THE RISKS OF REPRISAL

IN the aftermath of the reprisal raid on Beirut airport by Israeli commandos, the Middle East last week seemed closer to war than at any time since all-out hostilities formally ceased 19 months ago. Jordan mobilized 17-year-olds, and King Hussein urgently called for an Arab summit conference. Diplomats of the U.S., Russia, Britain and France met in three capitals to discuss the crisis. In Washington, officials judged the Middle East the one place right now where a confrontation with the Russians could occur, and a White House aide reported that the turbulent region is uppermost in President Johnson's mind during the final 18 days of his Administration.

Along the Middle East's frontiers, bristling with weaponry, rolled a drumfire of incidents, any one of which could spark a new war. Israeli and Jordanian artillery dueled across the Jordan valley. Arab fedayeen guerrillas mortared a copper mine and three Israeli settlements, killing an 18-year-old army girl. In reprisal, Israelis strafed fedayeen positions, and jet-escorted helicopters blasted a Jordanian police car, killing three security men. From Lebanon, long the most peaceable of Israel's neighbors, Arab guerrillas rained rocket shells on the town of Qiryat Shemona and a nearby kibbutz, killing two civilians. In reply, Israeli troops shelled the town of Rajar, and traded shells with Lebanese artillery along what had now become Israel's fourth front.

Unhappy Example. Until now, Israel has been able to count in time of crisis on a reservoir of world sympathy for an outnumbered nation surrounded by implacably hostile neighbors. After the Beirut attack, however, Israel found itself largely isolated diplomatically. The raid, which fueled the latest round of violence, struck even Israel's friends as an unhappy example of a propensity to overreact, demanding not a tooth for a tooth but a whole mouthful of teeth for every one lost by Israel.

Certainly the provocation had been severe: an Arab terrorist strike at El Al, Israel's vital air link with the rest of the world. The pair of Palestinian terrorists who shot up an El Al Boeing 707 about to take off from Athens airport had also killed one passenger--and might well have killed everyone aboard if one of their incendiary grenades had ignited the liner's loaded fuel tanks. Israel accused Lebanon, which had served as the gunmen's point of departure, of harboring the terrorists. At a meeting in Jerusalem, senior cabinet ministers split over whether to raid Beirut airport or attack one of three guerrilla camps that the Israelis claim are located in Lebanon. Premier Levi Eshkol cast his vote with the hardliners: it would be Beirut.

The Israeli commandos had expected to find only half a dozen Arab planes on the ground; instead, they found and destroyed 13. Israel also miscalculated the raid's explosive effect on world opinion, despite the commandos' care not to take a life for the one lost in Athens. President Johnson publicly termed the raid "serious and unwise" and used considerably stronger language in private. In the United Nations, the U.S. joined the other 14 members of the Security Council in unanimously condemning Israel in the harshest of diplomatic terms for its "premeditated military action in violation of its obligations under the charter and the cease-fire resolutions." To Israel's understandable chagrin, the resolution failed to mention the Athens attack. Pope Paul VI sent a sympathetic message to Lebanese President Charles Helou, "deploring violent acts" and asking Lebanon to refrain from taking countermeasures.

Anger in Israel. The world's reaction --and particularly the Pope's words--evoked a bitter response in Israel, which met the censure with surprise, bewilderment and then anger. Israel's Minister for Religious Affairs, Zorach Warhaftig, replied that "the Pope's voice was silent when Jewish worshipers were attacked at the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron," referring to a grenade attack that injured 48 Israelis in October. Then, unable to stop there, he went on to castigate Pius XII for being silent "when millions of Jews were murdered" during World War II. Israel rejected the U.N. censure as hopelessly one-sided, since Arab nations are regularly protected from similar blame by Soviet veto. Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Yosef Tekoah, termed the censure proof of "the moral, political and juridical bankruptcy of the Council regarding the Middle East situation." Tekoah continued, making a justifiable point that most Israelis felt summed up their case: "Is the single life of the Israeli engineer killed in Athens worth less than all the metal and wire and upholstery destroyed in Beirut? Are we to hear that the scrap iron of airplanes is worth more than Jewish blood?"

Cast suddenly on the diplomatic defensive, Premier Eshkol said in Jerusalem that "we could not but exercise our right of self-defense. Any tourist knows where to find the terrorist organization in Beirut. International law clearly says that a country that harbors aggressors is an aggressor."

Preview Policy. In Lebanon's case, Israel's policy of holding Arab governments responsible for raids by Palestinian fedayeen might prove counterproductive. Lebanon has paid lip service to the guerrillas, but its army had always been under strict orders to prevent incursions into Israel. Now, declared the Beirut daily An Nahar, "Lebanon has entered the June 5 war." The government considered plans for a draft to bolster its 15,000-man army, but at the same time Lebanese Defense Minister Hussein Oweini reasserted that Lebanon would not knowingly permit the fedayeen to operate from its soil.

In Washington, the Beirut raid inevitably served to strengthen the hand of State Department advocates of a less unquestioning alliance with Israel. The raid could also make it politically easier for President-elect Richard Nixon to pursue a more even-handed policy in the Middle East, if he should so decide. In what might almost have been a preview of such a policy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk last week called on the Arab states to "do their utmost to restrain terrorist activity," and on Israel "to recognize that a policy of excessive retaliation will not produce the peace that Israel surely desires."

Sticking Points. If there was one dividend to be found in last week's crisis, it was the fresh sense of urgency imparted to big-power efforts toward a settlement. Russian diplomats in Washington, Paris and London began pressing for an agreement that could be offered to both sides with big-power endorsement. In a week of intensive conversations, there were hints of a new Soviet willingness to search for accommodation on such sticking points as demarcation of boundaries, free navigation, demilitarized zones and international guarantees. Some close observers detected an emerging package offer.

Even if the U.S. and Russia could come to a meeting of minds on the Middle East, along with Britain and France as the only other potential sources of arms, the question remained to what extent a settlement could be imposed on the quarrelsome antagonists. The Arabs now seem eager to have their borders guaranteed by the big powers, and the present leaders of the Arab world know that an imposed settlement is the only kind that they could politically survive. Israel insists that any lasting peace can only be negotiated by those responsible for living with it, and stoutly opposes big-power intervention. Against this is the fact that Arabs and Israelis remain farther away from settling their affairs than ever and, in the opinion of many, the Middle East remains too dangerous and unpredictable a situation to go unfettered much longer. The real question last week was whether the crisis that led to the talks would explode before diplomacy could shape a settlement.

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