Attack--and Fallout

By George Russell

COVER STORIES

Israel blasts Iraq's reactor and creates a global shock wave

Quietly, he made intricate arrangements for the meeting. By Sunday, June 7, his chief military attache, Brigadier General Efraim Poran, had called all 14 members of the Israeli Cabinet, asking each if he could come to a special 5 p.m. session with Prime Minister Menachem Begin at his Jerusalem home on that day. Each man thought that he was the only one invited and that a private chat about politics and policy would follow. It was a privilege to accept, and they did, though a few of the more orthodox Cabinet members grumbled that the appointed hour was dangerously close to the beginning, at sundown, of a major Jewish celebration: Shavuot, the Feast of Pentecost.

As each minister drove up to Begin's stone residence in the city's Rehavya district, his car was whisked away by a security man. One by one, the unknowing politicians were ushered into a ground-floor reception area, only to discover that the place was filling up with colleagues.

At 5:15, a shirtsleeved Begin emerged from his book-lined office and broke some staggering news with characteristic lack of ceremony. "Well," he said, "six of our planes are now on their way to their target in Iraq. I hope our boys will be able to complete their mission successfully and return to base."

There was stunned silence. Thinking of the still explosive Israeli confrontation in Lebanon over Syrian SA-6 missiles, one minister muttered: "You mean Syria."

Begin did not. He meant the French-built Tammuz 1 nuclear reactor at El-Tuwaitha, 10 1/2 miles southwest of Baghdad. Begin straightway launched into his real reason for calling the meeting: to ponder what Israel should do in the event that the attack taking place 515 miles away should fail. Half an hour later, after several options had been considered, a telephone call interrupted the Cabinet meeting. It was Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff, Lieut. General Rafael Eitan. He tersely informed Begin that the attack had been a total success. For a further 70 minutes, the Cabinet considered how Israel should cope with the lesser danger of one of the Israeli warplanes being shot down or crashing on its return journey. A little before 7 p.m., another telephone call announced the safe return of all aircraft. Jubilantly, the gathering celebrated the event, and the meeting broke up. Begin had only one other chore to perform. At 7 p.m., he called U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis with news of the successful raid. Lewis' laconic reply: "You don't say."

Begin's Cabinet may have been merely surprised, but the world was shocked when it learned the news. Using high-powered U.S. military technology with awesome efficiency, Israel had taken Iraq totally by surprise and destroyed that country's technological centerpiece, its nearly completed, $260 million nuclear-research reactor. The surgical strike, reminiscent of the pre-emptive air raids against Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War, was based on an Israeli perception that one of its most implacable foes would soon be making nuclear bombs. But, in removing that threat, the Israelis had done more than simply take international law into their own hands. They had dismayed their friends, increased their isolation and vastly compounded the difficulties of procuring a peaceful settlement of the confrontations in the Middle East that threaten the stability of that troubled region and of the world.

The raid jolted U.S.-Israeli relations. An upset Reagan Administration (see NATION) condemned the attack and then suspended "for the time being" the delivery of four additional F-16s that were ready to be shipped last week from Fort Worth to Israel. The U.S. Congress will soon face the question of whether Israel violated the 1952 agreement under which the U.S. provides weapons to an ally for "defensive" purposes only. Congress is likely to find a delicate way to avoid any substantive action.

The Israeli attack unified, however briefly, the normally divided Arab world, which put aside its own conflicts to urge the U.S. to restrict Israeli "aggression and expansionism" and to ask the United Nations to impose "binding sanctions" on Israel. Western diplomats in the Middle East also feared that the Arabs might feel forced to launch a retaliatory attack of some kind against the Israelis to recover their honor after yet another humiliation. Such an attack would certainly be answered by the Israelis, and the cycle of violence would quicken.

One Arab with a particular right to feel outraged was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was "totally astonished" by the news of the raid. Well he might have been; Sadat had held a highly publicized summit meeting with Begin in the Sinai only three days before the raid, and received no hint that trouble might lie ahead.

Even though the U.S. had no more warning of the attack than anyone else (a fact that should cause deep concern among U.S. intelligence experts), the Tammuz raid endangered American credibility with moderate Arab regimes, which still see a U.S. hand behind any Israeli military adventure. The attack rendered far more difficult the simultaneous Reagan Administration bid to support Israel, cultivate Arab friendships and further the 1978 Camp David peace accord. The assault also imperiled the Lebanese peacemaking mission of U.S. Envoy Philip Habib, who returned to the Middle East last week after a 12-day absence. Habib had seemed close to working out an agreement among Israelis, Lebanese and Syrians that would cool the missile crisis in Lebanon. Indeed, the Israeli raid posed the question of whether the U.S. had any means at all of controlling the maverick actions of an increasingly independent nation that depends ultimately for its existence on the U.S. Or failing that, did the U.S. have any way of dissociating itself from those actions when they did occur?

The sortie rankled European governments as well. Most ruffled were the French, who supplied the Iraqis with the reactor, who lost a technician as the only reported casualty of the raid and whose newly elected Socialist President, Franc,ois Mitterrand, had declared his willingness to strengthen ties with Israel. Said French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson: "I am saddened. This government has a great deal of sympathy for Israel, but we don't think such action serves the cause of peace in the area." In her typically blunt fashion, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher summed up the view of many others: "Armed attack in such circumstances cannot be justified; it represents a grave breach of international law."

The raid was a stinging setback to the efforts of Secretary of State Alexander Haig to form a "strategic consensus" that Soviet expansionism in the Middle East, not Israel, is the greatest threat to Arab security. Warned Moustafa Khalil, Egypt's former Prime Minister: "If the Arabs see the U.S. failing to check Israel, failing to improve Arab self-defense, failing to solve the Palestinian problem, what are they going to do? They will have no alternative but to turn to the Soviet Union." The Soviet news agency, TASS, called the Israeli raid an "act of gangsterism" and accused Washington of being a direct accomplice.

Perhaps most hazardous of all, the Israeli action managed to blend two of the world's most explosive issues: the question of nuclear proliferation in the Third World and the perpetual cauldron of Middle East politics. After a day of silence following the raid, Iraq declared that its reaction would be "bigger and better nuclear reactors." Begin made clear that Israel was ready to repeat its attack any time. Considering what might lie ahead, Sigvard Eklund, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which inspects the nuclear facilities of signatories to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, declared: "I do not think we have been faced with a more serious question than the implications of this development."

What the Israelis took less than three minutes to destroy had been developing since the mid-'70s, when Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictatorial President, made a nuclear shopping trip to Paris. The Israeli Defense Ministry soon began to predict that the Iraqis would be capable of producing atom bombs within four to six years. In September 1975, a Lebanese newspaper article quoted Hussein as saying that the nuclear program was "the first Arab attempt toward nuclear arming, although the official declared purpose of construction of the reactor is not nuclear weapons." A similar statement was made in 1977 by Naim Haddad, a member of Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council. Said Haddad: "The Arabs must get a bomb." In the face of such statements, the Israelis were not reassured by the fact that Iraq had signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, thereby vowing not to make nuclear weapons and agreeing to let experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspect its atomic installations.

U.S. officials were also concerned about the Iraqi reactor and its weapons potential, particularly since at that time Iraq was one of the most radical and pro-Soviet of the Arab states. In addition, the U.S. viewed Iraq as a dangerously disruptive force in the Middle East. Iraq had refused to sign an armistice agreement with Israel after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Thus Baghdad technically remained --and remains today--in a state of war with Israel. Says one U.S. expert: "Our worries reflected the quality of the regime as much as specific [nuclear] programs."

The Israelis frequently asked Washington to pressure France as well as Italy, another Iraqi nuclear supplier, into reconsidering their deals with Baghdad. The U S. tried but did not succeed. Says a U.S. official: "We thought there were clear grounds to exercise self-restraint. France and Italy disagreed." The two suppliers maintained that Iraq had given sufficient guarantees of its peaceful intentions.

But even then the Israelis were not relying solely on diplomatic maneuvering to avert a nuclear problem. Israeli agents were gathering information on the Iraqi project so successfully that one Israeli official boasts they were "almost ahead of the Iraqis themselves." Among other things, the Israelis managed to obtain engineering blueprints for the entire reactor. On April 5, 1979, three days before the reactor's core was to be shipped to the Iraqis, a group of unidentified men managed to penetrate the high-security French nuclear production facility at La Seyne-sur-Mer, near Toulon. They attached explosive charges to the reactor core and fled. The resulting damage delayed the reactor's delivery for two years. The French thought that the attack was the work of MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence organization. French sources also believe that Israelis warned French scientists and technicians to stay out of Iraq. On June 14,1980, the Egyptian-born head of Iraq's nuclear program, Yahia El-Meshad, was bludgeoned to death at the Hotel Meridien in Paris. No assailant was arrested, but again, the French suspected MOSSAD.

In the winter of 1979, the Israelis began to assemble a "combat file" on the proposed reactor site at El-Tuwaitha. Using the engineering blueprints, Israeli experts pinpointed the exact location of the reactor core within its sheltering cupola. They also measured the size and strength of the cupola and the precise location of a computer installation that would eventually control the reactor's operation. In June 1980, the armed forces asked Prime Minister Begin to authorize a clandestine, infrared survey of the site at El-Tuwaitha. Before the mission, Begin was given an aerial photograph of the area. He did not hesitate. With a flourish, he signed the bottom of the photograph: "With the salutations of Zion. Menachem Begin."

In September 1980, the Israelis received additional intelligence. Taking advantage of the confusion at the start of the Iraq-Iran war, unmarked Israeli planes flew over the reactor site, gathering valuable data. It was during this period that two Iranian warplanes made a bumbling attack on the reactor, causing little damage. Iraq charged that Israel was involved. Israel's acting Defense Minister, Mordechai Zipori, labeled the accusation an "anti-Semitic blood libel."

But discussions about attacking the reactor were indeed being conducted at that time by Begin's Ministerial Defense Committee on Security Affairs. The meetings were in part spurred by an intelligence report that the Iraqis might be able to start manufacturing two or three small nuclear weapons within a year. Despite that, not all of the committee's Cabinet-level members were in favor of a pre-emptive raid. Among those opposed were Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin, Interior Minister Yosef Burg and Education Minister Zevulun Hammer, who felt that the attack would damage relations with the U.S. But Begin prevailed with the support of such Israeli hawks as Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. In October 1980, the raid plan was given the go-ahead. Thereafter, Begin took complete personal control of the operation.

In all, five different dates were set for the attack. The first, in November 1980, was canceled because of the Iran-Iraq fighting: the French had evacuated most of their 150 technicians from El-Tuwaitha, and the Israelis assumed that work on the reactor would be halted indefinitely. But after the war bogged down, the French returned. Another attack date was set for February, but it was canceled after Yadin reiterated his strong objections. A third date, in March, was scrubbed for undisclosed reasons. In May, the ministerial committee authorized Begin to choose his own date for the raid, but strong objections about timing were raised by Opposition Leader Shimon Peres, who had been briefed on the scheme, and the strike was once more postponed.

After so many false starts, the cloak of secrecy sheltering the operation was beginning to fray. On May 22, word of the raid was leaked to Moshe Shahal, a Knesset opposition party leader. His source: former Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, who viewed the proposed strike as "adventurist." At roughly the same time, Begin's office received two additional intelligence reports that the Iraqis were prepared to activate the reactor (make it "hot" in technical jargon) as early as the first week in July. On June 5, Begin gave orders to launch the attack two days later. His day of decision was the 14th anniversary of the Six-Day War.

The Israeli Air Force had not been idle during these months of deliberation. A full-scale model of the entire reactor area had been built in a restricted part of the Sinai Desert, and a carefully selected group of the most talented Israeli pilots practiced their bombing runs until, in the words of one high-ranking officer, they knew "every tree and house" along their eventual attack route. Despite the scope of the rehearsals, the U.S. says that it did not detect the operation, either by satellite or other means. Originally, the plan called for the bombing to be carried out by F-4 Phantom jets. However, the first batches of 75 light, agile F-16 fighters, ordered from the U.S. in August 1977, had arrived in Israel. The Israeli Air Force had the innovative notion of making a bomber out of a fighter designed for jet-age dogfights. Tests showed that the F-16s, equipped with special bomb racks and additional fuel tanks, could just make the 1,300-mile round trip to Baghdad without aerial refueling if they were not attacked and made only one bombing run on the target.

At 4:40 p.m. local time on June 7, the first of the F-15 support fighters that had been stored in underground bunkers lifted off from Israel's Etzion airbase in the eastern Sinai. The F-15s avoided using their afterburners to conserve fuel. Soon the F-16s joined them, and the jets headed east, flying low, the escorting F-15s above and on either side of the bombers.

The formation headed across the Gulf of Aqaba toward Jordan, following a top-secret route designed to take advantage of blind spots in Arab radar coverage along the borders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. The aircraft stayed close to the terrain, but varied their altitudes in a weaving pattern that had been tested by the Israeli Air Force as a means to further reduce radar visibility.

Even so, as they crossed the eastern bank of the Gulf of Aqaba and began to climb over the nearby rocky red mountains, the higher-flying F-15s were picked up by Jordanian radar based at Ma'an. The station radioed the planes in Arabic, using international emergency frequencies. The Israelis were prepared. They replied in perfect Arabic, apparently convincing the ground spotters that the sighting was either Jordanian or Saudi aircraft. As the flight went on, the Israelis were aided by the fact that the surrounding Arab countries have failed to establish an integrated air defense command. Thus the Jordanians did not pass on the sighting either to Saudi Arabia or to Iraq.

The flight plan, exact details of which remain secret, skirted the southern tip of Jordan, then proceeded northeast across the top of Saudi Arabia. From time to time the jets would flash over a reference point, and the group leader would radio a code message ("sand dune yellow") to the war room in Tel Aviv's Defense Ministry building. The warplanes remained well beyond the range of U.S.-operated AWACS radar aircraft currently assigned to the Saudis and patroling the country's Persian Gulf perimeter. The job of the one AWACS that was airborne at the time was solely to survey the gulf area. Its effective radar range of 230 miles could not reach the Israeli attacking aircraft, exactly as the Israelis had anticipated.

At 5:10 p.m. Israeli time, the lead fighter penetrated Iraqi airspace. The aircraft continued to change course continuously as they moved in on target, howling through the Sunday twilight at 400 m.p.h. For months the Israelis had studied the route up the Euphrates Valley, convinced that they could negotiate it without being detected by radar or ground observers. Fifty minutes after takeoff, the warplanes sighted their target, the distinctive cupola housing the nuclear reactor. The aircraft wheeled and climbed toward the setting sun--the classic maneuver prior to attack.

While the six twin-engine F-15s provided a protective umbrella, the specially armed F-16s screamed into their bombing runs. The lead plane fired a pair of video-guided precision "smart" bombs, to punch through predetermined spots in the domed concrete. The following aircraft launched their own explosives through the jagged holes: a dozen conventional bombs weighing 2,200 Ibs. each. After a series of shattering roars, the roof collapsed, burying the reactor's radioactive core under hundreds of tons of concrete and steel debris. Fire raged through the site. Two of the attackers, carrying cameras rather than heavy explosives, made a pass to film the scene. Then they streaked for home, ignoring ineffectual puffs of antiaircraft fire and leaving behind the one civilian casualty, one bomb that failed to explode and the mangled nuclear ambitions of Iraq.

In Baghdad, a line of barrage balloons designed to foil low-flying aircraft floated placidly above the city. With the sun hovering low on the horizon, the jets had appeared suddenly out of nowhere. When the bombs dropped, there were muffled explosions. As guests arrived at the Italian embassy to celebrate the host country's national day, some speculated that the detonations might have had something to do with the nuclear establishment. In downtown Baghdad, in the suqs (marketplaces) and along the riverbanks, no one seemed to notice. No antiaircraft fire was heard until an hour later. The city went to bed largely unaware that Israel had carried out its brilliant attack.

Israel, too, was eerily silent about the raid. Begin had instructed his new press secretary, Uri Porath, to prepare an official announcement at short notice, not to be given before news reports of the attack came over the wires. Porath waited through all of Sunday evening for a telephone call from Begin authorizing release of the story. Not until the following day, after Amman Radio sketchily outlined the raid as a joint Israeli-Iranian venture, did Israel give its own version of events.

When Porath telephoned in the government's statement to a holiday skeleton staff at Israel Radio, journalists refused for an hour to believe that the startling report was genuine. Only when Radio Staffer Emmanuel Halperin, Begin's nephew, confirmed the facts with the Prime Minister himself, did the station put the reports on the air.

The Israeli reaction was, naturally enough, pride in their military accomplishment. But there was not the same spontaneous celebration in the streets, for example, that greeted the July 1976 pinpoint Israeli commando raid on Uganda's Entebbe airfield. One reason was that as international criticism started to pour in, many Israelis sensed an impending isolation. Said Eli Ben-Hamo, 26, a Jerusalem cafe owner: "It was necessary. It had to be done. But I'm worried. We're doing it to ourselves. For years the world didn't much like us. Nowadays we're giving them reason not to."

Others had fewer doubts. Said one Israeli official: "I think something positive has happened to world welfare in the same way that we made a major impact on the hijacking situation at Entebbe. Today nobody gives in to hijacking blackmail. When the criticism has subsided, people will realize that you can't allow every small country, particularly like Iraq, to own the atom bomb." Said Miriam Hefetz, 29, a government secretary: "We're doing the dirty work for the rest of the world. We have nothing to be ashamed of. Somebody had to stop Iraq."

Outside Israel--and even inside the country--there was an immediate suspicion that the raid and its timing had more to do with Israel's June 30 national election than with impending nuclear threats from the Iraqis. The six-month campaign between Begin's ruling Likud coalition and the opposition Labor Party of Shimon Peres was one of the most strained in the country's history. Owing in part to Begin's tough stance on the Syrian missiles in Lebanon, his party had moved ahead, 38% to 33%, in a poll conducted before the raid. The Likud had trailed in January, 14% to 44%. In London, diplomats guessed that the Iraqi raid was designed to boost Begin's election chances and to deliver a message to the Syrians about their SA-6 missiles, which the Israelis have threatened to destroy. Seethed one British Cabinet member: "It is a measure of Begin's fanaticism, personal ambition and total disregard of the truth that he was prepared to risk the peace of the Middle East, and even world peace, to achieve his ends." Skepticism increased when IAEA Director-General Eklund agreed with the Iraqis' claim that they had not been trying to make a weapon with their reactor. Even if the Iraqis had tried, said Eklund, they would need ten years to build one. U.S. estimates of the time that the Iraqis would need vary from two to ten years. Much would depend on how blatantly the Iraqis were willing to violate their peaceful commitment under the nonproliferation treaty, and the vigilance of the inspectors and French technicians. So far, the Iraqis have shown no intention of violating the treaty at all.

The Israeli Prime Minister only partly clarified matters on Tuesday at one of the most extraordinary press conferences of his life. His defense of the mission was vintage Begin. "Despite all the condemnations heaped on Israel for the last 24 hours," he began, "Israel has nothing to apologize for. Ours is a just cause, we stand by it, and it will triumph."

Begin built his rationale for the attack on Iraqi documents. Following the September raid by Iran on the Tammuz reactor, Iraq issued a statement that Begin read from a Baghdad newspaper. Quoted Begin: "The Iranian people should not fear the Iraqi nuclear reactor, which is not intended to be used against Iran, but against the Zionist enemy." He added that the imminent start-up of the reactor would enable Iraq to begin manufacturing, "in the near future, between three and five Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs of 20 kilotons."

Begin then gave a humanitarian twist to the raid. He declared that the reactor was going to start to process highly radioactive materials either the first week of July or the first week of September. Once the reactor was "hot," explained Begin, any successful bombing attack would unleash "a horrifying wave of radioactivity." In a ghoulish reference, he reminded listeners that Nazi mass murderers had used poisonous Zyklon B gas on their Jewish victims, and radioactivity "is also a poison." Said Begin: "In Baghdad, hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens would have been hurt. I for one would never have made a proposal under such circumstances to send our Air Force and bomb the reactor."

Thus, in Begin's view, Israel faced "a terrible dilemma: Should we now be passive and then lose the last opportunity without those horrible casualties to destroy the hotbed of death, or should we act now?" His voice dramatically pitched, Begin answered his own question. "Then this country and this people would have been lost, after the Holocaust. Another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people. Never again, never again. Tell your friends, tell anybody you meet, we shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal." The bombing raid, drummed Begin, was a "morally supreme act of national self-defense. No fault whatsoever on our side."

No mention was made then of the fact that the CIA had concluded in 1974 that Israel had nuclear weapons of its own or that Israel, unlike Iraq, has not signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and will not allow inspectors to visit its reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert.

At one point, Begin was asked what would happen if the world condemned Israel. "Well, my friends," he said, "what can we do? We are an ancient people, we are used to it. We survived, we shall survive." And to the question of how Israel would react if Libya got the bomb, Begin replied, amid laughter, "Let us deal first with that meshuggener [Yiddish for lunatic], Saddam Hussein. With the other meshuggener [Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi], another time."

Stripped of its rhetoric, Begin's defense of the raid was based on an implicit strategic calculation: that tiny Israel, unlike the U.S., could not survive a first nuclear assault and deliver a counterattack. All the country's airbases, for example, could be taken out in a single strike. Nor can Israel afford the enormous expense of keeping warplanes in the air at all times as a deterrent to aggressors. Thus the country feels a particular vulnerability to nuclear blackmail. The Begin view: no Israeli government, or any other government in a similar position, could ever take the risk that a foe armed with atomic bombs would not use them.

By invoking an argument that jurists sometimes call "anticipatory self-defense," Begin was straying into an exceedingly murky area of international law. The United Nations Charter, which prohibits international aggression, also recognizes a state's legitimate right of self-defense in the face of "armed attack."

The U.N. has broadened that definition on occasion to include pre-emptive attacks when there was overwhelming evidence that an aggressor planned a hostile act in the immediate future. In 1967, for example, the U.N. Security Council did not condemn Israel for its Six-Day War attack on Egypt, since there was evidence of Egypt's aggressive intentions. Says Christian Tomuschat, professor of international law at the University of Bonn: "It always comes down to the same question: Was there a real and imminent danger that would have justified a preventive strike?"

Almost no expert feels that Iraq's alleged bombmaking capability--in one year, as Israeli intelligence would have it, or ten, as nuclear regulators claim --falls within the internationally recognized definition of "imminent danger." Legal scholars sympathetic to Israel suggest that the country should have given a public warning or ultimatum to Iraq, or taken other overt diplomatic action before launching the strike. Says Alfred Rubin, international law professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy: "It makes a difference politically. I would have thought they would have been better off lining up al lies and so forth."

Begin's justifications for the raid might have been more convincing if a persistent odor of electioneering had not clung to some of his other actions. The day after Begin's press conference, an ugly spate of name-calling erupted between the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Peres. Reason: Begin had given the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee a copy of Peres' "personal and top-secret" letter that resulted in one of the raid's postponements. Peres had learned that the attack was scheduled for May 10, the date of the deciding round of French presidential elections. As a "supreme civic duty," he warned Begin not to go ahead. Peres felt, correctly, as it happened, that Socialist Franc,ois Mitterrand would win, and that there were signs that the new French President would do everything possible to "make the Iraqi reactor impotent, militarily." Peres also warned Begin that the raid would leave Israel as isolated "as a lonely shrub in the desert."

Peres' letter was so vaguely worded for "security reasons," he claimed, should it fall into unfriendly hands--that Begin could send it to the Knesset with the charge that his rival opposed the reactor raid "in principle." Peres called Begin's ploy "arrogance," while others termed it "pure politics." Begin's government, said Peres, was one "that bends national affairs to suit party aims."

Begin himself obviously felt he had to go further in his accusations against Iraq. On Wednesday, after his government complained that the temporary U.S. suspension of the latest F-16 shipment was "unjust," Begin made a new claim about the Tammuz reactor. He declared that some 132 ft. beneath the demolished reactor there was a secret installation, undiscovered by international inspectors, where the Iraqis intended to produce their bombs. This too, he said, had been destroyed. The next day, Begin altered the depth of the hiding place to 13.2 ft.

Both the IAEA and the French designers of the reactor flatly denied the existence of any such secret room at any level. The construction had been under constant French supervision. In all likelihood, Begin was referring to the reactor's "guide chamber," a sealed area in such installations where physicists conduct experiments with the neutrons produced by the reactor.

If Begin's knowledge of reactors proved to be foggy, so did his understanding of the Reagan Administration's response to the raid. Begin was outraged by a report, carried in the press, that U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had suggested cutting off all forms of U.S. military aid to Israel as punishment.

"What chutzpah," Begin fumed to his aides. On the hustings, Begin went further. "By what morality were you acting, Mr. American Secretary of Defense?" he asked rhetorically before a campaign crowd. "Haven't you heard of 1.5 million little Jewish children who were thrown into the gas chambers?" Weinberger, who in fact had not urged stopping aid to Israel, issued a calm statement saying that he was "sorry that Mr. Begin is proceeding on an erroneous assumption."

Despite Begin's outlandish utterances, there was a perceptible relaxation by week's end of the fear that the Tammuz raid might set off some new and shocking chain reaction in the Middle East. Egyptian President Sadat had declared that he would remain faithful to the Camp David peace process despite Israel's "intolerable" act. Said Sadat: "We started [the peace movement] and we're not ready at all to give it up." The foreign ministers of the 21-member Arab League issued a tough but predictable resolution condemning the attack, calling for a halt to all U.S. assistance to Israel and demanding U.N. sanctions in retaliation for the assault. Arab League Secretary-General Chedli Klibi declared the session to be "one of the shortest and most successful Arab meetings to date."

This week the Arabs will ask the Security Council to condemn Israel. In addition to calling for sanctions, which almost certainly will be vetoed by Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the U. N. Iraqi Foreign Minister Saadoun Hammadi has demanded that the council order Israel to open its own atomic facilities for inspection and subject them to the safeguard system of the IAEA. Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Blum, on the other hand, has proposed making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone--a ploy that would require Arab states to recognize Israel as an equal partner.

Meanwhile, Iraqi reaction to the raid has continued to be remarkably restrained. The country's basic strategy so far seems to be to let Israel condemn itself with its own words. Iraq has already earned a wide measure of world sympathy. A violent, desperate act cannot yet be ruled out, but Iraq does not seem interested in wasting valuable support.

In its timing, at least, Israel may have been right about the raid. So thinks a senior Western diplomat in Beirut, who feels that the Israelis suspect, correctly, that as the Reagan Administration clarifies its Middle East policy, "it will almost certainly move more in favor of the Arabs. So, if a strike against Iraq were necessary, there would never be a better time." The same diplomat doubts that Israel will soon strike the Syrian missiles in Lebanon. Says he: "Any attempt to remove the missiles will involve Israeli casualties, and the last thing the Israeli Prime Minister needs as the country moves toward a general election is Israeli dead and wounded."

In the aftermath of the raid, American as well as Israeli officials have suggested that not all Arabs were outraged, or even unhappy, about the demolition of Iraq's atomic reactor, despite the Arabs' apparently solid front. Prior to the raid both Syria and Saudi Arabia were in ensely suspicious of the Saddam Hussein regime. If either country--not to mention the warring Iranians--took Hussein's atomic ambitions as seriously as the Israelis did, they would be relieved by the attack. So too the Egyptians. Insists an Israeli Foreign Ministry official: "We have discreet information that the Saudis are happy, and some Egyptian officials have expressed quiet satisfaction."

In the corridors of French power, there was also a sense of relief that the Iraqi reactor was gone, although diplomats were sharply opposed to the Israeli tactics Foreign Minister Cheysson had already declared that "we Socialists would never have signed this [nuclear] contract. At least not without a clearer idea of Iraqi intentions. And not without clearer guarantees that it could be used only for peaceful purposes." Paris would likely demand much tougher restrictions for the reactor if asked to rebuild it.

But a number of deeply disturbing issues remain. The first is the increasingly truculent unpredictability of Israel, at least under Menachem Begin. The Reagan Administration--and Congress --needs to pursue the unpleasant implications of the fact that no hold on Israeli behavior seems to be strong enough. The same examination is needed within Israel which runs the risk of ever increasing isolation if even relatively new friends, like Egypt's Sadat, must brace for a shocking surprise just three days after a public show of Israeli esteem.

It is equally obvious that nothing short of a comprehensive Middle East agreement, including a just settlement for the issue of Palestinian self-determination, will bring true peace to the region. After the Tammuz raid, no Arab country can accept Secretary of State Haig's thesis that Soviet adventurism is a greater threat to the area. No less a figure than Saudi Arabia's King Khalid made the point last week during a visit to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Without movement toward that regional goal, even the most conservative Arab states may give up any hope of gaining satisfaction from the West, and instead seek to put new pressure on Israel.

Most complicated of all is the issue of nuclear proliferation (see box) and the argument invoked by the Israelis that any strike against a nuclear installation that it perceives to be a threat is justified. That course is foolhardy. As Columnist Carl Rowan wrote in the Washington Star: "If Israel's nuclear nonproliferation strike is right and proper, then would it not be equally moral for an aggressor to attack suspected nuclear weapons in Israel?"

At a mass meeting in Tripoli, Libya strongman, Muammar Gaddafi, took precisely that stance. With Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat present, Gaddafi declared that "Israel made it legitimate for us to destroy the Israel reactor."

Alas, there are too many other rival states around the world where hatred and radioactive isotopes mix--India and Pakistan, for example--for the principle of pre-emptive strikes to be condoned.

Since it won its war for existence in 1948, Israel has scored a number of brilliant military successes, and it clearly added to that number last week. But while feats of arms have brought survival they have not brought peace. As the dust settled in the Iraqi desert and the fires guttered out in the smashed nuclear reactor in Tammuz, Israel was not about to be abandoned by its friends, especially the U.S. Yet there was a growing international feeling that the embattled nation must try harder to make an accommodation with its Arab neighbors if it is ever to enjoy the true security that it has pursued with such zeal for so long. --By George Russell. Reported by David Aikman/Jerusalem and William Stewart/Baghdad, with other bureaus

With reporting by David Aikman/Jerusalem, William Stewart/Baghdad

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