Israel Retaliates for Car Bombings

Israeli warplanes bombed the regional headquarters of a pro-Syrian militia deep in the Bekaa Valley on Friday, killing as many as 40 people in retaliation for four recent suicide car bombings directed against Israeli and allied troops in southern Lebanon.

The morning raid, which reportedly reduced to rubble the headquarters in Chtoura of the Syrian National Social Party, about 20 miles east of Beirut, coincided with two actions on the occupied West Bank that were also seen as a response to recent attacks on Israelis: Israel closed for two months the largest Arab university in the area and formally reintroduced a controversial procedure for detaining Palestinian Arabs indefinitely without trial.

All three moves came amid signs of a distinct turn to the right in the political mood of the country. According to a public opinion poll published Friday in Haaretz, an independent newspaper, the two parties on the extreme right wing would capture 16% of the vote if elections were held in Israel today. That compares with only 5.2% a year ago.

Given the public mood, Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ national unity government has been under strong pressure to react strongly to the latest wave of attacks against Israeli targets here and in Lebanon.

The air raid into Lebanon was the second this week and ninth of the year.

‘Spectacular Attacks’

The army said that the Syrian National Social Party was responsible for staging “spectacular attacks and suicide actions” against the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army militia in the “security zone,” a 6-to-10-mile-wide strip of land north of the Lebanese border over which Israel claims military control.

The pro-Syrian Lebanese militia has claimed responsibility for four recent car bomb attacks in the buffer zone, including one which wounded two Israelis earlier this week.

Reports from Beirut quoted sources in Lebanon’s civil defense corps as saying that “more than 10 bodies” were removed from the rubble of a villa in the heart of Chtoura after the 9:15 a.m. Israeli raid.

Christian Voice of Lebanon radio quoted civil defense sources as saying that 23 were dead and that more bodies believed buried beneath the ruins could bring the final toll to 40. According to one unconfirmed report, all the militia’s leaders in the Bekaa Valley had entered the building for a meeting only 15 minutes before six Israeli jets appeared overhead.

An Israeli statement said only that its pilots reported hits on their target and that “all our planes returned safely.”

University Ordered Shut

The targeted militia advocates the creation of a “Greater Syria,” including present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Cyprus, Israel and the West Bank territories that Israel occupied after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Military authorities ordered a two-months’ closure of An-Najah University in Nablus, the largest Arab university on the West Bank. The authorities said that the campus had been used for “meetings and incitement by terrorist organizations” and that the army found “inflammatory . . . material which encouraged terrorist actions against Israel” during a search of the university Wednesday.

University officials denied the accusations, asserting that the closure was part of an “Israeli collective punishment campaign” meant to appease Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. The settlers have demanded retaliation for the murder of three Jews in northern Israel in the last two weeks.

University spokesman Saeb Erakat said that the closure will delay the graduation of 500 Arab students until late November and disrupt registration of next fall’s freshman class, which began last week.

“The action will add to the obstacles to real contact between the two peoples,” Erakat said, noting that “now they have 3,500 angry students” in the area.

Conflict Characterized

“I think the political conflict is being transferred into a racist conflict by the authorities in Israel,” the university spokesman added.

An-Najah was closed for four months last summer and three months in the the summer of 1983. Many on Israel’s political right, particularly Jewish settlers on the West Bank, assert that all five Arab universities in the occupied territories are breeding grounds for anti-Israeli terrorism and should be closed permanently.