Infiltrators Kill Three Soldiers in Israeli Camp

Suspected Arab infiltrators wielding knives, axes and a pitchfork killed three Israeli soldiers in their tents at a basic training camp in north-central Israel early Saturday in an attack that stirred up anew the bitter debate over how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Two of the three victims were immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were undergoing rudimentary military training. The third was a veteran noncommissioned officer. Another soldier, also a Soviet emigre, was wounded.

The audacious assault was certain to provoke repercussions that could affect the course of the campaign leading up to Israeli national elections now scheduled for June as well as the progress of U.S.-brokered Middle East peace talks that have been under way since October. The Knesset--the Israeli parliament--will meet this week to discuss the assault, army radio reported.

Israeli forces quickly retaliated, staging air attacks early today on two Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon, according to news reports from that country.

Flying low over the Mediterranean, jets and helicopter gunships fired rockets into Ein el Hilwa refugee camp near Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut, while other Israeli helicopters hammered the Rashidiyeh camp near Tyre, the British news agency Reuters reported.

Lebanese authorities said that four people were killed and six were wounded in Ein el Hilwa. Casualty figures from Rashidiyeh were not immediately available.

The retaliatory strikes came less than 24 hours after the reported Arab raid, the first such attack on a military base inside Israel proper during the four-year-old Palestinian uprising against the Jerusalem government’s rule over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And while the attack took place inside Israel’s borders, officials suspected that the raid originated in the occupied West Bank. Soldiers in helicopters and on foot combed the hills and villages toward the Palestinian town of Janin. After house-to-house searches, several Arab residents of Israel were arrested, but no suspects were identified by name.

Recent armed ambushes of settlers in the West Bank and Gaza provoked calls from Israeli right-wingers for an end to the Mideast peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians. And news of Saturday’s attack brought swift--and differing--reactions from across the spectrum of Israeli political life.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called the attack “another murderous crime of terrorism.”

Shamir’s government has been criticized for failure to crush the Palestinian uprising, and the issue of security is now more than ever likely to become a major topic in this spring’s election campaign.

Defense Minister Moshe Arens blamed the attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader, Yasser Arafat, who “claims to support peace talks but thinks they should be accompanied by terror acts.”

Other rightist politicians called for Israel to apply capital punishment to the perpetrators and to deport leaders of the uprising. Dovish politicians condemned the killings as the act of Arab extremists and insisted that peace talks must be speeded up.

Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi said the attack pointed up the need “for quick action toward a just peace” in the Israeli-Palestinian talks.

The Arab raid took place not long after midnight at the base located about 20 miles southeast of the port of Haifa. The camp was largely abandoned because most of the recruits in basic training had gone home for the weekend. Fewer than 10 soldiers remained, most of them asleep in their large olive-drab tents when the attackers struck. There is no fence around the compound.

The infiltrators first slit the throat of the veteran soldier and then stabbed the sleeping immigrant soldiers. A guard, hearing a commotion, fired a shot, apparently frightening the assailants away. Ambulances, helicopters and teams equipped with search dogs and desert scouts rushed to the area. Roadblocks were set up, creating huge weekend traffic jams for unwary travelers. Military censors kept news of the killings under wraps until Saturday afternoon.

The military camp is located near the Israeli Arab town of Umm al Fahm, a center of Muslim nationalism. Janin, in the West Bank, has been the scene of several incidents of violence involving armed Palestinians as well as Palestinian collaborators who spy on behalf of Israel.

Several commentators said the emigre victims barely knew how to load their rifles. There was criticism that the base was ineffectively guarded.

According to radio reports, a PLO squad known as the Black Panthers, made up of wanted Palestinians on the run, carried out the raid. Some Israeli officials attributed the attack to Muslim extremists. Three rifles were stolen from the victims.

In the past, most efforts to raid Israeli military bases have been launched from across the border, frequently from Lebanon. The most devastating recent previous raid occurred in November, 1987, when a Palestinian guerrilla flew by hang glider into an army base in northern Israel and gunned down six soldiers.