What was going on when I was born?

Israeli officials have told the United States that they are willing to remove most of their troops from Lebanon without waiting for a simultaneous pullback of Syrian forces, Reagan Administration officials said today. But the Israelis have stressed that they will not pull back until security arrangements for northern Israel are guaranteed and there is political coordination with Lebanon and the United States, American officials said. The stress on coordination, American officials said, is to avoid the problems that arose when Israel withdrew its troops from the Shuf mountains in September. That move touched off a sharp conflict between the Lebanese Army and Druse forces for control of the area, and it created political strains with Washington, which felt that the Israeli move was precipitous.

Texaco Inc. offered to buy the Getty Oil Company yesterday for about $10 billion, in what would be the biggest merger ever. Getty's board promptly and unanimously agreed in principle to approve the offer of $125 a share, just two days after the company and its major shareholders had accepted a complex merger proposal from the Pennzoil Company that valued Getty Oil's shares at about $112.50 each. Pennzoil, which thought it had a deal to buy Getty Oil in partnership with Gordon P. Getty, said it would sue. J. Hugh Liedtke, chairman of Pennzoil, sent a telegram yesterday to Getty directors saying that he expected them to ''comply with the terms of your agreement.'' Gordon Getty Controls 40.2% Mr. Getty, son of the late oil billionaire J. Paul Getty, joined the 15 other members of the board in voting to approve the Texaco offer in a telephone conference. As sole trustee for the Sarah C. Getty Trust, Mr. Getty controls 40.2 percent of the company's stock.

Each morning scores of Soviet citizens arrive in front of United Nations headquarters in a small convoy of buses. Late in the afternoon, the buses reappear and take the Russians back to a housing compound in Riverdale owned by their Government. The Soviet citizens, who arrive together, leave together and live together, are not members of the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, which is on East 67th Street. They are international civil servants who are among the 474 Soviet citizens who hold positions at all levels, both high and low, in the sprawling United Nations Secretariat, the administrative body of the world organization.

The nation's unemployment rate dropped last month to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in November, the Government reported today. It attributed the decline primarily to widespread success of men in either regaining factory jobs they lost in the long recession or finding work in other industries. Most parts of the labor force shared in 335,000 jobs that were filled last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said, but some stubborn soft spots remained. These included black workers, especially black teen-agers, who have benefited little from the economy's recovery, and former employees of declining basic industries, notably steel and heavy machinery.

President Reagan today strongly supported Charles Z. Wick, the director of the United States Information Agency, who has acknowledged that he tape-recorded some of his telephone conversations without asking permission. Mr. Reagan said that Mr. Wick ''has done a splendid job'' as head of the information agency and ''he's going to continue there.'' ''I don't think that Charles Wick is a dishonorable man in any way,'' Mr. Reagan told reporters as he left the White House for Camp David. As to Mr. Wick's failure to ask permission to tape the calls, Mr. Reagan said, ''I can understand his forgetting sometimes when he was talking to people, particularly that he knew.''

A plan to separate Lebanon's warring factions was delayed today by Moslem Druse objections, but Government officials said they were confident the dispute could be resolved. In the face of objections raised by Walid Jumblat, the Druse leader and head of the Progressive Socialist Party, President Amin Gemayel canceled plans to present the plan officially today at a luncheon for diplomats. In late afternoon, a spokesman for Mr. Jumblat said that neither the Druse leader nor his political organization had rejected the plan. A Government official suggested that a compromise was possible on Mr. Jumblat's objections to provisions calling for the stationing of Lebanese Army troops on two peaks south of Beirut overlooking Druse villages.

A bipartisan Presidential commission was said today to be close to approving a report that urges stepped-up United States diplomatic contacts with Nicaragua and a major new effort to bring about talks between the Salvadoran Government and leftist guerrillas. During the week, the commission, headed by Henry A. Kissinger, has made changes in a seven-volume draft report to accommodate objections of some Democratic members, commission officials said. Although the draft report generally endorses Reagan Administration policy, the officials said, it is now ''less hostile'' toward Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. Mr. Kissinger met with President Reagan for 20 minutes today to outline ''the thinking and direction'' of the 12- member panel. Officials said Mr. Reagan was advised that there was ''a consensus'' in favor of doubling United States economic and military aid to Central America to roughly $1 billion a year for the next 15 years.

Almost every evening hundreds of men gather on a street in the crowded, dusty, yet enormously rich diamond and gold business district of this bustling city to conduct a most unusual bazaar. Leaning against cars, squatting in dingy restaurants and gathered around cigarette vendors on Dhanji Street, the crowds of mostly young men buy and sell diamonds openly and illegally. With jewelers' lenses, they study glittering gems fished out from grimy shirt and trouser pockets or from a cloth or leather bag strapped to the wrist. A bout of bargaining, a deal is struck, and buyer and seller edge into the doorway of one of the scores of dark, old rickety buildings on either side of the road. A bundle of currency changes hands and the men part, looking for their next bargain.

A report today to Governor Cuomo concluded that psychiatric services are in a chronic state of crisis throughout New York City and are able to work with only the most sick, violent and suicidal patients. The report was made by a subcommittee of the Commission on the Future of the State-Local Mental Systems at a time the state has been criticized for cuts in mental-health programs and two days after Mr. Cuomo promised to increase services for the mentally ill this year. The report found that most psychiatric hospital beds were filled throughout the year and that patients were often treated in emergency rooms.

President Reagan, sensing the Soviet Union is in a period of ''introspection,'' is considering a major speech to invite an improvement in East-West relations, Administration officials said today. The President alluded to the need for ''a productive East-West dialogue'' in a brief statement this morning on the mission of James E. Goodby, the chief United States delegate to a conference on confidence and security opening Jan. 18 in Stockholm among ministers of North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko of the Soviet Union have agreed to meet at the conference to resume talks that were broken off after the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean airliner in September, with the loss of 269 lives. White House officials said the President was considering making ''a comprehensive statement'' of his views on the Soviet Union, timed either for the meeting between Mr. Shultz and Mr. Gromyko or possibly as the key foreign policy section of his State of Union address on Jan. 25.

President Spyros Kyprianou left on a trip to the United States and Europe today with hopes of reversing the move by Turkish Cypriots in November to declare an independent state. He plans to confer Monday with Secretary of State George P. Shultz in Washington.

A top Soviet official said today that Yuri V. Andropov, the Soviet leader, is recovering from his illness. ''He was ill and is getting better,'' the official, Vadim V. Zagladin, said.