Death at the Gate of Hope

MIDDLE EAST

In the Israeli town of Petah-Tikva last week, the quiet of a summer's night was suddenly shattered by the half-forgotten sound of incoming Katyusha rockets. One shell hit a hospital, killing an elderly woman patient. Two more damaged an elementary school closed for vacation. A fourth killed a five-year-old girl sitting on a porch. Next morning a spotter plane located the Russian-made rocket launcher 41 miles away near the Arab village of Deir Ballut.

For Israelis, who have been spared such incidents since last November, both the target and the timing were significant. Petah-Tikva (Gate of Hope), settled by Russian immigrants in 1878, was the first Jewish agricultural settlement in modern Palestine. The rocketing, along with guerrilla forays elsewhere--a bazooka barrage on the Lebanese border, a skirmish on the Golan Heights, a grenade explosion in Ashkelon--coincided with a meeting in Cairo of the 155-member guerrilla high command, the Palestine National Council. It also occurred during the four-day visit of West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel, who conferred with Israeli officials and visited the Yad Va'shem memorial to the 6,000,000 victims of the Holocaust, and the Wailing Wall, where he donned a yarmulke and chatted with rabbis.

Until last week the guerrillas had been largely silent since they were badly mauled last September by the Jordanian army. King Hussein seems determined to prove that he has the once-ungovernable commandos completely under control; last week his government hanged a guerrilla for committing sabotage at a phosphate plant outside Amman. Plagued by disunity and close to despair, the fedayeen might have launched last week's attacks, as Beirut's Daily Star observed, to prove that they "may be down but they are not out."

Effective Attrition. The resurgence of guerrilla activity showed, as Premier Golda Meir quickly pointed out, that Israel needs secure borders to ensure peace in the Middle East. At the same time, Egypt is becoming less and less optimistic about the chances of peace with Israel and the reopening of the Suez Canal. Al Ahram Editor Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, who usually mirrors official thinking, said last week that the time had come for another round of "effective attrition" against Israel combined with pressure on the U.S.

Despite such pessimistic signs, Washington is hopeful of persuading Israel and Egypt to take the first steps toward peace. The State Department last week dispatched Donald C. Bergus, who was returning to his post as provisional U.S. representative in Cairo after consultations in Washington, and Michael Sterner, its Egyptian expert. Cairo, in keeping with the mood, sent no one to meet them at the airport.

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