Violence Begets Violence

By Patricia Blake

An Israeli Ambassador is shot, and Jerusalem strikes back

Shortly after 11 p.m., Israel's Ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, left a diplomatic dinner at London's Dorchester Hotel and walked toward his waiting car on fashionable Park Lane. Suddenly, a man who had been loitering near by opened fire on the Israeli envoy, wounding him critically. The gunman, later identified as an Arab student, was shot down by police as he attempted to get away.

It was an act of brazen political violence that seemed to invite reprisals. But no one was prepared for the force or harshness of Jerusalem's response. Israel slammed Palestine Liberation Organization strongholds in southern Lebanon by air, land and sea. After two days of pounding, Lebanese officials reported that more than 100 people had been killed and more than 300 others wounded. Most were civilians.

The first waves of Israeli jets concentrated on P.L.O. targets in Beirut and its outskirts. Though the bombs were aimed mostly at guerrilla bases and other P.L.O. installations, attacks were made on such nonmilitary areas as Family Beach, a popular stretch of sand and surf just south of the beleaguered capital. Israel's planes hammered hard at Beirut's Sports City, a former stadium that is now a storage depot for food and supplies for Al Fatah, a commando group of the P.L.O. Two floors of the structure collapsed under fire, burying guerrillas and their families in a broken mass of reinforced concrete.

Other Israeli targets included P.L.O. offices in Fakhani, the scene of an Israeli air attack last year, and the Palestinian refugee camps of Bourj el Brajneh and Sabra. The P.L.O., in a retaliatory strike of its own, fired scores of Soviet-made Katyusha rockets and long-range artillery shells at towns and settlements in northern Israel. Israeli gunners responded in border duels that continued throughout the night. P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat declared that his guerrilla forces would teach Jerusalem a "lesson." Israeli Economic Minister Ya'acov Meridor vowed that his country would "liquidate the sources of the shooting."

Over a two-day period Israeli planes hit at 50 different sites across southern Lebanon. At one point, the jets reportedly blew up a 500-yd. segment of the main road that connects Beirut with the south, effectively blocking the passage of Lebanese refugees seeking escape from the relentless bombings. Israeli gunships off the southern Lebanese coast joined the attack by shelling the village of Ras el Rin and the Palestinian refugee camp at Rashidiyeh, near the Israeli border. Just outside Damur, south of Beirut, more than 20 mutilated bodies lay strewn across the road. On the route to Sidon, a civilian bus was struck by a bomb that killed 20 passengers and wounded 35 others.

Surveying the bloodshed in Beirut, one appalled Western diplomat asked: "If this is vengeance, then what happened to [the biblical injunction] 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?' " In battered Lebanon, at least, the arithmetic of Israeli retribution--100 for 1--seemed tragically askew. In Israel, however, many officials and ordinary citizens felt the raids were an appropriate response to the coldblooded shooting of Argov. It was the latest in a series of attacks on Israeli envoys. On April 3, an Israeli embassy official in Paris named Ya'acov Barsimantov, who was said to be particularly well informed about P.L.O. activities in Europe, was fatally shot outside of his apartment by an unidentified woman. Only three days earlier, the offices of the Israeli military attache in Paris had been sprayed with machine-gun fire.

Many foreign observers that one Palestinian faction or had been involved in the London though the P.L.O. office in London responsibility. The gunman, Hassan Ahmed Said, 23, who was hospitalized and then turned over to the police, had at least two accomplices. The men carried two Jordanian passports one from Iraq. Their capture by Scotland Yard reportedly led to the seizure of a hit list targeting other high-level Israelis, well as a cache of guns, hand grenades and ammunition.

The attack on Argov powerfully reinforced hawkish elements in the Israeli government, while the resolve of Cabinet members had been hesitant to opt for a full-scale strike against P.L.O. bases in Lebanon. Said Yitzhak Moda'i, an Israeli minister without portfolio: "Prolonged restraint costs too much. We must strike at the terrorist" Indeed even before Agrov was shot, Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir had called for "complete elimination of the P.L.O. In the wake of the Argov assassination attempt, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry declared that the ten-month-old cease-fire the was being "permanently violated" by P.L.O.

At week's end Israeli tanks and appeared to be poised for a possible across the border. All of Israel's military forces were fully mobilized, and troops throughout the rest of the were on alert. The Ministerial Committee, consisting of the Cabinet and military high command, met in Jerusalem to consider what step Israel might take next. The Middle East peace, thin as an eggshell at the best of times seemed on the verge of shattering.

--By Patricia Blake.

Reported by Robert Slater/Jerusalem and William Stewart/Beirut

With reporting by Robert Slater, William Stewart

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