Terror from Inside

The Israelis have taken some measure of satisfaction from the seeming failure by Arab fedayeen commandos to enlist the Arabs of the occupied territories in their cause. Last week that illusion was abruptly shattered. Security forces rounded up 85 Arabs and accused them of having set off a blast in a Jerusalem supermarket last month that killed two shoppers. The Israelis also bulldozed their homes, where massive amounts of explosives were found. The suspects included an Arab Anglican clergyman, who, according to the Israelis, acted as a courier for orders and relayed explosives provided by the Egyptian embassy in Amman.

Strapped to Palm Trees. Hardly was one set of terrorists behind bars when another struck. As some 150 students and professors crowded the cafeteria of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, a 2-lb. plastic bomb, hidden in a flowerpot, exploded and injured 29 persons. On the same day, a grenade was hurled into a bank at Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, wounding an Arab depositor.

The new dimension of terror from the inside added sharply to the burdens of Premier-designate Golda Meir, who, as expected, was voted in by the Israel Labor Party to succeed the late Premier Levi Eshkol last week. Only a day after the vote, trouble flared along the Suez Canal. Hours after Israeli jets shot down an Egyptian MIG-21 over the Sinai, artillery opened up along the 60-mile canal front. For the second time since the Six-Day war, Israeli guns set fire to Egypt's main oil refineries at Suez. The Israelis lost one soldier killed and six wounded during a 5-hr. 10-min. shelling duel, which each side accused the other of starting.

Substantial Progress. Israel has still not responded to the attack on an El Al airliner in Zurich last month. After the widespread condemnation that followed Israel's strike at Beirut airport last December, the government felt it necessary to measure its response with care, at a time when the new U.S. Administration of Richard Nixon is formulating its policy on the Middle East. At his press conference last week, the President reported "substantial progress" in conversations on the Middle East with France's De Gaulle, and "encouraging" talks with the Russians. Both favor an imposed settlement--a proposition that Israel adamantly resists. Though Nixon also added that the big powers "cannot dictate" a peace formula, the Israeli government worriedly held a special Cabinet meeting to hear a report on U.S. policy from its ambassador to Washington, Yitzhak Rabin. This week, eloquent Foreign Minister Abba Eban is scheduled to travel to Washington for a series of talks with officials of the Nixon Administration.

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