Suspicion, Hate and Rising Fears

By William E. Smith

Arabs and Israelis duel from Lebanon to the Sinai

Covered by a rug and preceded by three men holding Palestinian flags, the empty coffin was carried slowly along the main street of the village of Beit Likya in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. "In spirit and blood we sacrifice you," murmured one of the 250 onlookers, as others shouted, "Palestine is Arab!" The ceremony was a mock funeral for Jihad Ibrahim Badr, 16, one of the two Palestinians killed during the Easter morning shooting on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Both Badr and the other victim, Salah Alyamani, had already been buried in a tiny, fenced-off cemetery underneath the eastern wall of the Old City that is devoted to the Muslim victims of the 1936 Arab uprising against the British and of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. But the Palestinians were exploiting the rage over Badr's death to encourage resistance to Israeli rule.

The attack by Allen Goodman, an American-born Israeli soldier, on one of the most sacred sites in Islam, the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, had inflamed Arab passions throughout the Middle East. The incident occurred, moreover, at a time of extreme anxiety in the region. Plagued with doubts about the wisdom of its action, Israel was preparing to withdraw from the final third of the Sinai Peninsula on April 25, while Egypt waited anxiously to see if the Israeli government of Prime Minister Menachem

Begin would keep its word. For weeks, in addition, there had been reports that the Israeli armed forces, spurred on by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, were ready to launch a large-scale strike against Palestine Liberation Organization strongholds in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat, fully expecting an Israeli assault, was exerting all his influence to prevent some of the more radical Palestinian factions from launching their own attack across the Lebanese-Israeli border. In an effort to head off an Israeli strike and hold the Israelis to their promise of withdrawing from the Sinai by the scheduled date, the U.S. sent its second-ranking diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State Walter Stoessel, to Jerusalem for talks with Prime Minister Begin. Stoessel then continued to Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The region so accustomed to turmoil had seldom been tenser on so many fronts for so many reasons. A general strike of protest against the Jerusalem shooting incident was in effect for a day in much of the Arab world and for the rest of the week in most of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. By the end of the week, at least 70 Palestinians had been wounded by Israeli bullets; four Israeli soldiers and twelve civilians had been injured by Arab stones. In Gaza, a seven-year-old boy died from the effects of an Israeli bullet wound in his stomach. In Jerusalem, a five-year-old Arab girl was recovering from surgery after doctors removed an Israeli bullet from her brain. Elsewhere in Jerusalem, a three-year-old Israeli girl lay gravely injured with a fractured skull and was in danger of losing the sight of one eye. She had been riding in a bus when a rock thrown by an Arab demonstrator smashed through a window and struck her.

The Arab refugee camps in the occupied territories quickly became centers of protest; no fewer than six were placed under total curfew as a result of violent demonstrations. In the Jubaliya camp outside Gaza City, six youths were wounded by gunfire. At the Deheisheh camp near Bethlehem, a grenade was hurled at a military vehicle. No Israeli was injured, but in the subsequent melee seven Arabs were wounded by gunfire. At a girls' school in Ramallah, a 16-year-old student was shot in the hip. In Gaza City and Rafah, scenes of the most violent rioting, huge rocks were hurled at passing Israeli cars and military patrols. As Israeli troops responded, at least 40 Palestinians were injured by rifle fire. In Nablus, Arab youths barricaded the road outside the Balata refugee camp with a wall of refrigerators. In the Judean Hills, the Haifa-Jerusalem train was brought to a halt by obstacles on the track, then stoned by Arab youths.

After a day of rioting, the entire city of Rafah (pop. 80,000) in the Gaza Strip was placed under curfew by Israeli authorities. When East Jerusalem's Supreme Muslim Council called for a protest march to the Temple Mount, Israeli riot police and troops moved in and arrested 32 of the leaders before the marchers had taken ten steps. Shaking with fury, a prominent East Jerusalem resident, Anwar Nusseibeh, declared: "The transgression on the Temple Mount was not against us; it was against the values of everyone who believes in God. All we intended to do today was to offer our respect for those who died."

On the Temple Mount, an eerie calm prevailed. Shattered glass fragments, almost jewel-like in their symmetry, lay in piles outside the walls of the Dome of the Rock. Inside the eight gates to the Mount, Israeli troops and police stood guard, restricting the entry of would-be worshipers. The Israelis clearly feared that the entire area might become a staging ground for further demonstrations against the Israeli presence in the vicinity of the sacred mosque.

The handful of Arabs who sat on the ground near the mosque insisted bitterly that Goodman had somehow acted as an instrument of official Israeli policy. Demanded a bearded young man: "How could the Israeli intelligence services not have known that this would happen? How could the man be crazy and yet be accepted into the Israeli armed forces?" Only a week before the incident, the Arabs asserted, leaflets had been distributed, purportedly from an ultranationalist Jewish group, warning that if Jews were not permitted to pray on the Mount, the place would be taken by force. In fact, two East Jerusalem newspapers had received a letter expressing this view a day or two before the shooting. Israeli authorities, evidently taking the threats seriously, had assured Muslims that the holy places would be protected.

On Tuesday Goodman appeared in a Jerusalem court. He was seemingly indifferent to the fact that he could not afford a defense lawyer. "It doesn't matter," he said. "This is a political action, rather than a legal matter." Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the extremist Kach movement (see box), quickly came to Goodman's rescue by agreeing to pay for his defense. Goodman shouted as he left the courtroom, "Justice for national liberation!" Little was yet known about the Baltimore-born Goodman, 37, beyond reports that he had been visiting Israel off and on since 1967 and had only recently been inducted into the Israeli army. Some sources indicated that he had been expelled from Israel in 1978 after beating up an Arab kitchen worker, but had quietly returned to the country some time last year. Despite the suspicion of Arabs that Goodman was neither deranged nor acting alone, there was no evidence last week that the shooting incident had been planned by any of the groups that in the past have been active in insisting on the Jewish right to pray on the Temple Mount, site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. The Israelis do not allow Jews to pray there, in part to protect Muslim sensibilities and in part because the chief rabbis believe that the site of the Temple's Holy of Holies might inadvertently be desecrated.

The shooting incident and its violent aftermath increased tension between the Palestinians and Israelis at a particularly explosive time. For two months, the security-conscious Israeli government has been discussing plans to launch a strike against the P.L.O. in southern Lebanon. In Israeli eyes, there have been several provocations, including the murder of an Israeli diplomat in Paris, attempts by guerrillas to penetrate the West Bank by way of the Jordan Valley, and an arms buildup by the P.L.O. in southern Lebanon.

Since the July ceasefire, according to the Israelis, the Palestinians in southern Lebanon have increased their strength in Katyusha rocket launchers by 100%, in antitank guns by 150% and in medium-range artillery by 80%. They have been supplied with Soviet-made SA9 missiles and with antiaircraft missile batteries complete with Libyan instructors. But neither the incidents of provocation nor the arms buildup can be considered sufficiently serious to convince world opinion that such an attack would be essential to Israel's security.

The man behind the assault plan is Defense Minister Sharon, who is described as the "hawk among hawks" by a top U.S. official. Sharon is determined to wipe out the P.L.O. in Lebanon, reduce its influence in the occupied territories and thereby solve Israel's most serious security problem. In 1978 the Israelis invaded Lebanon with 10,000 men and 200 tanks, but failed to dislodge the P.L.O. This time they have 36,000 men massed in northern Israel.

Some observers believe that Sharon is set on retaliating against P.L.O. activity by staging a small raid, which in turn would cause the Palestinians to strike back in force. That would give Israel the excuse to mount a full-scale invasion, defeat the P.L.O. in the Beirut area and then vanquish the Syrians if they were foolish enough to get involved. The P.L.O. would be routed and, the thinking goes, would shift its attention to Jordan, overthrow King Hussein and turn the country into a Palestinian state. Israel would meanwhile annex the West Bank.

Last week a high-ranking Israeli general predicted that a major operation in Lebanon was imminent. "The coming days will provide the opening Sharon is waiting for," he said. "And he is absolutely convinced that the planned operation will solve all of Israel's problems, it will crown Sharon as the 'king of Israel.' "

As the threat of an invasion grew, U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis went straight to Begin to warn him off. The U.S., he cautioned, saw no reasonable justification for war. A patently unwarranted attack, he said, would isolate Israel in world opinion and further strain the nation's raveled ties to the U.S. Replied Begin: "We shall not allow the spillers of Jewish blood to escape justice." He added that the Cabinet had made "no decision" about an invasion. The U.S. chose to put the best possible interpretation on that carefully hedged assurance. Said one U.S. official: "We take Prime Minister Begin at his word." In Lebanon, P.L.O. Chairman Arafat, meeting with his organization's high command around a conference table in a subbasement deep beneath a Beirut apartment building, argued that it is to the P.L.O.'s advantage to let the Israelis strike first, both because he believes they would sustain heavy casualties and because they would be branded as the aggressors. Arafat has told his restless officers that if they let the Israelis attack and are able to hold out for ten days, the P.L.O. would get so much international support that it would have embassies in London and Paris within a month. Although some of the officers in his Fatah organization believe the P.L.O. should act immediately to support the continuing unrest in the West Bank and Gaza, Arafat seemed determined to hold out against those who were pressing for action.

Arafat was also trying, with little success, to mediate the growing dispute between the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslims and several Lebanese leftist factions. Last week the dispute suddenly erupted into battle in the south as well as in Beirut, with more than 50 casualties.

As they prepare for a possible campaign against the P.L.O., the Israelis are privately saying that the P.L.O., with a bit of Egyptian connivance, has been planning an all-out uprising in Gaza and the West Bank to take place in early May, not long after the Israelis have withdrawn from the Sinai. The Israelis justify their recent crackdown on the West Bank, including their firing of three pro-P.L.O. mayors, as part of a pre-emptive strike against the P.L.O. plan. The Israelis also say that in the past two weeks they have intercepted 1,000 hand grenades that were being smuggled into the Gaza Strip from El-Arish, which is under Egyptian control. They are thus hinting that the Egyptian government is quietly cooperating with the P.L.O. by allowing Bedouin tribesmen to carry grenades to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Some P.L.O. officers admit that they have received weapons by this route. Says a P.L.O. commander: "There are many officers in the Egyptian and Jordanian armies who will close their eyes because they want to help us." But there is no reason to believe that the Mubarak government has endorsed the smuggling.

The dispute over the hand grenades was just one of the contentious incidents that threatened to delay the departure of the Israelis from the last segment of the Sinai by the deadline of April 25. Sharon and others were recommending to the Cabinet that the date be ignored altogether. The Israelis charged that the Egyptians were violating the withdrawal agreement between the two nations by positioning military units in the demilitarized zone in the Sinai, by allowing the P.L.O. to set up an office in El-Arish, the Sinai's main city, and by directing hostile propaganda against Israel. In addition, Israel and Egypt have been wrangling over just where the final border should be drawn; 15 points were still in dispute, including the question of whether or not an Israeli hotel and bun galow village on the Gulf of Eilat should eventually be in Israeli or Egyptian territory. Meanwhile, a band of Israeli zealots, protesting the forced abandonment of the Sinai settlement of Yamit, staged furious demonstrations. Some even placed their children in the path of Israeli soldiers who were busy removing palm trees and telephone lines.

With so much confusion and so much at stake, the U.S. sent Stoessel to Jerusa lem to make sure that the Sinai withdraw al takes place on schedule. Stoessel came away convinced that the withdrawal will proceed as planned. Says one American official in Israel: "Begin, like the late Golda Meir, just cannot accept the fact that he is going to withdraw from territory he holds. But he knows he has to. He wants to achieve the peace on which Camp David is based."

At midweek Begin asked Sharon to make a quick trip to Cairo to discuss a number of outstanding points with the Egyptians. Sharon arrived in Cairo, as it happened, on the very day that the five men who had been sentenced to death for their part in the assassination of Anwar Sadat last October were executed. Shortly before dawn, the two soldiers, including the leader of the assassins, Army 1st Lieut. Khaled Islambuli, had been shot by a firing squad, while the three civilians had been hanged in Cairo's central pris on. The executions were carried out in se cret and were not announced until several hours later.

Sharon and Mubarak met for 90 min utes in the President's Oruba Palace office in suburban Heliopolis. In a discussion concerning the Israeli charges about weapons smuggling, Mubarak assured Sharon that Egypt would do nothing to jeopardize the peace. He offered to send a top officer to Israel to explore ways of stopping the infiltration of hand grenades into Gaza. He also told Sharon that Egypt would adhere to the troop-limitation clauses of the peace treaty.

In an even more emphatic gesture, Mubarak then wrote a personal letter to Begin, reportedly assuring him that the Sinai pullout would remove the last obstacle to fruitful relations between the two countries. In the future, said Mubarak, more Egyptians would be pleased to visit Israel and become acquainted with "their cousins and neighbors." Begin was said to be "satisfied and pleased" by the message.

In Cairo, Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Hassan Ali said at the close of a week of frenzied diplomacy: "I think the withdraw al will be on time." - By William E. Smith.

Reported by David Aikman/ Jerusalem and Roberto Sum/Beirut

With reporting by David Aikman/Jerusalem, Roberto Sum/Beirut

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