Israel Strikes Targets Deep Inside Lebanon

In an apparent warning to Syria, Israeli warplanes launched a rare attack Saturday on radical Palestinian targets in Lebanon, destroying 10 tanks and zeroing in on a suspected source of hostility as Israel attempts to end a 22-year occupation of Lebanon.

The air raids came as fighting escalated sharply in southern Lebanon and as another day of pitched rioting in the West Bank left scores of Palestinians wounded and forced Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak into an emergency Cabinet meeting late Saturday. When that session ended, Barak’s office announced that he was postponing his planned departure for Washington tonight for a meeting with President Clinton.

Israeli planes earlier Saturday fired a barrage of missiles on a training base belonging to the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, located in the Bekaa Valley near Lebanon’s border with Syria. The organization, under the leadership of Ahmed Jibril, opposes peace with Israel and answers to Syria.

Israeli officials in Jerusalem said the airstrikes destroyed 10 Soviet-made T-55 tanks. Israel regularly raids suspected guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon, usually belonging to Lebanese Islamic militants, but it rarely ventures as far east as the Syrian border.

Reuters news agency quoted witnesses in Lebanon who said that two jeeps and an arms depot were hit and that a number of casualties were evacuated across the border to Syria. Reuters also reported that Jibril’s son Jihad was at the base during the attacks. Jibril has for decades been implicated in terrorist bombings, with his name most recently emerging as a suspect in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Israeli officials, repeatedly and as recently as last week, have warned that radical Palestinian elements in Lebanon--acting on orders from Syria--will attempt to attack Israeli troops as they withdraw from Lebanon or will launch cross-border attacks into Israel once the pullback is complete.

Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, the Israeli army’s operations chief, said Saturday that long-dormant Palestinian extremists will increasingly hook up with Hezbollah, the Islamic militant movement that has been fighting to oust Israel from southern Lebanon. Saturday’s airstrikes came after Israel learned Friday that Hezbollah is equipped with tanks and other heavy artillery, which the Israeli army believes came from Syria.

By hitting a pro-Syrian group so close to the Syrian border, Israel was clearly sending a signal to the government in Damascus, the Syrian capital, that it had better rein in its proxies. Israel has resisted confronting Damascus directly because of the conflagration that could result if the two powers engaged in head-on war.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah attacked an Israeli army post near the border late Saturday, leaving several northern Israeli border communities without electrical power, the Israeli army said. Also, Hezbollah fighters attempted to infiltrate an outpost in southern Lebanon manned by Israel’s proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, but were fought back by the combined forces of the Israeli navy and air force.

And in Palestinian territories within Israel’s borders, at least 100 Palestinians and two Israelis were wounded Saturday in the ninth day of clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators.