Intramural Mayhem

The Middle East, which has always had more than its share of terrorism, last week seemed to be outdoing even itself. There were almost daily episodes of violence along the Israeli border, but the unusual feature of the latest out break was that it mostly involved Arab against Arab.

Double Guard. Bombs shook the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh and the border towns of Najran and Jizan, ruptured the Saudi segment of the Trans-Arabian pipeline near the Iraqi border. Grenades were lobbed in the British protectorate of Aden in a grim continuation of the violence that has killed 72 people in the past two years. Bombs went off in the Yemen port city of Hodeida, and there were explosions in both Cairo and Damascus.

Much of the violence centered in Jordan, where two bombs exploded in the capital of Amman and three more in the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem. There might have been even more explosions if alert Jordanian demolition experts had not found and defused eight additional bombs, including a packet of four dynamite sticks discovered near the office of the governor of Jerusalem. As a result, security guards were doubled at government buildings, and guards frisked passersby for explosives. Jordanian police arrested two infiltrators from Syria who, police said, were on a mission to assassinate King Hussein.

Small Comfort. The intramural murder reflects last summer's breakdown of the much-vaunted Arab cooperation, and the apparent decision of Egypt's President Nasser and Syria's Premier Youssef Zayyen to back a kind of confrontation with the conservative Arab kingdoms of Saudi Arabia's King Feisal and Jordan's Hussein. It also reflects a jockeying for power among rival Arab groups in such places as South Arabia, which will soon get its independence from Britain. The violence is being fueled by a sudden proliferation of terrorist organizations that seem as ready to fire on rivals as on the hated Jews. There are now no fewer than eleven separate Arab terrorist organizations, including the 550-man Asifa (Storm Troopers) operating out of Syria, the 8,000-man Palestine Liberation Organization, and antiroyalist groups in Saudi Arabia and Muscat.

For the first time, most of these outfits now place prime priority on knocking off Hussein before tackling Israel. The Heroes of the Repatriation, a smaller terrorist group, complained that when some of their men voluntarily surrendered to Hussein's Arab Legion after returning from a raid on Israel they were "clapped in jail and cruelly tortured." In announcing his decision last week to take the Palestine Liberation Organization underground, Chairman Ahmed Shukairy declared that for the moment "the primary struggle is against the tyrant of Amman, Hussein, who has betrayed God, the Prophet, and the Palestine cause." The Israelis, however, can draw small comfort from the Arab feuds. What Shukairy and his supporters in Cairo and Damascus want to do is eliminate Hussein so that they can use Jordan as the springboard for more attacks on Israel.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.