World: ATTACK ON BEIRUT: ISRAEL'S BIGGEST REPRISAL

ALONE among the Arab states sharing borders with Israel, tiny cosmopolitan Lebanon had escaped direct involvement in the Middle East's frequent outbursts of hostility. Like Arabs everywhere else, the Lebanese of course paid lip service and tithes to the Arab cause against Israel, but they were far more interested in commerce than in aggressive politics. The Beirut government dutifully declared war against Israel during last year's Six-Day War—and sent two fighters on a sortie southward toward Tel Aviv. When one was shot down, Lebanon happily withdrew from the campaign, its duty done.

Last week violence came to Lebanon with a vengeance. In perhaps the single most audacious military exploit in their already spectacular history, Israeli forces swept down in helicopters on Beirut's busy international airport, through which thousands of Arab and Western tourists and businessmen pass each day. In 45 minutes, the attackers wreaked an Israeli-estimated $100 million in damage. A dozen Lebanese civilian planes were destroyed or heavily damaged, hangars and fuel dumps set afire, all apparently without loss of life to either side. It was a swift, surgical and devastating raid, carried out in the most unlikely of places—and it once again raised the stakes in the Middle East, edging the area closer to another full-scale war.

It was also an action certain to bring down upon Israel fresh accusations that it overreacts to Arab provocations. The incitement in this instance had taken place only two days before, at Athens' international airport. There, a New York-bound Boeing 707 belonging to El Al, the Israeli airline, and carrying 41 passengers and a crew of ten had just moved away from its loading ramp when two men dashed onto the runway. Opening a canvas travel bag, they snatched out an automatic rifle and four incendiary grenades and fired a fusillade of bullets at the fuselage. They killed one passenger.

Fiery Mangled Metal. The gunmen carried leaflets from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Arab guerrilla outfit that hijacked an El Al airliner last July. In Beirut, P.F.L.P. immediately distributed a triumphant communique identifying the terrorists as Mahmoud Mohammed Issa, 25, and Maher Hussein Yamani, 19. They now face possible death sentences in the Greek courts.

In accordance with a policy of holding Arab governments responsible for fedayeen terrorism, Israel quickly blamed Lebanon. The terrorists, said a Tel Aviv statement, had flown to Athens from Beirut's airport, and belonged to a group of Arab saboteurs based in Lebanon. "The mark of Cain is on the heads of the perpetrators," declared Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The Middle East has learned to take such Israeli warnings seriously, and Lebanon braced for some sort of reprisal. It came within 48 hours, but on a scale no one would have dared predict.