Israel Strikes Back

MIDDLE EAST Israel Strikes Back Israel and Jordan became involved last week in the heaviest fighting since the cease-fire in June. In those eight months, the Israeli government had counted 91 separate incidents along the Jordanian border. Then the Jordanians suddenly stepped up the violence. Sporadic artillery duels sent kibbutz dwellers in Galilee scurrying for cover and killed 17 Arabs in a refugee camp near the Allenby Bridge. Three mortar shells exploded in Jerusalem. Bazooka shells landed near the airport at Lydda.

Coming as it did from Jordan, the country that had been most weakened by the June war, the latest round of provocations proved difficult for the Israelis to understand. "There is something absurd in Jordan's approach," Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told the Knesset. "At times it behaves along the border as though we lost the war."

Seas of Flame. After a few days' lull, the Israelis struck back. Answering an artillery barrage against two border kibbutzim, Israeli guns opened up along a 60-mile front extending from Jericho to the Sea of Galilee. Massed in advance for the attack, howitzers, heavy mortars and tanks pounded Jordanian positions with merciless accuracy. The Arabs brought up reinforcements and pounded back, turning great patches of Israeli farm land into rolling seas of flame. Then the Israelis called out their air force. For nearly seven hours, squadrons of jet fighter-bombers dumped rockets, phosphorus bombs and napalm on the East Bank. They destroyed a guerrilla base, damaged several towns, terrorized Arab refugee tent-camps and knocked out gun emplacements as far inland as Irbid, 20 miles away on Jordan's arid central plateau.

Finally, with much of his army again in ruins--and with Radio Amman broadcasting appeals for blood donors --Jordan's King Hussein called it quits. He asked the U.S. embassy in Amman for State Department help in arranging a ceasefire. Washington, which only the day before had authorized a renewal of arms shipments to Jordan, was glad to step in, and the Israelis quickly agreed to silence their guns.

Making a Point. Israel hoped, said Dayan, to "teach Jordan that a ceasefire is a cease-fire and that it applied to both Israel and Jordan." The Arab terrorist organizations, which have been responsible for starting most of the trouble, announced from the safety of Damascus that they would continue their raids, but King Hussein got the Israeli message. In a broadcast over Radio Amman, he promised to try to keep the terrorists from using Jordan as a base. "As of today," he said, "I shall not allow anyone to supply the enemy with pretexts and justifications for aggression." Whether he could make his promise stick was another question.

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