A Mission That Failed

Less than twelve hours before the Israeli commandos landed in Beirut, a band of nine young Palestinian guerrillas launched twin attacks on Israeli targets in Cyprus. Like some of the Israeli invaders, the Arab terrorists went to work in rented cars. There the resemblance ended.

Things went wrong from the start. One team of four set off in mid-afternoon in a rented yellow Morris Marina to strike at the Nicosia residence of Israeli Ambassador Rahamim Timor. Caught in heavy traffic that threatened to wreck their timetable, the Arabs raced conspicuously down the oncoming traffic lane of Grivas Avenue and through a series of red traffic lights. Other cars had to brake suddenly to avoid collisions, and one of these cars was driven by an off-duty policeman. He immediately alerted headquarters to have the "crazy driver" of the Morris picked up "before he kills someone."

While police were closing in on the Arabs as traffic violators, the would-be assassins screeched to a halt outside the three-story apartment building where Ambassador Timor lives with his wife and two children. One Arab fired a burst of his submachine gun at a Cypriot policeman on guard outside the building, seriously wounding him in the chest. Another planted a large handbag filled with dynamite at the main entrance. The Arabs were apparently unaware of two things: that there was another entrance closer to Timor's apartment, and that Timor had already left, five minutes earlier, to walk to the Israeli embassy half a mile away.

When the explosion went off, it blew a huge hole in a Greek Cypriot's ground-floor apartment but caused relatively little damage to Timor's quarters. Nobody inside the building was injured. The dynamiter himself was flung to the ground, however, and the getaway car was wrecked. The other three guerrillas left their comrade behind and commandeered another vehicle at gunpoint. They got only 50 yards before they rounded a curve and crashed head-on into a police car looking for the traffic violators. They surrendered, and the injured dynamiter was arrested later at a hotel where the entire group had been staying.

Five minutes after the bungled attack on the ambassador's residence, the other five Palestinians made an equally inept attempt to blow up an empty Israeli Viscount airliner at Nicosia airport. They arrived in a blue Dodge Colt and a Land-Rover. As the Colt headed for the tarmac, it crashed into a gatepost. One of its two occupants fled through a field, but the other attacked a police guard by hitting him on the head with a hand grenade. The impact of the blow dislodged the grenade pin; the young guerrilla, afraid that he was going to blow himself up, threw the grenade away. It exploded harmlessly, and the Arab, now unarmed, surrendered.

The Land-Rover had meanwhile made it onto the tarmac and was circling the Viscount, but only one of the three Arabs had a gun. He fired repeatedly at the plane without causing any appreciable damage. Another Arab threw a bag of explosives near the aircraft but it did not go off. By this time, an Israeli security agent was strafing the car with a submachine gun. He wounded all three guerrillas, one fatally, and the Land-Rover crashed into a mobile generator.

A handwritten note found in one of the rented vehicles identified the guerrillas in both attacks as members of the National Arab Youth Organization for the Liberation of Palestine. According to the note, they had all planned to escape by hijacking another plane to Libya. The note also apologized "to the friendly people of Cyprus for the fight on your beautiful island."

Though normally sympathetic to Arabs, President Archbishop Makarios reacted angrily to the twin attacks. He has had enough problems lately with bombings by the underground movement that seeks to unite Cyprus with Greece. Said Makarios: "Cyprus does not wish to see its soil used as a battleground for the Arab-Israeli conflict." [CLOSE_P]

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