Crackdown on the Palestinians

MIDDLE EAST Crackdown on the Palestinians Israel takes a hard line on both terrorism and dissent

Southern Lebanon became a battlefield again last week as Israeli jets bombed the area day after day in an effort to destroy Palestinian commando bases. On Wednesday when a band of Palestinian guerrillas tried to cross the border and raid a kibbutz, the Israeli army was waiting. It intercepted the Palestinians, captured one guerrilla and chased the others back into Lebanon. Then, with the support of its Lebanese Christian allies under the command of Major Sa'ad Haddad, an Israeli force of at least 400 pushed four miles into Lebanese territory until it ran head-on into United Nations peace-keeping forces and was made to withdraw.

The Israelis continued their harassment elsewhere, hitting the city of Tyre and Palestinian guerrilla locations around the Litani River. Most of the victims were not Palestinian terrorists but innocent people. In one incident, five Palestinian civilians were killed and 25 were wounded when the Israelis bombed a refugee camp at Al Mohmara, 60 miles north of Beirut, during a wedding ceremony. The dead were all members of the same family.

The whole exercise was disturbingly reminiscent of the Israelis' incursion into southern Lebanon in March 1978. In that operation, which verged on prolonged occupation, more than 2,000 people were killed and 265,000 made homeless. What were the Israelis trying to prove this time? Evidently they were prepared to risk everything, perhaps even the peace treaty with Egypt, in an effort to compel the Palestinians to end their terrorist raids on Israel. Recent assaults have been particularly vicious; in fact, the rejectionist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine described last week's attempted attack on the kibbutz as a "suicide mission." As a result, the Israelis have apparently adopted a policy of pre-emptive strikes and hot pursuit. As Premier Menachem Begin told the Knesset, "We shall attack these murderers at every opportunity. We shall give them no rest."

During the height of the aerial bombardment, Begin said that Lebanese President Elias Sarkis was welcome to come to Jerusalem to negotiate peace with Israel. Begin also demanded that Syrian troops withdraw from Lebanon, and declared that such Arab states as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq should admit Palestinian refugees now living in Lebanon. The Beirut government angrily declined the invitation, and Premier Selim Hoss dismissed the Begin offer as "blackmail." Lebanon needed the Syrians to maintain order, said Hoss, and in any case the matter was none of Israel's business. Ever ready with an inflammatory phrase, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat vowed that the Palestinian struggle would continue "until we overrun Begin's offices in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem."

Begin's government is also adopting an increasingly hard line toward Arab residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. They are overwhelmingly opposed to both the peace treaty and to Begin's proposals for the kind of limited "autonomy" he thinks the Palestinians of those regions should have. In Begin's view the Israeli army should still be responsible for the security and public order of the West Bank and Gaza. Jews should be free to settle on the West Bank, and should be immune from rulings of the elected Palestinian administrative council. Israel would retain full control over state land, military areas,Jewish settlements and water resources.

The West Bank Palestinians are understandably furious over Begin's proposals. Anwar Nuseibeh, a former Jordanian Defense Minister who is now an attorney in East Jerusalem, argues that the plan calls for "a perpetuation of the present occupation without our consent." In the current bitterness, the forthcoming negotiations on Palestinian autonomy, to be attended by Egyptian, Israeli and American officials, are dismissed by virtually all West Bank Arabs as irrelevant.

Palestinian resentment has been heightened by a series of provocative acts committed by Israeli extremists. In mid-March, two Palestinians were shot and killed by Jewish settlers during a rock-throwing barrage near the town of Hebron. In late April, a group of Jewish women and children occupied a vacant building in Hebron that was once used as a Jewish hospital; their aim, they said, was to take over all buildings in the town that had ever been owned by Jews. After the Israeli Supreme Court ordered that a parcel of confiscated land be returned to Arab control, vandals destroyed Arab grapevines on the property. On May 2, Israel's independence day, thousands of supporters of the fanatical Gush Emunim movement marched through Arab villages to proclaim their right to settle wherever .they wished in Judea and Samaria, the ancient biblical names for the West Bank.

These provocative acts embarrassed many Israelis. As onetime Foreign Minister Yigal Allon observed last week, "We must do what is necessary to maintain security, but settlers should not interfere in the security problems of the area." So far, the zealous settlers of the West Bank do not seem to have heard the message.

Israelis like to think that their armed forces are the best in the Middle East. That may be true, but a devastating new report by the State Comptroller on the army's performance during last year's invasion of southern Lebanon concluded that a number of Israeli lives were lost because of lax discipline, inadequate equipment and bad intelligence. Some roadblocks were unmanned, for example, leading Israeli troops to enter P.L.O.-held territory by mistake. As many as 21 tank were put out of commission because troops failed to follow orders. In less than a month, there were 182 cases of plunder by soldiers and officers. All this, commented the Jerusalem Post, was evidence that a "don't-give-a-damn" sickness "has spread over our lives in Israel during the past decade."

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