3 Palestinians Slain After Killing 2 Israeli Soldiers

Three Palestinian guerrillas bent on seizing Israeli hostages slipped through a network of electronic and other security systems on this country’s border with Lebanon on Sunday and killed two Israeli soldiers in a clash at dawn before they themselves were slain, the army said.

It was believed to be the first successful guerrilla penetration across this country’s heavily guarded northern frontier in years, and it was the most serious such episode since April, 1980, when five attackers and three Israelis, including a 2-year-old boy, were killed in a clash at the border kibbutz of Misgav Am.

Within hours of Sunday’s attack, Israeli army units went into action across the border, imposing a curfew on Meiss el Jabar, the nearest Lebanese village to the site of the border penetration, and later sending helicopter gunships to attack a building near the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre that the army said was used by “terrorists.”

(Reuters news agency quoted Palestinian sources in Beirut as saying that a woman was killed and three people seriously injured when the gunships attacked the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh.)

It was the second consecutive day of unusually bold Arab attacks. On Saturday, Israeli forces and their ally, the South Lebanon Army militia, beat back an assault by up to 60 Shia Muslim gunmen who attacked a militia outpost in Israel’s proclaimed “security zone” that extends up to 10 miles north of the border.

The Israelis said that 18 guerrillas from the fundamentalist Hezbollah (Party of God) were killed in Saturday’s two-hour battle, which occurred near the Lebanese village of Qantarah, just a few miles slightly north and west of the site of Sunday’s guerrilla penetration into Israel.

Despite the coincidence of their timing and location, the two incidents were not believed to be related, Israeli military sources said. Documents found on the bodies of the three guerrilla infiltrators Sunday indicated that they were members of Yasser Arafat’s main-line Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sources said.

Coincides With Meeting

The Israeli sources linked Sunday’s incident to the scheduled opening in Algiers today of a meeting of the Palestine National Council, a body that functions as a Palestinian parliament in exile.

They viewed the attack as part of an effort by Arafat to regain support of PLO hard-liners who have reviled him for his ill-fated efforts to forge a joint Middle East peace strategy with Jordan’s King Hussein.

There was no immediate way to independently confirm this explanation, which serves Israel’s longstanding interest in depicting Arafat as a terrorist with whom it is impossible to negotiate.

According to the Israeli army, Sunday’s infiltrators were dressed in military fatigues and carried rifles, grenades, flak jackets and U.S.-made anti-tank missiles. They apparently managed to penetrate the security zone immediately north of the border and hide out in Meiss el Jabar for some time before slipping past Israeli defenses near the isolated border kibbutz of Menara under cover of darkness, fog and a light rain.

Patrol Finds Footprints

Patrolling Israeli soldiers found their footprints at about 4 a.m. Sunday and sounded an alert. The area was sealed off, nearby settlements were warned, and a careful search was begun, using foot patrols and helicopters.

The guerrillas hid in an apple orchard between Menara and a neighboring kibbutz at Yiftah, according to the army. They opened fire at about dawn on an Israeli patrol as it passed within 10 feet of them, killing two soldiers. The three infiltrators were killed by return fire.

Military sources said that leaflets found in their clothing indicated that the guerrillas intended to take Israeli hostages with hopes of trading them for Palestinians imprisoned in this country. The military command identified the two Israeli casualties as Sgt. Yosef Allon, 21, and Lt. Yoav Sharon, 22. Sharon was buried Sunday afternoon at the military cemetery in his hometown of Haifa.

News Delayed by Censor

Israel’s military censor delayed public disclosure of news of the attack for nine hours to allow time for the army to notify the families of the slain soldiers.

There have been several other attempts to attack northern Israel from across the Lebanese border in recent years, but most have reportedly been detected before would-be infiltrators managed to set foot in Israeli territory.

In one such case, two Arabs were killed by Israeli troops during an attempt to cross into Israel in March, 1986.

In the 1980 incident at Misgav Am, attackers held several Israelis hostage at a nursery school before an army anti-terrorist unit stormed the building and killed all five gunmen.

Menara and Yiftah were both founded in the 1940s, and each has several hundred residents. Menara was attacked by Arab infiltrators in 1969 and again in 1970.