Middle East: Civilians as Targets

WITH the undeclared war in the Middle East growing steadily in intensity, the communique from Tel Aviv last week seemed strictly routine. It began: "Israeli jets blasted Egyptian military targets north and south of Cairo and a radar site 24 miles west of the Suez Canal in two raids today. All the Israeli planes returned safely. Pilots reported accurate hits in both strikes." In a matter of hours, however, the Israelis were drastically amending the report.

Staging their tenth air raid in a month around Cairo, Israeli planes were supposed to bomb an air force supply depot at Khanka, twelve miles north of the Egyptian capital. But two planes swept over the nearby community of Abu Zabal and dropped several bombs on a steel plant whose 1,700 employees had just arrived for the 8 a.m. shift. The Egyptian government reported 70 of the civilian workers killed and 98 wounded in the raid. It was the worst toll of civilians since the 1967 war, and its aftereffects are likely to be felt for a long time by all the powers concerned, including the U.S. and the Soviet Union. On Israel's part, it was a dangerous move, at best a major blunder. Despite continued Arab attacks, the raid made Israel seem increasingly aggressive and intransigent at a time when it is seeking additional U.S. arms.

24-Hour Warning. Western correspondents summoned to Abu Zabal found a rustic, peaceful scene on the town's fringes. Fellahin stolidly plowed their fields. On an adjacent canal, tall-masted feluccas sailed gracefully. At the National Metal Industries Co., however, fires smoldered everywhere, and at a hospital close by, bodies were stacked like cordwood. Because the Israelis so rarely make mistakes, there was doubt that the attack was inadvertent. Yet Israeli officials seemed genuinely surprised when reports began coming out of Egypt on the bombing of the factory. Finally, the military command announced that there had been inaccurate bombing because of a "technical error"--but it offered no further explanation. As if to underscore that the raid really was an accident, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan took the unprecedented step of notifying Egypt through the International Red Cross and U.N. cease-fire observers that an 880-lb. delayed-action bomb had been dropped at Abu Zabal and was set to detonate in 24 hours.

Far from the Middle East, the war be tween Israelis and Arabs claimed several other civilian casualties last week. At Munich's Riem airport, three swarthry men sauntered toward passengers of an El Al jet en route from Tel Aviv to London. The three, later identified as two Jordanians and an Egyptian, suddenly began tossing grenades and firing pistols. One Israeli was fatally wounded and 11 other people were hurt. At first, German police assumed that the three were after Actor Assaf Dayan, 23, Moshe's son, who was the first passenger to notice the Arabs. Papers the men tried to discard when they were captured, however, showed that they had planned to hijack the 707.

Unstable Situation. The increasing attacks with civilians as targets added a volatile element to a situation that was already as unstable as a vial of nitroglycerin. In Cairo, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians staged the biggest demonstration since the Six-Day War, demanding vengeance for "the blood of the martyrs." If one of the Israelis' objectives was to weaken Nasser, the raid seemed to be having the opposite effect --at least for the time being. "Nasser! Nasser!" screamed the crowds as Egypt's President drove to prayers at Al Azhar mosque with visiting Sudanese Premier Jaafar Nemery and Libyan Leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Two newspapers in the Egyptian capital, noting that U.S. Phantom jets had been used to carry out the Abu Zabal raid, called it "an American-Israeli crime in which Nixon is an accomplice."

Thrust onto the defensive, the U.S. upbraided Israel for the attack. Under Secretary of State Elliot Richardson publicly deplored both the Abu Zabal bombing and the Munich attack; privately, he emphasized Washington's unhappiness over the bombing during a two-hour meeting with Israeli Ambassador Itzhak Rabin.

The new round of bloodshed also spurred fresh demands for an end to the fighting. Charles Yost, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., proposed at a meeting with his British, French and Soviet counterparts in Manhattan that the Big Four try to implement a ceasefire. In Addis Ababa, U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers had a 75-minute talk with Yugoslavia's President Tito, who will see Gamal Abdel Nasser later this month in Cairo.

Plainly, the week's events have complicated the already grave dilemmas that confront all the principals in the Middle East crisis:

THE U.S. Before the month is out, President Nixon is supposed to reply to an Israeli request for 24 more Phantom jets and 80 Skyhawks to offset the sale of nearly 110 French Mirages and trainers to Libya. U.S. officials insisted that the Abu Zabal raid would not delay the decision. But a postponement would surprise nobody, for Nixon is bound to be faulted no matter what he decides. If he sells more jets to the Israelis, the Arabs warn that they might move against the American companies that now pump some $2.5 billion in oil from Arab wells annually. If Nixon refuses to sell the jets, the Israelis might be tempted to mount a major offensive before their neighbors have time to gain military seniority. Only last week, Dayan noted that by next summer "the Egyptians will have more tanks, more planes, more sophisticated weapons and better-trained forces."

THE SOVIET UNION. Moscow's dilemma is similar in some respects to Washington's. For months, Egyptians have been grumbling because the Soviets refuse to supply them with offensive arms. The Kremlin fears that if it provides such arms, the result might be a war that could spread rapidly beyond the Middle East. But if Moscow keeps turning Nasser down, it risks losing leverage.

JORDAN. King Hussein wants peace, probably more than any other Arab leader. But he remembers well how his grandfather, King Abdullah, was cut down by Arab assassins in 1951 for considering a separate settlement with the Israelis. Nevertheless, Hussein would like to curb the fedayeen within Jordan before their activities bring new Israeli reprisals. After conferring with Nasser in Cairo last week, Hussein announced stiff new limitations on the guerrillas. But he quickly backed down as battles broke out between the fedayeen and his army; one report said that 29 were killed.

EGYPT. In numerous speeches, Nasser has vowed that he will reply in kind to Israeli attacks. He has not done so, except for a few costly pinpricks. Last week, for example, four Egyptian planes, including a Sukh017 bomber, were destroyed in attacks on Israeli positions. Because the MIGs that form the bulk of Nasser's air force cannot reach Israeli cities and return to bases in Egypt, Nasser may soon seek permission to use landing strips in Jordan and Syria.

ISRAEL. Once seen as the David of the Middle East, surrounded by 100 million hostile Arabs, Israel is increasingly being transformed in the world's eyes into the Goliath, as a result of episodes like that at Abu Zabal. Yet, the Israelis ask, how were they supposed to respond when Nasser launched his war of attrition? In an acrimonious Cabinet debate last week, Foreign Minister Abba Eban proposed that Israel stop the shooting on its own, not only to scout peace possibilities but also to regain some of its lost good will. Premier Golda Meir coldly rejected the idea. One upshot of the debate has been to improve Dayan's chances of succeeding Golda. Previously, Deputy Premier Yigal Allon was thought to be first in line. With the war heating up, Golda now seems to be leaning toward Soldier Dayan as the man whose views on the fighting are most compatible with hers.

If not intolerable, the situation has thus become extremely uneasy for everybody involved. But how is it to be improved? Some U.S. officials believe that Nasser could do it simply by agreeing to a ceasefire, but that is something he has refused to do several times. Eban's idea of a unilateral Israeli cease-fire might inspire the Arabs to stop shooting, but other Israelis regard that as a very iffy proposition. Hussein could set peace talks in motion by seeking a settlement with the Israelis on his own, though it is just as conceivable that he would set nothing in motion but his own downfall. Meanwhile, the hot summer envisioned by Moshe Dayan draws nearer. The way things are going, it could even arrive by spring.

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