Middle East It Turned Out to Be a Mistake

Ever since Palestinian terrorists staged attacks last Dec. 27 at Rome and Vienna airports against the Israeli airline El Al, it was inevitable that the Israelis would respond. Last week they apparently thought they had their + chance. As a Libyan Gulfstream II executive jet carrying nine passengers and three crewmen passed the southeastern coast of Cyprus on its way to Damascus, two Israeli fighter jets intercepted the aircraft and ordered the pilot to proceed to Ramat David air force base, near Haifa.

Israeli authorities presumably believed they had caught a big fish: George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Jabril of the P.F.L.P. general command, or perhaps even Sabry Khalil Bana, better known as Abu Nidal, chief of the self-styled Fatah Revolutionary Council and the suspected mastermind behind countless terrorist attacks. But when the Israelis ordered passengers and crew to disembark from the commandeered craft, they discovered only a group of Syrian and Lebanese officials aboard. In what appeared to be a notable failure of Israel's highly vaunted intelligence services, the big fish had managed to slip away. After holding the plane for four hours, the Israelis allowed it to resume its flight to Damascus.

The Palestinians, as well as the Syrians and Lebanese, had been attending a three-day meeting in Tripoli of what Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi called the Allied Leadership of the Revolutionary Forces of the Arab Nation. Representatives of 22 Palestinian and other Arab organizations had been called together for a meeting at Gaddafi's stronghold, the Bab al Azizia barracks. The purpose: to demonstrate radical Arab support for Gaddafi in the face of U.S. naval maneuvers taking place off the Libyan coast. The delegates, who included Habash and Jabril, duly approved an eleven-point resolution proposing, among other things, the creation of suicide squads for commando attacks against American targets in the U.S. and elsewhere "if the U.S. should dare to launch an aggression against Libya or any other Arab country." Added the joint declaration: "He who sets a fire must be burned by his own fire."

A few of the delegates had left early aboard the Libyan executive jet, but Habash, Jabril and other leaders of pro-Syria Palestine Liberation Organization factions had remained behind or left by other means. Once the news of the Israeli seizure reached Tripoli, Jabril angrily threatened to avenge the interception with attacks on Israeli and even American airliners. Summoning journalists to a press conference, he declared: "Tell the world not to board American or Israeli planes. From this day onward, we will not respect civilians who take such planes."

Habash, whose organization helped pioneer skyjack terrorism in 1968 but later publicly disavowed the tactic, acknowledged that he had flown from Damascus to Tripoli aboard the same plane earlier in the week and said he believed he had been an intended target of the Israeli interception. Said Habash, who was nearly kidnaped by Israeli commandos during a similar attack in 1973: "The capture of any Palestinian leader is a good thing from their point of view."