The Next Best Thing

"There is nothing I would not give if I could promise you peace," Israel's Premier Golda Meir said in a message to her armed forces last week, "but I cannot promise it." With no end in sight to the prolonged Middle East crisis, Golda's government offered the troops the next best thing. In advance of the country's 22nd anniversary celebrations this week, the Defense Ministry unveiled three new and formidable Israeli-developed weapons systems: > An almost totally redesigned version of the U.S.-built M48 Patton tank, which now mounts a British 105-mm. cannon, is driven by a diesel instead of a gasoline engine, and may be the equal of Egypt's Soviet-supplied T-55s. > A 90-mm. antitank gun, mounted on a halftrack chassis and capable of traversing from side to side, which considerably increases desert firepower. > Most impressive of all, the ship-based Gabriel missile, a flat-trajectory supersonic weapon against which no defense is reported to have been built as yet.

The Gabriels are mounted on Israel's twelve-ship flotilla of speedy (over 40 knots) French-built missile boats, the last five of which were smuggled out of Cherbourg in December in defiance of France's arms embargo. Each Sa'ar (Hebrew for storm) carries eight Gabriels. According to Pentagon specialists, the missile represents a technological breakthrough and greatly outperforms the Soviet Styx system, which the Egyptian navy used to sink the Israeli destroyer Elath in 1967. Its guidance is self-contained, combining both infra-red (heat-seeking) and radar-homing techniques. The Gabriel hunts down its target at such low levels that it becomes coated with sea spray on long flights. Washington is particularly interested in the fact that the new missile seems to be eminently capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

Commando Raids. The new arms promised to be of benefit in any renewal of all-out fighting. Last week, however, Israel was concerned with smaller-scale attacks by Arab commandos. On the Jordan frontier, an Israeli unit on night patrol spotted three Fatah scouts. Taking cover, the Israelis held their fire until the Fatah main force arrived to join the scouts. A body count produced 21 claimed dead--the largest number of commandos ever killed in one fight on Israeli territory. Three other major Arab thrusts came from southern Lebanon. Rockets killed a father and daughter in the east Galilee town of Kiryat Shemona; three Israeli soldiers died in an ambush on the foothills of Mount Hermon, and Israeli police near Haifa trapped a Fatah band, claiming four kills while suffering three wounded. In the wake of those attacks, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan warned: "Israel must take action across the border." Late in the week, Israeli jets struck at fedayeen-controlled areas in south Lebanon.

Dayan also voiced concern about another border--the one with Egypt. Intelligence sources disclosed last week that Moscow is sending Cairo not only SA3 antiaircraft missiles, Soviet pilots and technicians, but also "J"-model MIG-21s, which use tip-tanks for greater range and are capable of striking deep into Israeli-held territory. "Until now, our planes have not encountered Russians in the air and have not hit them on the ground," said Dayan. But he added ominously: "A military effort will be made to reduce our losses."

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