An Eye for an Eye

By William E. Smith

"Whoever injures us," vowed Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in a speech before the Knesset's defense and foreign affairs committee "we will injure." All week long, the world waited for the seemingly inevitable counterstrike by Israel, or possibly the U.S. against the perpetrators of the Dec. 27 terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports that left 19 people dead and 112 injured. All signs pointed to Abu Nidal, the shadowy leader of a renegade Palestinian group currently based in Libya (see following story), as the man who masterminded the slaughter. Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi taunted the U.S. and Israel, declaring that a retaliatory strike against his country, which openly supports and encourages Nidal and his accomplices, would set off a "tit for tat" cycle of violence. Libyans, warned Gaddafi, would harass Americans "in their own streets" and spread bloodshed throughout the Mediterranean region.

The situation was fraught with danger, not least for the 1,500 U.S. citizens who still live in Libya despite repeated warnings by Washington to leave. But perhaps the most serious risk was to the Middle East peace process, an ultimate aim of which is a resolution of the Palestinian problem that underlies the current epidemic of terrorism. As the U.S. aircraft carrier Coral Sea left Naples with its support vessels to begin what U.S. officials called "routine operations in the central Mediterranean," the widespread assumption was that the Navy was getting into position in case President Reagan gave the order to strike at Libya.

As the week began, the first order of business was burying the dead in the wake of the airport atrocities. On both sides of the Atlantic, families and friends gathered to mourn their lost loved ones, who included five Americans, four Greeks, two Mexicans, an Italian, an Austrian, an Algerian and an Israeli. Nearly 400 people, among them U.S. Ambassador to Italy Maxwell Rabb and Archbishop Justin Rigali, representing Pope John Paul II, gathered in the chapel of Rome's North American College for the funeral of Natasha Simpson, 11, the American schoolgirl who was the youngest of the airport victims. The Rev. Diarmuid Martin, a Vatican official and family friend, summarized the shared sense of sorrow and shock. Noting that many of the mourners were journalists, including Natasha's father Victor, an editor for the Associated Press in Rome, Father Martin observed, "We've written or spoken about suffering, about anguish, about tragedy, about natural disasters. We've spoken about violence and terrorism, about all the good and evil in society. But when we heard the news, heard the name of someone we know, the child of a friend, we were shocked and stunned."

As police investigations continued in Italy and Austria, a consensus quickly emerged about the identity of the seven known terrorists, only three of whom survived the airport attacks. The men were apparently agents of Abu Nidal and his Fatah Revolutionary Council, which split in 1974 from Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah organization and in recent years has spent about as much time and energy trying to kill P.L.O. leaders and other Arabs as it has devoted to fighting Israel.

After interrogating the two terrorists still alive after the Vienna raid, Austrian police began a search for a fourth conspirator, who they say gave the three gunmen weapons and instructions at the city's Hilton Hotel shortly before the attack began. Police also found a receipt at the Hilton cafeteria for four breakfasts--coffee, rolls and eggs--that the terrorists appear to have consumed that morning, and forensic tests of the contents of the dead gunman's stomach corresponded to that fare. The Austrians were grimly discreet as they pressed their investigation, taking care to avoid the glare of unwelcome publicity. "We don't want every terrorist thug to know the faces and names of the judges and policemen on the case," said a tightlipped spokesman for the Ministry of Justice. The Austrians had good reason for caution: for the past 4 1/2 years three Abu Nidal terrorists have been held in Austrian jails, so far without incident, in connection with the 1981 murder of a Vienna city councilman and an attack that year on the city's main synagogue.

Though many questions remained unanswered, Austrian authorities concluded from the interrogation that the terrorists had not intended to commit suicide at the Vienna airport, as the police had first assumed, but instead were plotting a grand spectacle of murder and revenge. They were evidently hoping to take a number of people at the airport hostage, commandeer an El Al jetliner and order it flown to Tel Aviv where, along with an El Al plane seized simultaneously by their accomplices in Rome, they would destroy the aircraft and everyone on board. The action was to have been in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of P.L.O. headquarters in Tunis last Oct. 1. That attack killed some 70 people and wounded more than 100.

In Italy, Special Prosecutor Domenico Sica questioned the sole surviving terrorist from the Rome attack, who gave his name as Mohammed Sharam, 19. Sica then flew to Vienna to compare notes with investigators there. He is next expected to make a quick trip to Brussels, where police last week arrested two Arabs and charged them with conspiracy to commit a crime. Also arrested was their host, a Belgian video store owner in the provincial town of Hasselt, in whose possession police found 40 lbs. of explosives. The Belgian had been previously convicted on charges of illegal arms possession. The disclosure seemed to support suspicions by law-enforcement officials that links exist between terrorist networks and arms suppliers in Europe.

From his investigation, Sica concluded that as many as six or seven people may have been involved in the Rome attack. According to Sharam, the mission began in mid-November when a terrorist recruiter visited the infamous Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut and selected eight or ten volunteers for a suicide mission. One team was sent to Vienna, the other to Rome. Both teams called themselves Martyrs of Palestine and considered Abu Nidal their sponsor, though no proof of that link was found on any of the survivors. The Rome team carried fake Moroccan passports from the same stock as the one used by a youth implicated in the bombing last September of the Cafe de Paris on Rome's Via Veneto. The Rome gunmen's Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades, some of Chinese manufacture, are believed to have come from a weapons depot the Palestinians once shared in Italy with the Red Brigades. Relying on information from Sharam, police discovered a hand grenade in a bag abandoned by the terrorists at the Rome airport. After sifting all the evidence, Sica was reportedly ready at week's end to seek an international arrest warrant for Abu Nidal for his role in plotting the attack.

Italians were angry and dismayed that their country, which has traditionally been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, has become such a frequent target of terrorists. When the Libyan news agency last week described the airport attacks as "acts of heroism committed by the children of the martyrs of the Sabra and Shatila camps," Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi replied angrily that there was no heroism in "the massacre of innocent and defenseless civilians." A particular object of criticism was Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, a Christian Democratic member of Craxi's Socialist-led coalition, who is somewhat sympathetic to the P.L.O. and has recently attempted to help mediate the Middle East diplomatic impasse. The irony, of course, is that the latest acts of terrorism were most probably perpetrated by Arafat's enemies in an effort to destroy the very peace process that Andreotti supports. Nonetheless, given the unrest in the ruling coalition over the recent spate of terrorism, some political observers believe the Craxi government may be obliged to assuage critics of its Middle East policy by forcing Andreotti to resign.

After the first news of the airport attacks, the Reagan Administration had urged Israel to exercise caution in its response. Reason: the U.S. was fearful that the Israelis would seize the opportunity to strike at Syrian missile emplacements in Lebanon, thereby provoking a Syrian response and perhaps torpedoing any chance that the current peace overtures in the Middle East might lead to negotiations. The Israeli position has always been that the P.L.O. is ultimately responsible for all terrorist acts against Israel, and therefore is a legitimate target whatever the circumstances. Indeed, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin used Abu Nidal's attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador to London in 1982 as a primary excuse for the ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in June of that year. But as it became increasingly clear last week that Libyan-based Abu Nidal was responsible for the airport massacres, the Reagan Administration started to take a different line, saying it was prepared to work with other governments to "exert pressure" on Libya to halt the export of terrorism.

In Israel, Prime Minister Peres faced a dilemma similar to Washington's: how to strike back at terrorism without undermining the peace process. That was an especially complicated situation for the Israelis. Peres was concerned about the Soviet-made surface-to-air missile batteries that Syria recently installed along its border, as well as the mobile missile batteries it has been moving in and out of Lebanon in response to Israel's downing in November of two Syrian fighter planes inside Syrian airspace. He did not want to increase the tension over that potentially explosive issue, nor did he want to do anything to contribute to the success of last week's reunion in Damascus of those two longtime adversaries, King Hussein of Jordan and Syrian President Hafez Assad. Peres also knew that his countrymen were upset about a rocket attack on the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona; though there were no casualties, it was the first such attack on Kiryat Shemona from across the Lebanese border in more than 3 1/2 years. Finally, there was the sticky logistical question of how to locate and punish Abu Nidal without suffering too many Israeli casualties.

Having denounced Libya as "the center of world terrorism" and "a wicked country full of murder," Peres was heartened by the U.S. statement supporting "measured, focused" retaliation. But he also called for international sanctions against Libya and suggested that the job of punishing Libya was not Israel's alone. Why, demanded Peres, is Libya "exempt from political, legal or economic punitive measures, as though diplomatic rules are honored toward that country while it does not honor them with respect to others? . . . Why is Libya treated with a measure of forgiveness and a closing of eyes?" Added Simcha Dinitz, a Labor Party member of the Knesset and a former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.: "We would like to feel that the battle against terrorism is an international concern and not the exclusive domain of Israel." Publicly at least, the Israelis were talking as if they did not Intend to make an immediate retaliatory strike. As one Jerusalem official put it, "Even if we did something later, the world won't dissociate the reprisal from the Rome and Vienna attacks."

In Tripoli, where his countrymen staged a series of noisy anti-American rallies, Gaddafi charged that the U.S. and Israel were "leading the world to war," because they "forced the Palestinian Arab people to conduct such acts." On Thursday the State Department called for international sanctions against Libya, and on Friday issued another warning to the 1,500 Americans resident there. Declared Charles Redman, a department spokesman: "We strongly oppose travel to Libya by American citizens because of the danger to their own welfare posed by the unpredictability of actions by the Gaddafi regime." President Reagan, when asked by reporters in Los Angeles what he thought of Gaddafi's remarks, replied, "I don't answer fellas who think it's all right to shoot eleven-year-old girls."

At week's end it was still unclear whether the West's anger against the terrorists and their Libyan backers would result in any kind of military action. Among U.S. allies that opposed the intervention were Britain, France and West Germany, all of which have trade links with Libya. Both the White House and the Pentagon insisted that a U.S. strike was unlikely, but at the same time the planning continued. One favored option called for an aerial engagement against Libyan fighters over the Gulf of Sidra, followed by strikes against one or more of the five main air bases strung out along the Libyan coast. Intelligence reports indicated that Libya was accelerating its deployment of Soviet surface-to-air missiles, including SA-5s, which will significantly strengthen its defenses against attack. As part of the U.S. preparations, the Pentagon ordered a flight of EA-6B "electronic warfare" planes dispatched from Whidbey Island, Washington, to the Mediterranean. The special "jamming" craft were said to be useful in what one official called a "highdensity communications environment," presumably meaning an assault on a Libyan missile site.

As the week ended, it appeared that no U.S. decision had yet been taken. But one high-ranking West European official said, "We would not be surprised if the military option is shortly engaged." Like the U.S. interception of an Egyptian airliner carrying the alleged hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro to freedom, that move would send an unmistakable message to Libya, Abu Nidal, the P.L.O. and any other sources of terrorism: such acts against U.S. citizens will not go unanswered. Whether that would have any effect on discouraging future terrorism was quite another question. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Walter Galling/Rome, Gertraud Lessing/Vienna and Robert Slater/Jerusalem, with other bureaus

With reporting by Reported by Walter Galling/Rome, Gertraud Lessing/Vienna, Robert Slater/Jerusalem, with other bureaus