Rocketing of Town Poses Further Challenge to Israel

Already caught up in deliberations over how to respond to the recent movement of Syrian surface-to-air missiles into Lebanon and last Friday’s terrorist attacks against El Al Airlines in Rome and Vienna, Israeli leaders Thursday faced a new military challenge on their northern border.

Five Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon landed in northern Israel early Thursday, sending the residents of the country’s largest border town, Kiryat Shemona, scurrying into bomb shelters. While Israeli military sources said there were no casualties in the attacks, a Katyusha that landed in the central section of the town of 15,000 damaged four cars and shattered nearby apartment windows.

As with the latest Syrian missile crisis and the airport assaults, Israeli officials threatened retaliation for the Katyusha attacks, but took no immediate action.

“I would say (it’s) ‘Bad Guys, 3, Israel, wait and see,’ ” summed up one diplomatic source.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres told reporters that Israel will take the necessary steps to halt the politically volatile Katyusha attacks, but said that it would be difficult to pinpoint those responsible “because there are so many forces acting in an uncoordinated manner” in Lebanon.

The Northern District army commander, Maj. Gen. Ori Orr, said in an interview on Israel army radio that “if we find out that this is the beginning of a new process, we will react, and not only the residents of Kiryat Shemona will remain sleepless.”

His comments were seen as a warning that Israel would unleash artillery or some other form of military response against any guerrilla targets it can identify in southern Lebanon. However, another defense source said it will be another few days before it is clear whether the attacks were an isolated incident.

Officials also said that guerrillas of the Iranian-backed Shia Muslim group Hezbollah (Party of God) are now operating in southern Lebanon. United Nations peacekeeping troops have reported seeing Iranian flags openly exhibited in the area, although such flags previously were banned by Amal, a less radical Shia Muslim militia.

It was ostensibly to end frequent Katyusha rocket attacks against Kiryat Shemona and other northern settlements that Israel invaded Lebanon in June, 1982. The action, known here as “Operation Peace for Galilee,” successfully smashed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s infrastructure in the south.

But, as the incursion evolved into a three-year military occupation, it turned the local, mostly Shia Muslim population against Israel. The Israeli army still has several hundred troops stationed in a six-mile-deep “security zone” in southern Lebanon, and it supports a mostly Christian militia called the South Lebanon Army, which is supposed to help prevent attacks on Israel’s northern border settlements.

One Guerrilla Slain

On Wednesday, Israeli troops patrolling in the security zone killed one Lebanese guerrilla and routed others who were getting ready to launch a Katyusha attack, the military command said.

That night, the South Lebanon Army began shelling Shia villages north of the zone, according to Timor Goksel, spokesman for U.N. peacekeeping forces in the region. Israel radio reported Thursday that the SLA shelling continued Thursday.

The Katyusha attacks came just hours after Israel’s “inner Cabinet” of senior government ministers discussed options for dealing with last Friday’s airport assaults in Rome and Vienna and the latest Syrian missile crisis.

“Now we have another dimension,” commented one Israeli government official.

Another person, a Greek woman, died in Rome on Thursday from wounds sustained in the airport attack, bringing the total of civilian deaths in the two assaults to 15. In addition, four terrorists were slain in gunfights with security guards, local police officers and Israeli security agents at the two airports.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry blamed the PLO for the airport attacks.

The letter charged that Palestinian terrorism originates with the PLO, which it said has repeatedly demonstrated its readiness to carry out attacks that kill innocent people.

The letter also criticized countries that condemn terrorism but allow the PLO to operate diplomatic missions in their capitals.

” . . . There is a blatant contradiction between the stance that many countries have adopted against international terrorism and the permission some of them give to the central terrorist organization of the world to operate ‘missions’ in their capitals,” the letter said.

Three of the surviving terrorists have told investigators that they represent a Palestinian splinter group headed by terrorist Abu Nidal, who broke with the mainline PLO a decade ago. Peres said in a report to the Israeli Parliament on Wednesday that the group’s “main strength today lies in Libya,” although it has also received support from Syria and Iran.

The Syrian missile crisis has been brewing for about six weeks, with Israel contending that the repositioned weapons change the status quo in Lebanon and threaten Israel’s vital “freedom of the skies” in the area. Jerusalem wiped out Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries in Lebanon in the first days of its 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

The Israeli official refused to say whether the ministers approved any specific actions at their Cabinet meeting Wednesday, although he did comment: “We will not let terrorist activities, whoever carried them out, go unanswered. They will be answered.”

Speculation Discounted

Like other sources in the last few days, however, this official appeared anxious to discourage speculation about some imminent military response to either the airport attacks or the Syrian missiles.

“As long as people are nervous, that’s good enough for us for the time being,” the official said.

A diplomatic source commented, “I’m sure they (the Israelis) have all sorts of options on their drawing board, but it takes time to plan and get the people up to tune, and to really be prepared so you don’t have casualties on your side.”

Israeli officials contend that the government need not be in a rush to react either in the case of the Syrian missiles or over the airport attacks.

Little Public Pressure

“In the past, the government has been pushed into action by the pressure of domestic public opinion,” said one government source.

“Here in this case, . . . there isn’t such domestic public pressure. It simply doesn’t exist now.”

Israelis have lived before with Syrian missiles in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, noted a senior defense source. He referred to the period between the spring of 1981, when such weapons were first deployed there, and the June, 1982, Israeli attack that wiped them out. “We have a lot of time,” he said. “You have to wait for an opportunity and an occasion to do it.”

Military sources stressed that Israel has been able to adjust to the new situation by rerouting its reconnaissance flights over Lebanon to avoid the missile batteries. Also, its aircraft are using new cameras capable of “seeing” almost as far into Syria as was possible using the old reconnaissance routes over the Bekaa.

Israeli Concern Cited

The sources said Israel could easily knock out the Syrian missiles but that the government is concerned that this could trigger a wider conflict that neither Syria nor Israel really wants right now.

While Peres has harshly criticized Libya as a “murder state” in connection with the airport attacks, Israel also appears less inclined to retaliate quickly for those actions than it did in the first hours after the attacks.

“There are some who propose a military action against Libya,” Peres told the Parliament on Wednesday. “However, before one speaks of military operations, some simple questions have to be asked: Why is Libya treated with a measure of forgiveness and a closing of eyes” by much of the international community?

Even though the airport attacks were directed against El Al check-in counters, most of the casualties were non-Israelis, and officials here clearly feel that the burden of responding should not be left to them alone.

“They don’t want the burden of being the spear carrier for anti-terrorism,” said one source close to the government.

As Israel sees it, Washington has publicly urged it to take retaliatory action against Libya. However, said a high ranking Israeli defense source: “I’m afraid that the U.S. may be playing a double game--trying to get Israel to do its dirty work while saving itself from possible failure like the rescue attempt in Iran,” a reference to President Jimmy Carter’s abortive attempt to rescue American hostages in Tehran in April, 1980.

Meanwhile, the military source added, “we must keep in mind that America, the leader of the Free World, lost five dead in the (airport) attacks,” compared to only one Israeli fatality.

Another government source here said that while Israel might have found it politically attractive to strike militarily at the PLO in retaliation for the airport attacks, Libya and Abu Nidal are less inviting targets.

While as hostile as any Arab state toward Israel, Libya is not one of the “confrontation states” bordering on the Jewish nation. And while Abu Nidal poses a terrorist threat, he does not represent the political challenge that Yasser Arafat’s mainstream PLO constitutes for Israel.