Commando Riposte

Each fresh stage of violence in the Middle East has been marked by mu ual vengeance for major provocations by each side. Last week was no exception. Both sides went beyond their now familiar tactics of artillery duels along the Suez Canal and Israeli air force sweeps of Arab fedayeen positions in the Jordan River valley. In a new in tensification of their struggle, the Arabs and Israelis launched a damaging string of commando assaults.

Israel was the victim of the week's most spectacular raid, a strike at its oil installations at Haifa, the country's chief seaport. In the early morning, a lone Palestinian fedayeen crept up to a complex of eight pipelines carrying oil from the Haifa refinery to dockside and placed three pounds of explosives under a manifold. The resulting blast knocked three of the pipelines temporarily out of commission and started a fire that destroyed 1,500 tons of refined oil. It was the most spectacular act of Arab sabotage since the June 1967 war.

Main Front. The fedayeen, however, are of less concern to Israel than the standing threat from Egypt. Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan warned that Egypt and Syria were stepping up their war efforts, and another round of the war "can happen," perhaps this year. "The Egyptian front is the main one," he added. "It won't start anywhere else."

As evidence of increased danger, Egypt significantly stepped up its commando raids. Over three nights, the Egyptians staged five raids by their own count, three according to the Israelis.

Crossing south of Great Bitter Lake, they met an Israeli patrol, and in a three-hour firefight near Suez, four Israelis and one Egyptian were wounded. In an other raid, south of El Qantara, the Egyptians unsuccessfully stormed an Israeli army post, losing three men (Egypt claimed 22 Israelis killed). In a third attack, Egyptian commandos tried to breach a road leading to the strategic Mitla Pass. The attacking Egyptian force was repulsed after killing one Israeli private.

Responding in kind, Israeli commandos raided an Egyptian coast guard station at Ras Adabiya, seven miles southwest of Suez. They claimed 15 Egyptians killed and a small radar station destroyed, at a cost of two men wounded. In a second raid, this time on Jordan, Israeli commandos blasted the $30 million East Ghor irrigation duct.

Despite the new scope of struggle, there is some evidence that Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser is caught between conflicting pressures. On the one hand, he must appease his more zealous army officers, who are impatient for action against Israel, and he may need to demonstrate his independence in the face of Soviet counsels of caution. On the other hand, there are evanescent but tantalizing indications of counterpressures on Nasser from some army officers and middle-class bureaucrats who are weary of Egypt's bearing the main burden of the Arab cause. These men have begun to argue for making a separate peace with Israel and letting other Arabs carry on as best they can.

No one can measure how widely this

"Egypt first" feeling is shared, but the proponents of a separate peace have so far been unable to make a noticeable dent in Nasser's foreign policy. During four months of talks in Washington, the U.S. had won from the Soviets a tacit agreement to let Israel and Egypt work out their new borders themselves. But after Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko visited Cairo last month, Russia switched its stance and in a hard-lining note delivered two weeks ago echoed Arab demands for total Israeli withdrawal on all fronts to prewar lines. The Soviets also called for demilitarized zones "astride" the borders, a suggestion that Israel has always resisted. In fact, the only encouraging sign was a negative one. Nasser has apparently not rejected the notion of a "contractual agreement," thus keeping open the possibility of a deal with the Israelis and indicating a desire for the big-power talks to continue.

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