MIDDLE EAST: Border Violence, Hands of Peace

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An experience of fire followed by an exchange of words

Bloody violence broke out once more last week across the border between Israel and Lebanon. From bases below the Litani River, Palestinian fedayeen launched a series of attacks with Soviet-made Katyusha rockets on the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya. Three Israelis, one a 35-year-old mother of two, were killed and five wounded.

To revenge the dead and discourage further attacks, Israel retaliated—and perhaps overreacted—with heavy artillery barrages and bombing raids on southern Lebanon. When the Israeli Phantoms and Kfirs had completed their runs and wheeled back to base, three villages—'Izziyah, Hinniyah and Burj al Shamali—had been all but wiped out. The Lebanese government claimed that at least 119 people, most of them women and children, were dead and more than 200 were wounded. The casualty toll was the worst ever in southern Lebanon, exceeding that of a similar Israeli raid on Dec. 2, 1975, in which 100 died and 150 were wounded.

The eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth warfare snapped a six-week cease-fire along the border that had been arranged by the U.S. The confrontation threatened to snag the slow and painful process by which President Carter hopes to get Israelis and Arabs together at a Geneva peace conference, presumably this year. At his press conference last week, Carter deplored the heavy loss of life, but he declined to single out Israel for striking what had obviously turned out to be civilian targets. "The overriding consideration," the President said, "is not to condemn Israel at this point for retaliation, but just to say that if the provocations were absent then the retaliation would have been unnecessary."

Palestinian spokesmen last week insisted that Israel had broken the ceasefire first with heavy artillery barrages on Nabatiyah and nearby Beaufort Castle, an ancient crusader fortress below Mount Hermon that has been used by Palestinians as an observation post. In retaliation, the Katyushas were launched on Nahariya from Hill 352, apparently by soldiers of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Israeli military commanders believed that Syria might have condoned the rocketing, since the trucks that carried the Katyushas had not been halted at Syrian checkpoints just north of the Litani River. (The river marks the "Red Line" of Israel, below which it will not allow Syrian troops.)

After the bombing raids, Lieut. General Mordechai Gur, Israel's chief of staff, insisted that his pilots had struck the targets assigned them. Said he: "We know for sure that the bombing was accurate and the results were good. We did not attack any civilian areas or refugee camps."

That was untrue—as Western newsmen who visited the scene quickly discovered. In a highly unusual move, Premier Menachem Begin summoned U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis to his office in Jerusalem to express sympathy for the victims. Said Begin: "If the news reports are correct on civilian casualties, we regret it very deeply, but we do not apologize for the operation itself. If there is quiet on the other side, there will be absolute quiet on our side."