Israel Seizure of Libyan Jet Condemned : Britain Joins Arab Nations in Attacking Interception of Plane

Condemnation of Israel’s seizure of a private Libyan jet carrying nine Syrian politicians poured in today from Britain and from Arab nations both moderate and extreme, including Libya, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe said there is no evidence that there were any terrorists aboard the plane or that there was any threat to Israel’s security.

“The interception was without justification. It sets a dangerous precedent which appears to have been in contravention of international law,” he said. “We condemn this forcible diversion. Such acts can only endanger the lives of innocent persons.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd termed the seizure an “act of perfidious aggression.” The official press said Fahd told Syrian President Hafez Assad in a telephone conversation of his “deep resentment of this act of air piracy, perpetrated by our common enemy.”

Hussein Hits ‘Piracy’

Government-run Jordan television said King Hussein telephoned Assad and “denounced and condemned the Israeli aggression against the civilian Libyan airliner and described it as air piracy.”

Syria’s official news agency quoted armed forces chief of staff Gen. Hikmet Chehabi as saying: “We will answer this crime by teaching those who committed it a lesson they will not forget. We will choose the method, the time and the place.”

Government-run Libyan radio called the interception a “low and ugly crime” that could “open the door” to the revenge hijacking of American and Israeli planes.

Israeli warplanes intercepted the U.S.-made Gulfstream jet Tuesday on a flight to Syria and forced it to land at an air base in northern Israel. Authorities questioned passengers and held the plane five hours before letting them continue to Damascus.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in a speech Tuesday night to the Knesset, acknowledged, “We did not find what we hoped to find” in the search and seizure, apparently directed against Palestinian terrorist leaders.

‘Victory for Terrorists’

“If it was successful it would have been extremely effective,” said Tamar Prat of the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. “Instead, it’s a victory for the terrorists.”

Most Israeli government officials refused to comment on the incident, but newspapers, scholars and former intelligence officials characterized the interception of the wrong plane as an embarrassment and a disappointment.

Israel had hoped to capture radical Palestinian guerrilla leaders returning from a conference in Tripoli. “The important point is that the people we were looking for were not there, and from that point of view it definitely was a failure, a mistake,” said Shlomo Gazit, chief of military intelligence from 1974-79.

“The Plan Went Astray,” read the headline of today’s Jerusalem Post.

“I’ll say it did,” muttered a woman in disgust as she purchased the morning paper.