The New Blood Feud: Arab vs. Arab

A deadly struggle ranges from Paris to Pakistan

"We don't know quite where it's going to lead, but there's blood all over the place."

So said one bewildered State Department diplomat last week, commenting on an unprecedented and frightening display of Palestinian terrorism--directed not against the Israelis but against brother Arabs. The blood feud involved a long-running quarrel between Palestinians loyal to Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Iraqi-backed "rejectionists," who believed that the P.L.O. leader was soft on Israel.

Within a seven-day period, reactivated P.L.O. hit teams launched assaults that left four people dead and eleven more wounded in a number of cities. In return, Palestinian enemies of Arafat attacked the P.L.O. office in Paris, killing Arafat's Principal Deputy on the Continent and his Assistant. At week's end there were no signs that the bloodletting was over--and no clear answer as to what effect it would have on the Middle East peacemaking process.

Highlights of the seven-day battle:

P:In London, Palestinians tossed a hand grenade beneath the limousine of Iraqi Ambassador Taha Ahmed Daoud outside his embassy in Kensington. Daoud, luckily, was inside the embassy, bidding his staff farewell before leaving for reassignment in Saudi Arabia. London police arrested two Palestinian grenade tossers, a man and a woman.

P:In Paris, two gunmen who had stuffed grenades and guns beneath their raincoats bluffed their way into the Iraqi embassy. They whipped out the weapons, but one of the two, after tossing a grenade, unaccountably dashed away and disappeared. His companion took nine employees hostage and held them for eight hours. Once again the gunmen's target escaped: Iraqi Ambassador Mundir Tawfik Wandawi was at the Elysee Palace bidding French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing farewell before he too departed for a new assignment. After an eight-hour vigil, the Palestinian was persuaded to release his hostages and surrender. As he was being led away from the embassy by police, an Iraqi security agent opened pointblank pistol fire at him. The Palestinian was hit in the thigh, and one of his French escorts was killed. In the return fire, an Iraqi security man was fatally wounded. Three Iraqis were arrested.

P:In Beirut, a Palestinian Jeep carrying a .50-cal. machine gun sprayed the Iraqi embassy. No one was hurt, but in northern Lebanon, Palestinian factions battled in a running fight that by week's end had taken a reported 37 lives.

P:In Karachi, two armed men rode up to the Iraqi consulate general aboard a motorcycle. One of the two was bayoneted by a Pakistani policeman. The other, captured after a brief shootout, confessed that he had been sent from Beirut to murder Consul General Naji Zain Din and had picked up his weapon and instructions from Palestinians in Pakistan.

P:In Paris, pro-Iraqi Palestinians struck while Arafat was in Havana attending a Cuban-sponsored world youth festival. Storming Arab League headquarters on Boulevard Haussmann, two gunmen shot their way into the offices of the P.L.O. One of them killed Ezzedin Kalak, 40, a close friend of Arafat's, as well as Kalak's assistant, Hammad Adnan.

>In Islamabad, finally, two pro-Iraqi gunmen launched an attack on the local P.L.O. office that killed three Palestinians and a Pakistani policeman.

To observers of the Arab world, it was no great surprise that Iraqi diplomatic missions figured so centrally in the bloody raids. Iraq's fanatic Baathist government rejects any negotiations whatsoever with Israel. Baghdad was annoyed when the P.L.O. in May decided to suspend its Lebanon-based military operations against Israel.* In response, the Iraqis shut down P.L.O. weapons factories in the country and reportedly intercepted shipments of arms and medicines from China intended for Arafat's troops.

Iraq has also become a sanctuary for Palestinian rejectionists who believe that Arafat's stance toward Israel is too moderate. The principal fedayeen rebel is Sabry Khalil Bana, 40, whose code name Abu Nidal means Father of the Struggle; he heads a dissident Palestinian group known as Black June, after the month in 1976 when Syrian forces invaded Lebanon and fought the Palestinians. Abu Nidal, whose terrorist credentials include a 1973 attack on a Pan Am jet at Rome's Fiumicino Airport in which 34 people died, is under a P.L.O. death sentence for disobeying orders. Last week's series of attacks suggested that the P.L.O. intends to wipe out Abu Nidal and strike back at the Iraqi regime that supports him. "If someone pulls out your eye, pull out both his eyes," said Arafat in authorizing the hit teams. "This is the only language these people will understand."

Britain and France took somewhat different approaches to the terrorism that afflicted their cities. After investigating two earlier killings--the murder of former Iraqi Premier Abdel Razak Nayef last month and the shooting of P.L.O. Representative Said Hammami in January--British authorities decided that Iraqi agents were deeply involved, and that Baghdad was using its embassy and airline to import weapons and killers. The Foreign Office as a result ordered home seven Iraqi diplomats and four other nationals. In retaliation, eight British diplomats and two other nationals were banished from Baghdad.

The French response was more muted. Iraq is now the largest supplier of French oil after Saudi Arabia. French sales to Baghdad surpass $400 million a year, including a recent contract for 36 Mirage F-l jets. On the ground that the three Iraqi guards who shot at the Palestinian kidnaper were diplomats, and thus immune from prosecution under the 1961 Vienna Convention, President Giscard merely ordered them home on the first available plane. -

*Not every fedayeen unit followed suit. Last week the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for a bomb that exploded in a Tel Aviv marketplace, killing one and wounding 49. In retaliation, Israeli jets bombed Palestinian camps in Lebanon, causing heavy casualties.

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