Israel Militant

The uneasy border peace between Israeli and Arab was broken last week by the sharpest armed clash since Israel's 1956 invasion of the Sinai peninsula. It began with a sporadic, five-day-long exchange of gunfire over the efforts of Arab farmers to plow up disputed land in the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria, south of the Sea of Galilee. It became something else when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion got word at a Cabinet meeting that an Israeli border policeman had been killed in the exchanges. He ordered a reprisal attack of the kind that Israel used to launch across Arab borders before the Sinai invasion three years ago.

Nine hours after the policeman's death, the Israelis struck in force. Under cover of darkness, infantry troops of the Golani Brigade pushed off in files toward their objective: the Arab village of Tawafik. It lies in the demilitarized zone just below the Syrian-held hills, in an area that has been the subject of 755 complaints from the Israelis since 1951. When a Syrian searchlight stabbed at the advancing armor, the Israeli unit commander coolly radioed his artillery base: "I would be greatly indebted to you if you would kindly switch off that projector which is disturbing my work." Israeli shells zeroed in, and the light snapped off. As Syrian artillery opened up, the Israeli infantry bumped into a machine-gun nest in the presumably unarmed village, wiped it out with a grenade attack. After that the Israelis placed two tons of dynamite under the village walls and withdrew. One hour later, most of Tawafik's 40-odd houses blew up with a roar that shook the Jordan River valley.

Later that day, Syrian forces moved back into the ruins of Tawafik, after U.N. officials had won the usual assurances of a cease-fire amid the usual counter-exchanges of boasts and threats. Cairo claimed to have killed 38 Israelis (Israel said it lost only three), and two Syrian MIG pilots were decorated after an aerial dogfight in which, said the Israelis, the MIGs fired wildly out of range.

The intensity of Israel's reprisal reflects a revival of the old Israeli feelings of frustration. The Arab economic boycott has been cutting into their trade, President Nasser has been getting more aid from both East and West, and the U.N. has failed to secure passage for Israeli goods through the Suez Canal, even when carried in ships of other countries. After several years of quiet diplomacy, a familiar old note was struck in Ben-Gurion's militant warning last week to his people: "During the next decade we are liable to face a grave and perhaps decisive military test."

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