Middle East: Bombs, Passions and Farewells

Israel returns the Sinai to Egypt, and hits the P.L.O. in Lebanon

After months of second thoughts and soul searching, the Israelis withdrew from the last third of the Sinai Peninsula last week and restored it to Egyptian control, thereby ending 15 years of Israeli occupation. The withdrawal effectively concluded the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, whose undisputed accomplishment had been to end the state of hostilities between Israel and Egypt.

Yet even as Israeli soldiers were bulldozing the remains of Jewish settlements in the Sinai and removing the last defiant occupants, Israel sent its warplanes northward to bomb and strafe some strongholds of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon. That air assault breached a cease-fire along the Israeli-Lebanese border that had been in effect since last July. The Israelis' immediate explanation for the bombings: retaliation for a series of Palestinian truce violations, including the death last week, in a landmine explosion, of an Israeli soldier who had himself been on patrol in Lebanese territory.

For a variety of reasons, the week was filled with tension and uncertainty. The Israeli bombing raid, on various targets in central Lebanon, killed at least 30 people and injured 70. Still, it was a far less serious attack than if the Israelis had launched a ground assault. Such a move, which could involve as many as 36,000 Israeli soldiers massed in northern Israel, has long been expected by both sides.

Despite widespread fears that the P.L.O. would automatically retaliate for any kind of Israeli attack, the Palestinians said in the days after the Israeli bombing that they would continue to observe the ceasefire. This was an indication that P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat still believes that his organization has more to gain by avoiding open fighting and by putting the Israelis in the position of appearing tc be the aggressors.

For more than a week, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Walter Stoessel had been shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Cairo, anxious to see that no last-minute hitches would prevent the Sinai withdrawal from taking place on schedule. The event was a momentous one, poignant for the Egyptians, frightening for the Israelis. The Sinai, captured from Egypt in the Six-Day War, had given the Israelis a buffer against a traditional enemy and had provided a new frontier for adventurous young settlers. Under the terms of Camp David, the Israelis had agreed to surrender the Sinai in three stages in return for a peace treaty with Egypt. It was a good bargain for both sides. But in the weeks before the final withdrawal, the Israelis worried about the strength of their new ties with Egypt. They wondered whether the treaty signed with such enthusiasm by the late Anwar Sadat would mean as much to his successor Hosni Mubarak.