Lebanon Raids Mark Upsurge in Fighting

Israeli warplanes rocketed guerrilla positions in South Lebanon on Friday after Muslim militants killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded seven in attacks on Israeli outposts, the army confirmed.

The pro-Iranian group Hezbollah said it shelled the Israeli army positions in revenge for a car bombing that killed four people--including at least two Hezbollah members--in Beirut on Wednesday. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for the car bombing, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin denied that Israel was involved.

The upsurge in fighting on Israel’s only active front came as talks continued in Washington between senior Israeli and Syrian military officers, who were said to be exchanging views on the security needs each nation has on the Golan Heights.

Peace negotiations between Israel and Syria have bogged down over Syria’s demand that the Israelis withdraw completely from the strategic plateau, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Syria has 30,000 troops deployed in eastern Lebanon, and Israel regards it as the chief powerbroker in that troubled nation. Israel has repeatedly accused Syria of using Hezbollah to put pressure on Israel at the negotiating table.

Hezbollah recently stepped up both shelling and ground attacks on posts held by Israel and its allied militia, the South Lebanese Army, in Israel’s self-proclaimed security zone--a belt of land above Israel’s border with Lebanon that the Israelis and the SLA jointly patrol.

Twenty-one Israeli soldiers have died this year in South Lebanon. This month alone, six Israeli soldiers have died in South Lebanon and 18 have been wounded.

The mounting casualties there have provoked a debate within the government and the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, over whether the army should break out of the security zone and unleash an all-out assault on Hezbollah.

Rabin has warned that a large-scale attack could endanger the fragile negotiations with Syria under U.S. auspices or trigger Hezbollah attacks on Jews living outside Israel.

Touring the northern border to speak with soldiers and their officers Friday night, Rabin again indicated that Israel’s response to Hezbollah would be limited.

“We have to remember that we’ve tried in the past to eliminate terrorism by means of a total war,” Rabin said, referring to the June, 1982, invasion of Lebanon launched by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s right-wing government, an invasion that took the Israeli army all the way to Beirut in a war against the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“We managed to eliminate the Palestinian terrorism in Lebanon, and instead we got a much more vicious, harsher terrorism and one that is for the most part authentically Lebanese, not foreign,” Rabin said.

He said the Israeli army’s response to Hezbollah attacks in the security zone will, in general, be confined to that area.

“Any attempt to . . . expand the security zone will force us to commit more forces, to allow them greater geographic mobility, and the number of casualties will rise without changing anything for (the security of) residents of the north,” Rabin said.

Nonetheless, Israeli planes and helicopter gunships attacked Hezbollah targets north of the security zone Friday after Hezbollah’s morning attack on the Israeli positions.

Reports from Marjayoun, in Lebanon, said that a Lebanese police car was struck by one rocket outside the village of Jbaa, burning alive two Lebanese policemen. The army made no comment on that report.

Hezbollah leaders had warned Thursday that the Shiite Muslim group would strike back at Israel for the Wednesday car bombing. Early Friday morning, Hezbollah started shelling Israeli positions in the eastern part of the security zone.

Israel Radio reported that dozens of rockets, missiles and mortars fell on its posts at Suweida and Dabsheh.

All the Israeli casualties reportedly occurred during an attack on a post at Ali Taher heights, an army spokesman reported.

About 1,000 Israeli soldiers and about 2,500 SLA troops patrol the 440-square-mile zone, which Israel carved out in 1985 to protect its northern towns from rocket attacks and cross-border guerrilla raids.