Middle East Israel's 1,500-Mile Raid

By William E. Smith.

It was just after 10 on a clear Tuesday morning when the eight sleek warplanes peeled off over the faintly ruffled waters of the Gulf of Tunis in the western Mediterranean. They were a long way from home, and they wasted little time. While the others hovered high over the sea like watchful birds of prey, the first two jets swooped down on the beach, so low that startled and incredulous bystanders on the shore could pick out the Star of David on the planes' flashing silver tails. A volley of bombs and missiles streaked into a cluster of sand-colored buildings squatting among palms and pine trees in the seaside village of Hammam al-Shatt, twelve miles south of the Tunisian capital.

Within six minutes, the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization had been reduced to a pile of twisted steel and crumpled concrete. A two-story administration building and a house used by P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat were demolished. Arafat was out of the area at the time, having long ago demonstrated that he has nine lives. But at least 60 Palestinians and Tunisians were killed in the attack, and more than 100 were injured. Among the dead were several of Arafat's bodyguards.

Not since 1976, when its commandos raided Entebbe airport in Uganda to rescue a planeload of passengers being held hostage by Palestinian gunmen, had Israel launched an operation so far from home. This time, the Israelis flew some 1,500 miles across the Mediterranean, twice refueling in midair. The Israelis announced that the raid was in reprisal for the murder by terrorists a week earlier of three Israeli civilians on a yacht in the port of Larnaca, Cyprus. The Israelis were convinced that the attack, which took place on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, had been carried out by Force 17, a commando unit from the Fatah branch of the P.L.O., a claim the organization denied.

Like the Entebbe rescue and a 1981 bombing raid that destroyed a nuclear reactor in Iraq, last week's attack had been elaborately planned. At dawn on Tuesday, eight F-15s took off from an air base in northern Israel, followed about 40 minutes later by eight F-16s. The F-16s were refueled by Israeli tanker planes; then they dived and continued to fly as low as possible over the Mediterranean to avoid radar detection, approaching Tunis from the south. While the F-16s staged the bombing raid, the F-15s remained in reserve some 500 miles away. Near the island of Malta, an Israeli naval vessel stood ready to launch helicopters to rescue any downed Israeli pilots. After the mission was completed, the F-16s were again refueled in midair by the tankers, which were escorted home by the F-15s.

As a military operation, the raid was a singular success. As a diplomatic and political maneuver, it was a dubious proposition, since it came at a time when the U.S., in cooperation with Jordan and Egypt, had been attempting to keep King Hussein's fragile peace initiative alive. The raid took the Tunisian government of President Habib Bourguiba, 82, a longtime friend of the U.S., by surprise. When Tunisians first heard explosions from Hammam al-Shatt, many thought that a raid was being carried out by Libya, with which Tunisia had broken diplomatic relations a few days earlier. But on the beach at Hammam al- Shatt, there was no such confusion. Said one young Palestinian survivor: "We could see the Israeli markings. The planes peeled off just above us. It was terrifying."

Tunisians were enraged by the long-distance attack. Newspapers published dozens of photographs of dismembered bodies, and the government-owned daily La Presse described the raid as "the blind barbaric terrorism of the Israeli state." But what really angered Bourguiba was the Reagan Administration's enthusiastic endorsement of the Israeli action, which White House Spokesman Larry Speakes described as a "legitimate response" to "terrorist attacks." President Reagan declared that Israel and other nations have the right to strike back "if they can pick out the people responsible." He added that he had "great faith in Israel's intelligence capabilities" on that score.

The Administration's approval of the raid shocked moderate Arab states. At the United Nations, the Security Council condemned the Israeli raid by a vote of 14 to 0, with the U.S. abstaining. Tunisian Foreign Minister Beji Caid Essebsi called the attack an act of "state terrorism" aimed at sabotaging Middle East peace efforts. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had returned to Cairo only the previous day after what he had regarded as a successful trip to Washington, denounced the raid as a "horrible criminal operation" that posed "a major blow to peace efforts." Argued Mubarak: "If we counter terror with terror, we are going to have an endless chain of terrorist operations." Mubarak's prediction appeared to have been borne out by the news from Beirut that an Islamic fundamentalist group had announced that it intended to "execute" an American hostage, U.S. Embassy Political Officer William Buckley, in retaliation for the Israeli raid (see following story).

Egypt suspended negotiations with Israel over the status of Taba, the sliver of beachfront in the Sinai that is claimed by both countries. In Tunis, Bourguiba called in U.S. Ambassador Peter Sebastian and told him of his "profound regret and great astonishment" at the Administration's response. Summing up the reaction by moderate Arabs, one senior Western ^ diplomat in Cairo declared, "The raid is going to leave scars, a lot more than were caused by the attack on the Iraqi reactor."

Among those who seemed to feel the White House had praised the Israeli action too lavishly was Secretary of State George Shultz. As luck would have it, Shultz was in New York that day to have lunch with the foreign ministers of six gulf states, and the ministers treated the Secretary to a volley of angry protest. One warned him that "no Arab state can now consider itself safe from Israel," while another noted acidly that Tunisia had been the first Arab country ever to call for peace with Israel. Shultz pointed out that Israel had been increasingly concerned about a general upsurge in terrorism over the past several months, but then added, in an attempt at evenhandedness, "We have to be clear in our minds that we will do everything we can to prevent violence from stopping efforts toward peace."

Shultz called the White House to protest the tenor of some of Speakes' comments. Next day, the White House backtracked a bit by saying that while the Israeli raid may have been "understandable as an expression of self- defense," it could not be "condoned." President Reagan belatedly sent his "condolences" to Bourguiba. Other officials acknowledged that the U.S. had played an important part in persuading the Tunisian leader to give the P.L.O. a place of refuge after it was driven out of Beirut by the Israelis in 1982.

Last week's raid could have myriad consequences. For one thing, it put Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi on notice that his country is not beyond the reach of Israeli air power. More important, however, may be the adverse effect on possible Middle East talks between Jordan and Israel. It will hurt King Hussein, particularly among moderate Arabs whose support he has been seeking. In visits to Washington and New York last week, Hussein went a long way toward meeting U.S. demands that he make clear his willingness to negotiate directly with Israel. Arafat, who last week vowed vengeance for the raid, is less likely than ever to recognize Israel, a step that both the U.S. and Israel have long regarded as a prerequisite for future negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres insisted that the raid had been a response to a recent increase in P.L.O. terrorism. Said he: "It was an act of self-defense. Period." The Yom Kippur murders at Larnaca had shocked Israelis and intensified the pressure on Peres to take decisive action. But ! in the Arab world last week, the view was that Israel's real aim had been to torpedo the peace process.

That belief was shared by at least one West European leader, Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who declared in an interview with TIME Managing Editor Ray Cave, "This act of Israel's was either a tragic error or a deliberate maneuver to strike at the evolution of the (peace process)." Craxi said that the Israelis themselves had told him that Arafat was risking his life by talking peace. Thus, the Prime Minister continued, "the Israelis could not have failed to calculate that this action would liquidate the Jordanian- Palestinian peace initiative." He said he hoped the P.L.O. would not return to a policy of terrorism. "But let's face it," he added. "The moderate Palestinians stretched out their hand and had a bomb placed in it."

While that judgment did not take full account of the fact that terrorism by the P.L.O. has never really stopped, it accurately reflected the anger engendered in many quarters by the Israeli raid. Symbolic of the prevailing mood was a State Department advisory to its missions throughout the world last week: Be on guard against terrorist attacks.

With reporting by John Borrell/Cairo and Roland Flamini/Jerusalem