Israel Loses a Round

"This is anti-Israel festival week," groaned one foreign ministry official in Jerusalem. To a large extent, he was right. At the United Nations last week, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization won a stunning diplomatic victory that came as a sharp defeat for the increasingly isolated and friendless Israelis. In effect, the Security Council virtually recognized the P.L.O. as the government in exile of a potential state equal in international standing to Israel. Over the violent protestations of U.S. Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan, the Security Council voted 9 to 3 (with three abstentions) to invite representatives of the P.L.O. to participate in a formal council debate on "Israeli aggression" against Lebanon, with the same rights that are granted member nations of the United Nations.

Bizarre Drama. The Palestinian diplomatic coup was the climax of a bizarre week-long drama of Arab and Israeli face-saving, double-talking, bluff-calling and epithet-hurling. It began when the Security Council, after frantic three-day consultations, accepted a Syrian demand that renewal of the mandate for the U.N. forces on the Golan Heights be linked to a proposal for a full-scale Security Council debate on the Middle East. Representatives of the P.L.O., who gained permanent observer status in the General Assembly last year but had never been included in Security Council proceedings before, were to be invited to participate in this debate, scheduled to begin on Jan. 12. The mandate renewal, which was to expire four hours before the agreement was reached, was accepted with relief by all parties.

The invitation to the P.L.O. was another matter. It was interpreted by many not only as a victory for Arab hard-liners (and for Syria in particular) but as a serious diplomatic defeat for Israel, the U.S. and even Egypt, which had bilaterally negotiated a Sinai accord earlier this year without gaining any concessions for the Palestinians.

The reaction of Israel was swift, blunt and angry. Jerusalem was particularly annoyed at what it saw as a betrayal by Washington; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the Israelis felt, should have ordered Moynihan to veto the mandate resolution rather than permit greater international recognition of the P.L.O. After a six-hour emergency session on Monday, Premier Yitzhak Rabin's Cabinet decided to boycott next month's U.N. debate. It also approved a proposal to establish four new settlements on the Golan Heights within the next two weeks--a move that will make any future territorial negotiations with Syria considerably more difficult. The Cabinet issued a stern warning that "Israel will deem Syria responsible for any murderous activity perpetrated by terrorists coming from Syrian territory." In response, Palestine commando leaders in Lebanon threatened stepped-up activity against Israel. From Damascus came reports that Syria would not stand idly by while Israel built new settlements on the Golan Heights.

Less than 24 hours after the Cabinet's angry pronouncements, 30 Israeli jets bombed and strafed Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, leaving at least 100 dead and more than 150 wounded --the heaviest death toll in such raids since February 1973. During attacks on refugee camps near Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, the hamlet of Kafr Tabnit was razed almost to the ground. Israeli military spokesmen said the targets were terrorist bases, including the headquarters of the Syrian-backed Saiqa guerrillas who are thought to be responsible for a Nov. 21 raid on the Golan Heights in which three Israeli militiamen were killed. Some form of Israeli reprisal had also been expected for a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem earlier in November that killed six people and wounded 46. The timing and intensity of last week's air strikes, however, led many observers to conclude that they were an expression of Israeli outrage at the Security Council action.

Clumsy Raids. The Israelis suffered no losses in the raids, which initially served to defuse the tense and angry mood in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Later, though, there were some second thoughts. "The use of massive airpower increases the danger of hitting civilians and merely fuels the present anti-Israel campaign in the world," warned Ha 'aretz, the country's leading paper. "The price we may have to pay may be far above what we have achieved in greater security." Even one foreign ministry official conceded that the raids had been "clumsy and ill-timed."

Arab leaders were more vehement.

Lebanese Premier Rashid Karami said the attacks "demonstrated Israel's perplexity after the victories scored by Syria and the P.L.O. at the U.N." P.L.O. Spokesman Abu Sharar also attributed the strikes to Israeli "desperation" over the Palestinians' diplomatic success. Criticism came from less predictable sources as well. Pope Paul VI, in a message of condolence cabled to the Lebanese government, called the raids "an inadmissible gesture of violence."

The Israeli action placed Egypt in a particularly uncomfortable position. The day before the raids, Egypt had taken over the Abu Rudeis oilfields, which Israel had given up as part of the second Sinai accord. The Egyptians thus regained a $1 million-a-day resource, but the takeover made them appear to be on embarrassingly good terms with Israel at a bad moment. Privately, the Egyptians were furious at the Syrians for having undermined President Anwar Sadat's attempts to ease tensions in the area. As one high government official told TIME: "They have called a Security Council debate that will accomplish nothing but has given the Israelis an excuse to get tough."

Official Status. Publicly the Egyptians had to do something to refurbish their image as champions of Arab solidarity. To one-up their Syrian rivals, the Egyptian delegation at the U.N. called for an immediate emergency meeting of the Security Council last Wednesday to discuss "Israeli aggression" against Lebanon--with P.L.O. participation. The P.L.O. then forced the issue of their official status at the U.N. by refusing to participate under Procedural Rule 39, which would allow them to participate rather amorphously as "persons who can supply information" useful to the council. Instead, they asked to be admitted under Rule 37, which governs "member states," thus precipitating last Thursday's watershed vote.

The Syrians, however, trumpeted the Security Council vote as a major victory for their aggressive strategy--and as a major setback for the Egyptian policy of seeking peace on the installment plan with Israel. "Syria has realized an important political achievement for the Palestinian cause," proclaimed the Damascus newspaper Al Thawra. "The Security Council's resolution was a defeat for the step-by-step diplomacy and the policy of bilateral and partial solutions." Syrian Defense Minister Major-General Moustafa Tlas also gratuitously sneered at the Egyptian-Israeli accord on the Sinai. "The Egyptian administration regained a few kilometers of land," he said, "where troops armed with rifles only can enter. But the Egyptian army cannot take up positions in the strategic Sinai passes because American spies and experts will be stationed there."

To some Israeli hawks, the U.S. vote on the mandate was evidence that Washington is changing its policy of aloofness toward the P.L.O. The State Department firmly denies there is any such shift, but there has been some indication of at least willingness to rethink the issue. Last month then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Harold

Saunders submitted a document to the House Committee on International Relations that stressed the importance of the Palestinian question as "the heart of the conflict" in the Middle East. The Saunders paper raised the possibility of negotiations between Israel and the P.L.O. on the future of a Palestinian state if the P.L.O. would renounce terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist.

Half Loaf. The Saunders testimony, even as it profoundly disturbed Israelis, profoundly intrigued Palestinian moderates, including Yasser Arafat. According to some reports, he is ready to accept a "half a loaf solution to the Middle East problem--a state on the West Bank and in Gaza, instead of all Palestine. Although they are still a distinctly minority voice, at least five dovish ministers in the Israeli Cabinet have called for a new policy under which Israel would announce its willingness to negotiate with any group of Palestinians that would recognize Israel, renounce the use of terrorism against it, and accept the Security Council's resolutions on the Middle East. Proponents of this policy argue that it would help Israel regain some support in world opinion.

Last Thursday's vote, however, apparently convinced Israeli hard-liners --and Premier Rabin as well--that no such compromise is possible. In an interview with the daily Ma 'ariv, the Premier insisted that "there will not be a third state between Israel and Jordan. The solution to the Palestinian problem must be within the framework of our relations with Jordan"--a proposal that is almost as unacceptable to King Hussein as it is to Arafat. Then Rabin added gloomily, "We may have to go decades without getting peace."

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