Murder and Massacre on Cyprus

An Arab vendetta threatens Middle East peace

"No more Palestine, no more Palestine! Arafat, round up your dogs!"

The chant that swelled last week from the throats of Cairo street mobs marked a significant Middle East turning point. Cairenes were in the streets wailing in protest against a bizarre series of events on nearby Cyprus that began with a political assassination and climaxed in a massacre. The murder victim: Youssef Sebai, 60, author, chairman-editor of Egypt's semiofficial daily newspaper al-Ahram and a close friend of Anwar Sadat's. Sebai's slaying, by two Palestinian gunmen in the lobby of Nicosia's Cyprus Hilton, made him the first victim of Sadafs peace initiative toward Israel. But what infuriated Egyptians even more was that a commando expedition dispatched to capture Sebai's killers and free their eleven Arab hostages ended in disaster. Last week the commandos were ambushed by Cypriot national guardsmen. Fifteen of the 58 Egyptians who had flown into Cyprus' Larnaca airport aboard a C-130E military transport died in a swirling 50-minute airport gun battle. Their $6 million plane went up in flames.

The double tragedy drove Sadat to redoubled rage. At the military funeral for the slain 15, he lashed away furiously at both the Palestinian liberation movement and Cyprus. Yasser Arafat's followers, he said, were "little people and idiots." Sadat announced a break in diplomatic relations with Cyprus' Greek government and dismissed President Spyros Kyprianou as "a dwarf (the Egyptian is 5 ft. 9 in., while the Cypriot is 5 ft. 4 in.). "Cyprus should explain to me," said a Sadat close to tears, "the treachery that was committed against my sons."

Actually, the assassins were not Arafat's people; they were members of a tiny renegade movement, which Arafat himself had disowned. A fortnight ago, the two men checked into the Hilton ostensibly to attend a meeting of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization, chaired by Sebai. They were searching, as it turned out, for a way to hit Sebai. As one of the prominent Egyptians who had traveled with Sadat to Jerusalem last November, Sebai had been condemned as a traitor by Arab rejectionists. The moment came unexpectedly. Spotting Sebai in the hotel lobby, the Palestinians quickly checked out of their room, paid a bill of $608 in cash and ordered a cab. Then they approached Sebai at the hotel newsstand and squeezed off three pistol shots, which struck him in the head.

The assassins rounded up 16 Arab convention delegates as hostages--among them, ironically, two P.L.O. representatives. At Larnaca airport, they commandeered a Cyprus Airways DC-8 jet and set out on a fruitless journey to Djibouti and back (see following story).

At this point President Kyprianou promised them Cypriot passports and safe conduct to Athens in exchange for the hostages. In the course of negotiations, Kyprianou received two fateful overseas telephone calls. The first was from Arafat in Beirut. The P.L.O. leader was furious because a close aide was among the hostages. Arafat offered the services of a twelve-man squad of experienced gunmen. Kyprianou accepted and dispatched an airliner to Beirut to pick them up. The squad, armed with Soviet AK-47 submachine guns, was kept out of sight inside the terminal, waiting for a crack at the hijackers. Later, there were reports that Arafat's men participated in the shooting of the Egyptian commandos, but Cyprus officials insisted that the P.L.O. squad never fired a shot.

More puzzling was the role of the Egyptian commandos. The second telephone call had come from Sadat. In anguish over the assassination of his friend, he begged President Kyprianou to rescue the hostages, one of whom was Egyptian, and to send the Palestinian killers to Cairo for trial. Kyprianou told him, "I personally will handle the matter."

That assurance was scarcely comforting to Sadat, who knew that Cyprus had long been a haven for Palestinian terrorists. Fearing that the killers might be freed, Sadat alerted the Egyptian army's crack Saiqa (Lightning) commando team and ordered it sent to Larnaca. Cairo merely informed Kyprianou that "we have people on the way to help rescue the hostages." Clearly, Sadat was preparing for an Entebbe-like raid. When the Egyptian transport arrived, Cypriot officials were stunned to discover that the "helpers" were Commando General Nabil Shukry and his assault team. Most were wearing combat suits. For some unexplained reason, several commandos were disguised for undercover work, some in sport clothes, a few in bell-bottom denims and platform shoes.

Adamantly, Kyprianou refused to allow the Egyptian team to act. As negotiations wore on late into Sunday evening, Shukry correctly decided that the Cypriots were preparing to release the two assassins. He sent his men into action--and disaster.

The tail of the Egyptian transport dropped, and a Jeep with four men aboard charged down the ramp. Firing nearly all the way, the men in the Jeep sped toward the DC-8 800 yds. down the dark tarmac. The remaining commandos moved out on foot at an almost leisurely pace. It proved fatal. "They were walking at a slow march," recalled a Western military observer who witnessed the attack. "My first thought was that this was a deliberate diversion. I was sure that a killer team must be climbing up the steps to the airplane under cover and unseen." But there was no killer team. In fact, no returning fire came from the DC-8. Instead, astonished Cypriot officials immediately ordered their national guardsmen to shoot the commandos. The Egyptians were caught in a deadly fusillade; the Jeep was hit by grenades, its occupants killed. Most of the outgunned Egyptians took shelter in a nearby plane. Finally they surrendered. Then the hijackers meekly turned over their weapons and gave themselves up.

Hailing its commandos home last week, Egypt treated the Larnaca raid as a famous victory, and in a sense it was. Sadat was praised for forcefulness not only by President Carter but even by the Israelis. But the Cyprus events, beginning with Sebai's assassination, were a grievous blow to Arab unity, especially for rejectionists like Arafat, who oppose Sadat's negotiations but would really like to close the gap between their position and his. Up to now Sadat has based his conversations with Israel not only on the recovery of Sinai but on Palestinian rights as well. Whether the Cyprus raid cut deeply enough to change that policy remains to be seen.

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