Israel Repeats Threat to Retaliate for Raids : Argues Worst Response Would Be to Do Nothing; Sees Involvement of Abu Nidal Group, Also PLO

Arguing that failure to react to Friday’s bloody terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports would do more damage to the Mideast peace process than retaliation, senior Israeli officials Sunday repeated their pledge to punish those responsible.

They commented in response to a U.S. warning against “an escalation of violence on either side” that might sidetrack the search for Mideast peace. The White House sent messages to several nations urging restraint in the face of the assaults, which were directed at check-in counters of the Israeli national airline at the two airports and left 18 people dead and 121 wounded. The dead included five Americans and one Israeli.

Still Sifting Information

The officials also said that Israel is still collecting information on the incidents, that mounting evidence implicates the radical group of Palestinian terrorists led by Abu Nidal and that the attackers may have had the help of Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization, despite the latter’s denials that it had anything to do with Friday’s slaughter.

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, speaking from here on a television program broadcast in the United States, said Sunday that Israel intends to attack PLO targets, even though the Reagan Administration has urged restraint in the wake of the airport raids.

Rabin said evidence indicates that the airport murders were the work of Abu Nidal, who is believed to have his headquarters in Libya but who also is reported to have strong Syrian backing. However, Rabin said, his government still considers the PLO its main enemy.

“We are in a war against terrorists, all the groups of terrorists, including--maybe mainly--the Arafat group,” Rabin said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” “We look at it not as one or two actions that took place in Europe. For us, it’s a daily war against terrorism.”

Israel’s Cabinet ministers “received a detailed report on the two massacres” during their regular meeting Sunday. Cabinet Secretary Yossi Beilin, in a brief statement afterward, gave no hint about whether the Cabinet had decided on any retaliatory action.

“Israel . . . will not announce (its decision) in advance,” a senior official said.

The Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Levy; the air force commander, Maj. Gen. Amos Lapidot, and the head of military intelligence were all seen entering the Cabinet building while the ministers were meeting.

“Of course we will take into consideration what our American friends tell us, but first and foremost we will have our own interests to consider,” a Foreign Ministry official said Sunday night.

“It may take time--it does not have to be something immediately,” the official added. “But we will not let (the attacks) go by unpunished, because it would be very wrong. It would give encouragement to further terror.”

Rabin was equally explicit.

‘This Prolonged War’

“We have heard the message from Washington,” he said when asked on the NBC interview program about President Reagan’s message to Prime Minister Shimon Peres last week. Reagan urged that Israel do nothing that might harm chances for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“We will do what we consider to be vital to our interest in this prolonged war against terrorism,” Rabin said.

In response to a further question, Rabin added: “Whenever we realize there is a target of terrorism that deserves an action, we will act--with or without the kind of attacks that were carried out in Rome and Vienna.

“We decide how and when and where,” he said.

On Saturday, White House spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters in Southern California, where President Reagan is vacationing, that “it is absolutely essential that we continue the (Mideast) peace process.” He said that Reagan sent messages to “a number of nations” and that “what we have asked is that there be restraint on the part of all parties in the region.”

Message From Reagan

Peres told the Cabinet that he had received a message from Reagan, “which included an expression of condolences for the victims of the massacre in Rome and Vienna.”

A senior Israeli official, who spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity, responded that “we are not unaware of the considerations that the American spokesman (Speakes) raised. But as usual, it remains an Israeli decision . . . and I think that our American friends know that.”

The official said that whoever carried out the Rome and Vienna attacks “was aiming to damage the peace process” and that every time such an incident occurs, “this aim is at least partly achieved.” However, he added, “toleration of extremism and terrorism weakens the peace process more than some action against it.”

Speaking to reporters after Sunday’s Cabinet meeting, Communications Minister Amnon Rubenstein commented, “We are sensitive to every appeal by the United States, and needless to say, there will not be any irresponsible action.” But he added, “I am sure our intelligence will be able to discover who was responsible, and those responsible for these atrocities will be punished.”

Although PLO spokesmen in Tunis and in several European cities, including Rome, have denied any involvement of their organization in the airport raids and have condemned the attackers, one of two captured terrorists in Vienna told CBS television that he and his accomplices are members of “Fatah.”

Fatah is Arafat’s mainstream faction in the PLO. Abu Nidal’s group, which was expelled from the PLO in the 1970s, calls itself, among other names, the Revolutionary Council of Fatah.

The single surviving terrorist from the Rome attack has been quoted as telling Italian authorities that he and his accomplices were members of the Abu Nidal group, blamed for many past attacks on Israelis and PLO moderates in Europe.

“It more and more looks like both the PLO and Abu Nidal were involved in it (the airport assaults),” an Israeli Foreign Ministry official said Sunday. “This is what we believe.”

A senior Israeli military source said: “There are two possibilities: that it’s really Abu Nidal, and what the terrorist was saying (in Vienna) to the CBS reporter was really to implicate Arafat-PLO, or else that they are really PLO . . . and it’s hard to say.”

The military source added that in spite of past demonstrated animosity between Abu Nidal and Arafat, “there has been cooperation (in the past) between the two in attacks on (Jewish) targets.” He cited as examples attacks on European synagogues in which the Abu Nidal group “did get logistical assistance from organs of the PLO.”

Complicating the problem of pinpointing responsibility is the fact that Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri Banna, has no large or permanent base.

“The standard form of retaliation, which the (Israeli military) used against Arab terrorist organizations during the past years, is not applicable in this case,” military correspondent Zev Schiff wrote Sunday in the independent newspaper Haaretz.

Scattered in 3 Countries

Abu Nidal’s faction numbers “several hundred members” who are scattered in at least three Arab countries--Syria, Lebanon and Libya--according to Israeli intelligence sources.

His principal support has come, at varying times, from Iraq, Syria, Libya and possibly Iran. Abu Nidal “is a soldier of fortune,” one military source said. “He will go to whatever country will give him the support, that gives him the logistics.”

Most recently, a Foreign Ministry official said, “he was a lot in Libya.” The official added that “I don’t know whether he’s there now.” And he added that Abu Nidal continues to receive Syrian support.

Israel radio quoted Italian press reports Sunday night as saying that the Rome terrorists were trained in Iran and had arrived in Europe by way of Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Israel has frequently responded to terrorist raids by attacking what it describes as terrorist bases in Lebanon’s strategic Bekaa Valley. There have been 13 such Israeli air raids in Lebanon this year.

Missiles Along Border

However, that option may now have become more of a problem because Damascus has recently moved SAM-2, SAM-6 and SAM-8 anti-aircraft missiles into the Bekaa Valley and along its border with Lebanon, posing a new threat to Israeli aircraft.

Defense Minister Rabin, on “Meet the Press,” charged Syria with “breaking . . . the rules of behavior that have existed for the last three years” by its new deployment of the surface-to-air missiles.

He warned that Israel might respond with “an escalation” if the missiles are not pulled back into Syria.

He said the missiles reduce Israel’s ability to fly reconnaissance and bombing flights over Lebanon unhampered.

Dan Fisher reported from Jerusalem and Doyle McManus from Washington.