Middle East: Dialogue of the Deaf

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Inevitably, some escaped the dragnet. Creeping in across the cornfields of the cooperative farm village of Ometz one night last week, Fatah saboteurs placed 15 lbs. of explosives under a cottage, killed three-year-old Yossi Solomon as he slept in his crib. Yossi's death brought Defense Minister Moshe Dayan himself to join the search party. Dayan and his men followed the assassins' tracks to the nearby Arab village of Kaffin (pop. 2,500). Border police ordered all of Kaffin's men into the village square, interrogated them until they admitted that five Fatah men had spent the night in three of Kaffin's houses. The police then escorted the entire village—men, women, children, donkeys, camels and sheep—to a hillside outside town, where they sat wide-eyed as Israeli sappers blew the three offending houses skyhigh. The lesson was harsh but clear, and next day the Israelis caught up with the guilty Fatah agents themselves.

Fear & Desire. Sunk into sullen resentment, Arabs throughout the Middle East are torn between the desire to encourage terrorism and the fear that Israel may take fresh punitive action against it. While Lebanon's daily An-Nahar urged the Palestinians to conduct a guerrilla war against the Israelis, Syria accused Israel of trying to "prepare world public opinion for launching new Israeli aggression." As for Israel, the terrorism only hardens its resolve to hold on to its new territories. The result is that diplomacy in the Middle East continues to be a dialogue of the deaf.