks I'm facing now, no one during these years, no one ever said a word about this massacre. No one said it, no one.
Our casualties were mostly due to the fact that we tried not to harm civilian population which were kept hostages in the hands of the terrorists. And they never let them out. They were keeping them in the buildings in order to prevent us from taking, I would say, what one may call the necessary military steps. And there we suffered most of our casualties. I don't know any other army in the world or any other nation that would have said: "Look, we believe that we should pay a higher rate of casualties in order not to harm civilian populations." Not France, not England, and not [the] U.S. - never did it. I don't mention the Soviets and so on. I speak about democracies: not France, not England, not [the] U.S., never. People are demanding from us what they were never ready to do themselves."