Deadly Battle of the Spooks

MOURNING the eleven Israelis who were murdered by Arab guerrillas of the Black September movement at the Munich Olympics last fall, Premier Golda Meir promised a war to avenge them. Israel, she said, would fight "with assiduity and skill" on a "farflung, dangerous and vital front line." Mrs. Meir never explained where that front line was to be, but it is now becoming ominously evident. Across Europe and the Middle East, Israeli intelligence agents and Palestinian Arabs are fighting an ugly, deadly battle of attrition. For each, the targets and victims are the other side's suspected spies.

The two latest casualties in this battle of the spooks were killed two weeks ago, a day and 2,000 miles apart. On Cyprus, an Arab businessman named Hussein Bashir, 33, flipped off the light in his second-floor room in Nicosia's Olympic Hotel and climbed into bed. An explosion suddenly wrecked the room and killed Bashir. Although he traveled on a Syrian passport and headed a company called Palmyra Enterprises, Bashir is believed to have been the representative to Cyprus of Al Fatah, the principal Palestinian guerrilla organization. A bomb, apparently one that could be detonated electronically from a distance, had been concealed under Bashir's bed. An unidentified assassin had watched for the light to go out in the room and then pressed a detonator, setting off the bomb.

The next day an Israeli businessman known as Moshe Hanan Yshai was inexplicably shot twice while strolling on the Gran Via, Madrid's busiest street, in view of hundreds of shoppers. Sources in Jerusalem identified the victim as Baruch Cohen, 37, and admitted that he was employed by the Israeli government. His line of work was intelligence; Cohen was on the Gran Via tracking the man who was to shoot and kill him. Before he died, he identified his murderer as a member of Black September--which claimed credit for the assassination.

Another apparent victim of the war of the spooks was Mahmoud Hamshari, 34, the P.L.O.'s principal representative in France. When he answered a telephone call at his Paris apartment one day last December, a bomb placed beneath the telephone table detonated. Badly maimed, Hamshari lived for a month before dying from his wounds. Wa'il Zuaiter, 38, whom Israelis have accused of planning assaults on El Al jets, was waiting for the elevator at his Rome apartment building in October when someone--Rome police have never determined who--came along and shot him twelve times at close range.

Besides Cohen, one other Israeli official is known to have been killed in the war: Ami Shachori, 44, agricultural counselor in the Israeli embassy in Britain, was killed in his London office in September when he unknowingly opened a letter-bomb--one of many sent to Israeli officials round the world. Somewhat more ambiguous is the case of Khodr Kanou, 36, a Syrian journalist in Paris, who was shot to death in his apartment doorway three months ago. Kanou, it turned out, was a double agent; French police suspect that Palestinians killed him for exposing Black September operations.

Europe appears to be the main battlefield in the war of the spooks because movement between countries is easier there than in most other areas. To prevent any extension of the conflict, the U.S. has mobilized a special anti-terrorist task force under former Ambassador to Japan Armin H. Meyer.

Understandably, the Israeli government has disclaimed any responsibility for the assassination of the P.L.O. agents. The most that the Israelis will admit is that they are using "unconventional tactics" to combat Arab terrorists wherever they operate. That strategy may well include carrying out a subtle war of nerves against Palestinian Arabs living in Europe. Obituaries of men who are still alive appear in local newspapers; the warnings, paid for by "friends," are unmistakable. Other Arabs have received anonymous letters containing intimate details of their private lives; they are advised to go home by the letter writers, who have obviously been tracking them. Lethal letter bombs have injured Arab recipients not only in the Middle East but in European cities as well.

The Israeli CIA. The director of the anti-P.L.O. operation is believed to be Major General Aharon Yariv, 51, who retired as director of military intelligence last year to become Golda Meir's "special adviser on security affairs." Yariv's operatives are probably members of Mossad ("the Institution"), Israel's equivalent of the CIA. Mossad appears to have infiltrated the guerrilla movement. In recent months at least three Arab travelers have been arrested at European airports by local police, who had been tipped off that passengers were carrying arms and explosives in their luggage. In separate incidents, Austrian and Italian police stopped young Arabs traveling on stolen or forged Israeli passports that normally might not have been questioned.

The P.L.O. argues that the Arabs who have been assassinated recently were not criminal terrorists but the equivalents of shadow ambassadors from a government in exile. Thus, the P.L.O. claims, Israel is trying to strangle the organization's growing political alignments with friendly states.

In Cairo, meanwhile, Abu lyad, second-in-command to Fatah Chief Yasser Arafat, last week conceded that Israel is now so cordoned off from fedayeen attacks by Lebanon, Jordan and the Sinai that direct assaults on "the enemy" are no longer possible. "We know our generation will not reach the sea," he said. Therefore Palestinians must hit Israelis abroad. "We don't have to occupy Tel Aviv to make our point," said lyad. "It's sufficient to keep scoring. We should fight the enemy anywhere in the world because every country bears the guilt for Palestine."

The Palestinian guerrillas are almost fatalistic about their running battle with the Israeli underground. Taking precautions, says one, "only adds up to postponing our execution." The fedayeen feel that they are being boxed in not only by Israeli agents but by Arab governments as well; one reason they have begun to use forged or stolen Israeli documents is that some conservative Arab governments have threatened to cut off support if Palestinians use their passports on anti-Israeli missions. The fedayeen are leaning more and more toward the desperate tactics of Black September. Yasser Arafat, eulogizing the dead Hussein Al Bashir, swore revenge "not on Cyprus, not in Israel and not in the occupied territories." That meant retaliation could come anywhere in the broadening battle of the spooks. Israeli officials are warning citizens abroad to take even more stringent security precautions than usual.

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