"Iron Fist:" CBS Newsmen Are Victims

The Israeli retaliatory campaign against Shi'ite guerrillas in southern Lebanon, known as the "iron fist" policy, came painfully close to America's TV screens last week. As Israeli forces stepped up their attacks on Shi'ite villages, two members of a CBS News camera crew were killed and a third was seriously injured by a shell from an Israeli tank. The three men, all Lebanese citizens, had been photographing a burned-out car outside the village of Kfar Melki that was under attack by an Israeli raiding party. CBS sent off a protest to Israel's Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, for what the network said had been described by eyewitnesses as "an unprovoked and | deliberate attack by Israeli forces."

That statement reflected the view of French Journalist Marine Jacquemin, who had been standing near the CBS crew. She said that the Israeli tank crew "saw me, and I have long blond hair; I couldn't have been Lebanese." She continued: "They saw we were journalists. We were filming and interviewing, and they shot at us deliberately." Peres expressed his condolences but said the CBS crew had taken positions "in the midst of a group of armed men who were engaged in active hostility" against Israeli troops. He rejected any suggestion that the incident "was anything but a derivative of the tragic situation in Lebanon."

The killing of the newsmen came as the Israelis were performing two complicated maneuvers: withdrawing from southern Lebanon and at the same time staging raids back into areas previously evacuated. In the course of the week they reported killing 21 guerrillas while losing two of their own men. The situation, in the words of Israel's northern commander, Major General Ori Orr, had reached a state of "all-out war," with an average of 70 Shi'ite attacks a week against the Israeli forces. As Israeli anger grew last week, there were repeated calls from Cabinet ministers for an accelerated withdrawal.

Fighting also broke out between Christian militiamen and the Lebanese Army near the port city of Sidon. By midweek, hundreds of Muslim residents of predominantly Christian villages had fled to Sidon. In the Beirut area, Islamic fundamentalists kidnaped a French diplomat, and two other employees of the French embassy were presumed to have been abducted, bringing to six the number of Westerners who have disappeared in the capital in the past two weeks. A telephone caller to Western news agencies in Beirut claimed that the radical group Islamic Holy War was holding the three.

On the Christian side, the standoff continued between President Amin Gemayel, who is a Maronite Christian, and the Christian officers who have seized control of the combined militias long dominated by the Gemayel family. From the beginning of the revolt two weeks ago, the rebels' anger is believed to have been directed at Gemayel for transferring his loyalty from Israel to Syria. The rebels insisted last week that they thought Gemayel was too autocratic in presuming to be both leader of the Christian community and President of Lebanon. They proposed the creation of a special council that would serve as a parliament for Lebanon's 1 million or more Christians. $

The Syrians, who are pledged to support Gemayel and his government, have reinforced some of their military positions around the area controlled by the Christian insurgents. They are not eager for a battle, partly because they realize that a Syrian rescue of Gemayel could easily bring about his downfall. For the moment they are content to use pressure rather than force against the rebels in the hope that the threat to Gemayel's rule will recede.