TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/81/81iraq.1

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                                                                                May 22, 1981

WORLD

Attack -- and Fallout


Israel blasts Iraq's reactor and creates a global shock wave


Quietly, he made intricate arrangements for the meeting. By
Sunday, June 7, his chief military attache, Brigadier General
Efraim Poran, had called all 14 members of the Israeli Cabinet,
asking each if he could come to a special 5 p.m. session with
Prime Minister Menachem Begin at his Jerusalem home on that
day. Each man thought that he was the only one invited and that
a private chat about politics and policy would follow. It was
a privilege to accept, and they did, though a few of the more
orthodox Cabinet members grumbled that the appointed hour was
dangerously close to the beginning, at sundown, of a major
Jewish celebration: Shavuot, the Feast of Pentecost.

As each minister drove up to Begin's stone residence in the
city's Rehavya district, his car was whisked away by a security
man. One by one, the unknowing politicians were ushered into
a ground-floor reception area, only to discover that the place
was filling up with colleagues.

At 5:15, a shirtsleeved Begin emerged from his book-lined
office and broke some staggering news with characteristic lack
of ceremony. "Well," he said, "six of our planes are now on
their way to their target in Iraq. I hope our boys will be able
to complete their mission successfully and return to base."

There was stunned silence. Thinking of the still explosive
Israeli confrontation in Lebanon over Syrian SA-6 missiles, one
minister muttered: "You mean Syria."

Begin did not. He meant the French-built Tammuz 1 nuclear
reactor at El-Tuwaitha, 10 1/2 miles southwest of Baghdad.
Begin straightway launched into his real reason for calling the
meeting: to ponder what Israel should do in the event that the
attack taking place 515 miles away should fail. Half an hour
later, after several options had been considered, a telephone
call interrupted the Cabinet meeting. It was Israeli Defense
Force Chief of Staff, Lieut. General Rafael Eitan. He tersely
informed Begin that the attack had been a total success. For
a further 70 minutes, the Cabinet considered how Israel should
cope with the lesser danger of one of the Israeli warplanes
being shot down or crashing on its return journey. A little
before 7 p.m., another telephone call announced the safe return
of all aircraft. Jubilantly, the gathering celebrated the event,
and the meeting broke up. Begin had only one other chore to
perform. At 7 p.m., he called U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel
Lewis with news of the successful raid. Lewis' laconic reply:
"You don't say."

Begin's Cabinet may have been merely surprised, but the world
was shocked when it learned the news. Using high-powered U.S.
military technology with awesome efficiency, Israel had taken
Iraq totally by surprise and destroyed that country's
technological centerpiece, its nearly completed, $260 million
nuclear-research reactor. The surgical strike, reminiscent of
the pre-emptive air raids against Egypt in the 1967 Six Day
War, was based on an Israeli perception that one of its most
implacable foes would soon be making nuclear bombs. But, in
removing that threat, the Israelis had done more than simply
take international law into their own hands. They had dismayed
their friends, increased their isolation and vastly compounded
the difficulties of procuring a peaceful settlement of the
confrontations in the Middle East that threaten the stability
of that troubled region and of the world.

The raid jolted U.S.-Israeli relations. An upset Reagan
Administration condemned the attack and then suspended "for the
time being" the delivery of four additional F-16s that were
ready to be shipped last week from Forth Worth to Israel. The
U.S. Congress will soon face the question of whether Israel
violated the 1952 agreement under which the U.S. provides
weapons to an ally for "defensive" purposes only. Congress is
likely to find a delicate way to avoid any substantive action.

The Israeli attack unified, however briefly, the normally
divided Arab world, which put aside its own conflicts to urge
the U.S. to restrict Israeli "aggression and expansionism" and
to impose "binding sanctions" on Israel. Western diplomats in
the Middle EAst also feared that the Arabs might feel forced to
launch a retaliatory attack of some kind against the Israelis
to recover their honor after yet another humiliation. Such an
attack would certainly be answered by the Israelis, and the
cycle of violence would quicken.

One Arab with a particular right to feel outraged was Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat, who was "totally astonished" by the news
of the raid. Well he might have been; Sadat had held a highly
publicized summit meeting with Begin in the Sinai only three
days before the raid, and received no hint that trouble might
lie ahead.

Even though the U.S. had no more warning of the attack than
anyone else (a fact that should cause deep concern among U.S.
intelligence experts), the Tammuz raid endangered American
credibility with moderate Arab regimes, which still see a U.S.
hand behind any israeli military adventure. The attack
rendered far more difficult the simultaneous Reagan
Administration bid to support Israel, cultivate Arab friendships
and further the 1978 Camp David peace accord. The assault also
imperiled the Lebanese peacemaking mission of U.S. Envoy Philip
Habib, who returned to the Middle East last week after a 12-day
absence. Habib had seemed close to working out an agreement
among Israelis, Lebanese and Syrians that would cool the missile
crisis in Lebanon. INdeed, the Israeli raid posed the question
of whether the U.S. had any means at all of controlling the
maverick actions of an increasingly independent nation that
depends ultimately for its existence on the U.S. Or failing
that, did the U.S. have any way of dissociating itself from
those actions when they did occur?

The sortie rankled European governments as well. Most ruffled
were the French, who supplied the Iraqis with the reactor, who
lost a technician as the only reported casualty of the raid and
whose newly elected Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand,
had declared his willingness to strengthen ties with Israel.
Said French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson: "I am saddened.
This government has a great deal of sympathy for Israel, but
we don't think such action serves the cause of peace in the
area." In her typically blunt fashion, British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher summed up the view of many others:  "Armed
attack in such circumstances cannot be justified; it represents
a grave breach of international law."

The raid was a stinging set back to the efforts of Secretary of
State Alexander Haig to form a "strategic consensus" that
Soviet expansionism in the Middle East, not Israel, is the
greatest threat to Arab security. Warned Moustafa Khalil,
Egypt's former Prime Minister: "If the Arabs see the U.S.
failing to check Israel, failing to improve Arab self-defense,
failing to solve the Palestinian problem, what are they going
to do?  They will have no alternative but to turn to the Soviet
Union." The Soviet news agency, TASS, called the Israeli raid
an "act of gangsterism" and accused Washington of being a direct
accomplice.

Perhaps most hazardous of all, the Israeli action managed to
blend two of the world's most explosive issues:  the question
of nuclear proliferation in the Third World and the perpetual
cauldron of Middle East politics. After a day of silence
following the raid, Iraq declared that is reaction would be
"bigger and better nuclear reactors." Begin made clear that
Israel was ready to repeat its attack any time. Considering
what might lie ahead, Sigvard Eklund, director-general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which inspects the
nuclear facilities of signatories to the nuclear
nonproliferation treaty, declared: "I do not think we have been
faced with a more serious question than the implications of this
development."

What the Israelis took less than three minutes to destroy had
been developing since the mid-'70s, when Saddam Hussein, Iraq's
dictatorial President, made a nuclear shopping trip to Paris.
The Israeli Defense Ministry soon began to predict that the
Iraqis would be capable of producing atom bombs within four to
six years. In September 1975, a Lebanese newspaper article
quoted Hussein as saying that the nuclear program was "the
first Arab attempt toward nuclear arming, although the official
declared purpose of construction of the reactor is not nuclear
weapons." A similar statement was made in 1977 by Naim Haddad,
a member of Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council. Said
Haddad: "The Arabs must get a bomb." In the face of such
statements, the Israelis were not reassured by the fact that
Iraq had signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, thereby
vowing not to make nuclear weapons and agreeing to let experts
of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspect its atomic
installations.

U.S. officials were also concerned about the Iraqi reactor and
its weapons potential, particularly since at the time Iraq was
one of the most radical and pro-Soviet of the Arab states. In
addition, the U.S. viewed Iraq as a dangerously disruptive
force in the Middle EAst. Iraq had refused to sign an
armistice agreement with Israel after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Thus Baghdad technically remained -- and remains today -- in
a state of war with Israel. Says one U.S. expert:  "Our
worries reflected the quality of the regime as much as specific
[nuclear] programs."

The Israelis frequently asked Washington to pressure France as
well as Italy, another Iraqi nuclear supplier, into
reconsidering their deals with Baghdad. The U.S. tried but did
not succeed. Says a U.S. official: "We thought there were clear
grounds to exercise self-restraint. France and Italy
disagreed." The two suppliers maintained that Iraq had given
sufficient guarantees of its peaceful intentions.

But even then the Israelis were not relying solely on
diplomatic maneuvering to avert a nuclear problem. Israeli
agents were gathering information on the Iraqi project so
successfully that one Israeli official boasts they were "almost
ahead of the Iraqis themselves." Among other things, the
Israelis managed to obtain engineering blueprints for the entire
reactor. On April 5, 1979, three days before the reactor's core
was to be shipped to the Iraqis, a group of unidentified men
managed to penetrate the high-security French nuclear production
facility at La Seyne-sur- Mer, near Toulon. They attached
explosive charges to the reactor core and fled. The resulting
damage delayed the reactor's delivery for two years. The French
thought that the attack was the work of MOSSAD, the Israeli
intelligence organization. French sources also believe that
Israelis warned French scientists and technicians to stay out
of Iraq. On June 14, 1980, the Egyptian-born head of Iraq's
nuclear program, Yahia El- Meshad, was bludgeoned to death at
the Hotel Meridien in Paris. No assailant was arrested, but
again,t he French suspected MOSSAD.

In the winter of 1979, the Israelis began to assemble a "combat
file" on the proposed reactor site at El-Tuwaitha. Using the
engineering blueprints, Israeli experts pinpointed the exact
location of the reactor core within its sheltering cupola.
They also measured the size and strength of the cupola and the
precise location of a computer installation that would
eventually control the reactor's operation. In June 1980, the
armed forces asked Prime Minister Begin to authorize a
clandestine, infrared survey of the site at El-Tuwaitha. Before
the mission, Begin was given an aerial photograph of the area.
He did not hesitate. With a flourish, he signed the bottom of
the photograph: "With the salutations of Zion. Menachem
Begin."

In September 1980, the Israelis received additional
intelligence. Taking advantage of the confusion at the start of
the Iraq-Iran war, unmarked Israeli planes flew over the reactor
site, gathering valuable data. It was during this period that
two Iranian warplanes made a bumbling attack on the reactor,
causing little damage. Iraq charged that Israel was involved.
Israel's acting Defense Minister, Mordechai Zipori, labeled the
accusation as" anti-Semitic blood libel."

But discussions about attacking the reactor were indeed being
conducted at that time by Begin's Ministerial Defense Committee
on Security Affairs. The meetings were in part spurred by an
intelligence report that the Iraqis might be able to start
manufacturing two or three small nuclear weapons within a year.
Despite that, not all of the committee's Cabinet-level members
were in favor of a pre-emptive raid. Among those opposed were
Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin, INterior Minister Yosef
Burg and Education Minister Zevulun Hammer, who felt that the
attack would damage relations with the U.S. But Begin prevailed
with the support of such Israeli hawks as Agriculture Minister
Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. In October
1980, the raid plan was given the go-ahead. Thereafter, Begin
took complete personal control of the operation.

In all, five different dates were set for the attack. The
first, in November 1980, was canceled because of the Iran-Iraq
fighting: the French had evacuated most of their 150 technicians
from El- Tuwaitha, and the Israelis assumed that work on the
reactor would be halted indefinitely. But after the war bogged
down, the French returned. Another attack date was set for
February, but it was canceled after Yadin reiterated his strong
objections. A third date, in March, was scrubbed for
undisclosed reasons. In May, the ministerial committee
authorized Begin to choose his own date for the raid, but strong
objections about timing were raised by Opposition Leader Shimon
Peres, who had been briefed on the scheme, and the strike was
once more postponed.

After so many false starts, the cloak of secrecy sheltering
the operation was beginning to fray. On May 22, word of the
raid was leaked to Moshe Shahal, a Knesset opposition party
leader. His source: former Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, who
viewed the proposed strike as "adventurist." At roughly the
same time, Begin's office received two additional intelligence
reports that the Iraqis were prepared to activate the reactor
(make it "hot," in technical jargon) as early as the first week
in July. On June 5, Begin gave orders to launch the attack two
days later. His day of decision was the 14th anniversary of the
Six-Day War.

The Israeli Air Force had not been idle during these months of
deliberation. A full-scale model of the entire reactor area
had been built in a restricted part of the Sinai Desert, and a
carefully selected group of the most talented Israeli pilots
practiced their bombing runs until, in the words of one high-
ranking officer, they knew "every tree and house" along their
eventual attack route. Despite the scope of the rehearsals,
the U.S. says that it did not detect the operation, either by
satellite or other means. Originally, the plan called for the
bombing to be carried out by F-4 Phantom jets. However, the
first batches of 75 light, agile F-16 fighters, ordered from
the U.S. in August 1977, had arrived in Israel. The Israeli
Air Force had the innovative notion of making a bomber out of
a fighter designed for Jet-age dog-fights. Tests showed that
the F-16s, equipped with special bomb racks and additional fuel
tanks, could just make the 1,300-mile round trip to Baghdad
without aerial refueling if they were not attacked and made
only one bombing run on the target.

At 4:40 p.m. local time on June 7, the first of the F-015
support fighters that had been stored in underground bunkers
lifted off from Israel' Etzion airbase in the eastern Sinai.
The F-15s avoided using their afterburners to conserve fuel.
Soon the F-16s joined them, and the jets headed east, flying
low, the escorting F-15s above and on either side of the
bombers.

The formation headed across the Gulf of Aqaba toward Jordan,
following a top-secret route designed to take advantage of
blind spots in Arab radar coverage along the borders of Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. The aircraft stayed close to the
terrain, but varied their altitudes in a weaving pattern that
had been tested by the Israeli Air Force as a means to further
reduce radar visibility.

Even so, as they crossed the eastern bank of the Gulf of Aqaba
and began to climb over the nearby rocky red mountains, the
higher-flying F-15s were picked up by Jordanian radar based at
Ma'an. The station radioed the planed in Arabic, using
international emergency frequencies. The Israelis were
prepared. The replied in perfect Arabic, apparently convincing
the ground spotters that the sighting was either Jordanian or
Saudi aircraft. As the flight went on, the Israelis were aided
by the fact that the surrounding Arab countries have failed to
establish an integrated air defense command. Thus the
Jordanians did not pass on the sighting either to Saudi Arabia
or to Iraq.

The flight plan, exact details of which remain secret, skirted
the southern tip of Jordan, then proceeded northeast across the
top of Saudi Arabia. From time to time the jets would flash
over a reference point, and the group leader would radio a code
message ("sand dune yellow") to the war room in Tel Aviv's
Defense Ministry building. The warplanes remained well beyond
the range of U.S.-operated AWACS radar aircraft currently
assigned to the Saudi and patrolling the country's Persian Gulf
perimeter. The job of one AWACS that was airborne at the time
was solely to survey the gulf area. Its effective radar range
of 230 miles could not reach the Israeli attacking aircraft,
exactly as the Israelis had anticipated.

At 5:10 p.m. Israeli time, the lead fighter penetrated Iraqi
airspace. The aircraft continued to change course continuously
as they moved in on target, howling through the Sunday twilight
at 400 m.p.h. for months the Israelis had studied the route up
the Euphrates Valley, convinced that they could negotiate it
without being detected by radar or ground observers. Fifty
minutes after takeoff, the warplanes sighted their target, the
distinctive cupola housing the nuclear reactor. The aircraft
wheeled and climbed toward the setting sun -- the classic
maneuver prior to attack.

While the six twin-engine F-15s provided a protective umbrella,
the specially armed F-16s screamed into their bombing runs.
The lead plane fired a pair of video-guided precision "smart"
bombs, to punch through predetermined spots in the domed
concrete. The following aircraft launched their own explosives
through the jagged holes:  a dozen conventional bombs weighing
2,200 lbs. each. After a series of shattering roars, the roof
collapsed, burying the reactor's radioactive core under hundreds
of tons of concrete and steel debris. Fire raged through the
site. Two of the attackers, carrying cameras rather than heavy
explosives, made a pass to film the scene. Then they streaked
for home, ignoring ineffectual puffs of antiaircraft fire and
leaving behind the one civilian casualty, one bomb that failed
to explode and the mangled nuclear ambitions of Iraq.

In Baghdad, a line of barrage balloons designed to foil low-
flying aircraft floated placidly above the city. With the sun
hovering low on the horizon, the jets had appeared suddenly out
of nowhere. When the bombs dropped, there were muffled
explosions. As guests arrived at the Italian embassy to
celebrate the host country's national day, some speculated that
the detonations might have had something to do with the nuclear
establishment. In downtown Baghdad, in the suqs (marketplaces)
and along the riverbanks, no one seemed to notice. No
antiaircraft fire was heard until an hour later. The city went
to bed largely unaware that Israel had carried out its
brilliant attack.

Israel, too, was eerily silent about the raid. Begin had
instructed his new press secretary, Uri Porath, to prepare an
official announcement at short notice, not to be given before
news reports of the attack come over the wires. Porath waited
through all of Sunday evening for a telephone call from Begin
authorizing release of the story. Not until the following day,
after Amman Radio sketchily outlined the raid as a joint
Israeli-Iranian venture, did Israel give its own version of
events.

When Porath telephoned in the government's statement to a
holiday skeleton staff at Israel Radio, journalists refused for
an hour to believe that the startling report was genuine. Only
when Radio Staffer Emmanuel Halperin, Begin's nephew, confirmed
the facts with the Prime Minister himself, did the station put
the reports on the air.

The Israeli reaction was, naturally enough, pride in their
military accomplishment. But there was not the same
spontaneous celebration in the streets, for example, that
greeted the July 1976 pinpoint Israeli commando raid on Uganda's
Entebbe airfield. One reason was that as international criticism
started to pour in, many Israelis sensed an impending isolation.
Said Eli Ben-Hamo, 26, a Jerusalem cafe owner: "It was
necessary. It had to be done. But I'm worried. We're doing
it to ourselves. For years the world didn't much like us.
Nowadays we're giving them reason not to."  Others had fewer
doubts. Said one Israeli official: "I think something positive
has happened to world welfare in the same way that we made a
major impact on the hijacking situation at Entebbe. Today
nobody gives in to hijacking blackmail. When the criticism has
subsided, people will realize that you can't allow every small
country, particularly like Iraq, to own the atom bomb." Said
Miriam Hefetz, 29, a government secretary: "We're doing the
dirty work for the rest of the world. We have nothing to be
ashamed of. Somebody had to stop Iraq."

Outside Israel -- and even inside the country -- there was an
immediate suspicion that the raid and its timing had more to do
with Israel's June 30 national election than with impending
nuclear threats from the Iraqis. The six-month campaign
between Begin's ruling Likud coalition and the opposition Labor
Party of Shimon Peres was one of the most strained in the
country's history. Owing in part to Begin's tough stance on the
Syrian missiles in Lebanon, his party had moved ahead, 38% to
33%, in a poll conducted before the raid. The Likud had trailed
in January, 14% to 44%. In London, diplomats guessed that the
Iraqi raid was designed to boost Begin's election chances and
to deliver a message to the Syrians about their SA-6 missiles,
which the Israelis have threatened to destroy. Seethed one
British Cabinet member: "It is a measure of Begin's fanaticism,
personal ambition and total disregard of the truth that he was
prepared to risk the peace of the Middle East, and even world
peace, to achieve his ends." Skepticism increased when IAEA
Director-General Eklund agreed with the Iraqis' claim that they
had not been trying to make a weapon with their reactor. Even
if the Iraqis had tried, said Eklund, they would need ten years
to build one. U.S. estimates of the time that the Iraqis would
need vary from two to ten years. Much would depend on how
blatantly the Iraqis were willing to violate their peaceful
commitment under the non proliferation treaty, and the vigilance
of the inspectors and French technicians. So far, the Iraqis
have shown no intention of violating the treaty at all.

The Israeli Prime Minister only partly clarified matters on
Tuesday at one of the most extraordinary press conferences of
his life. His defense of the mission was vintage Begin.
"Despite all the condemnations heaped on Israel for the last 24
hours," he began, "Israel has nothing to apologize for. Ours
is a just cause, we stand by it, and it will triumph."

Begin built his rationale for the attack on Iraqi documents.
Following the September raid by Iran on the Tammuz reactor,
Iraq issued a statement that Begin read from a Baghdad
newspaper. Quoted Begin: "The Iranian people should not fear
the Iraqi nuclear reactor, which is not intended to be used
against Iran, but against the Zionist enemy." He added that the
imminent start-up of the reactor would enable Iraq to begin
manufacturing, "In the near future, between three and five
Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs of 20 kilotons."

Begin then gave a humanitarian twist to the raid. He declared
that the reactor was going to start to process highly
radioactive materials either the first week of July or the first
week of September. Once the reactor was "hot," explained Begin,
any successful bombing attack would unleash "a horrifying wave
of radioactivity." In a ghoulish reference, he reminded
listeners that Nazi mass murderers had used poisonous Zyklon B
gas on their Jewish victims, and radioactivity "is also a
poison." Said Begin: "In Baghdad, hundreds of thousands of
innocent citizens would have been hurt. I for one would never
have made a proposal under such circumstances to send our Air
Force and bomb the reactor."

Thus, in Begin's view, Israel faced "a terrible dilemma:
Should we now be passive and then lose the last opportunity
without those horrible casualties to destroy the hotbed of
death, or should we act now?" His voice dramatically pitched,
Begin answered his own question. "Then this country and this
people would have been lost, after the Holocaust. Another
Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish
people. Never again, never again. Tell your friends, tell
anybody you meet, we shall defend our people with all the means
at our disposal." The bombing raid, drummed Begin, was a
"morally supreme act of national self-defense. No fault
whatsoever on our side."

No mention was made then of the fact that the CIA had concluded
in 1974 that Israel had nuclear weapons of its own or that
Israel, unlike Iraq, has not signed the nuclear
nonproliferation treaty and will not allow inspectors to visit
its reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert.

At one point, Begin was asked what would happen if the world
condemned Israel. "Well, my friends," he said, "what can we
do? We are an ancient people, we are used to it. We survived,
we shall survive." And to the question of how Israel would
react if Libya got the bomb, Begin replied, amid laughter, "Let
us deal first with that meshuggener [Yiddish for lunatic],
Saddam Hussein. With the other meshuggener [Libyan Strongman
Muammar Gaddafi], another time."

Stripped of its rhetoric, Begin's defense of the raid was based
on an implicit strategic calculation: that tiny Israel, unlike
the U.S., could not survive a first nuclear assault and deliver
a counterattack. All the country's airbases, for example, could
be taken out in a single strike. Nor can Israel afford the
enormous expense of keeping warplanes in the air at all times
as a deterrent to aggressors. Thus the country feels a
particular vulnerability to nuclear blackmail. The Begin view:
no Israeli government, or any other government in a similar
position, could ever take the risk that a foe armed with atomic
bombs would not use them.

By invoking an argument that jurists sometimes call
"anticipatory self-defense," Begin was straying into an
exceedingly murky area of international law. The United Nations
Charter, which prohibits international aggression, also
recognizes a state's legitimate right of self-defense in the
face of "armed attack." The U.N. has broadened that definition
on occasion to include pre-emptive attacks when there was
overwhelming evidence that an aggressor planned a hostile act
in the immediate future. In 1967, for example, the U.N.
Security Council did not condemn Israel for its Six-Day War
attack on Egypt, since there was evidence of Egypt's aggressive
intentions. Says Christian Tomuschat, professor of
international law at the University of Bon: "It always comes
down to the same question: Was there a real and imminent danger
that would have justified a preventive strike?"

Almost no expert feels that Iraq's alleged bombmaking
capability -- in one year, as Israeli intelligence would have
it, or ten, as nuclear regulators claim -- falls within the
internationally recognized definition of "imminent danger."
Legal scholars sympathetic to Israel suggest that the country
should have given a public warning or ultimatum to Iraq, or
taken other overt diplomatic action before launching the strike.
Says Alfred Rubin, international law professor at Tufts
University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy: "It makes a
difference politically. I would have thought they would have
been better off lining up allies and so forth."

Begin's justifications for the raid might have been more
convincing if a persistent odor of electioneering had not clung
to some of his other actions. The day after Begin's press
conference, an ugly spate of name-calling erupted between the
Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Peres. Reason: Begin had
given the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee a copy of Peres' "personal and top-secret" letter that
resulted in one of the raid's postponements. Peres had learned
that the attack was scheduled for May 10, the date of the
deciding round of French presidential elections. As a "supreme
civic duty," he warned Begin not to go ahead. Peres felt,
correctly, as it happened, that Socialist Francois Mitterrand
would win, and that there were signs that the new French
President would do everything possible to "make the Iraqi
reactor impotent, militarily."  Peres also warned Begin that the
raid would leave Israel as isolated "as a lonely shrub in the
desert."

Peres' letter was so vaguely worded -- for "security reasons,"
he claimed, should it fall into unfriendly hands -- that Begin
could send it to the Knesset with the charge that his rival
opposed the reactor raid "in principle."  Peres called Begin's
ploy "arrogance," while others termed it "pure politics."
Begin's government, said Peres, was one "that bends national
affairs to suit party aims."

Begin himself obviously felt he had to go further in his
accusations against Iraq. On Wednesday, after his government
complained that the temporary U.S. suspension of the latest
F-16 shipment was "unjust," Begin made a new claim about the
Tammuz reactor. He declared that some 132 ft. beneath the
demolished reactor there was a secret installation, undiscovered
by international inspectors, where the Iraqis intended to
produce their bombs. This too, he said, had been destroyed.
The next day, Begin altered the depth of the hiding place to
13.2 ft.

Both the IAEA and the French designers of the reactor flatly
denied the existence of any such secret room at any level. The
construction had been under constant French supervision. In
all likelihood, Begin was referring to the reactor's "guide
chamber," a sealed area in such installations where physicists
conduct experiments with the neutrons produced by the reactor.

If Begin's knowledge of reactors proved to be foggy, so did his
understanding of the Reagan Administration's response to the
raid. Begin was outraged by a report, carried in the press,
that U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had suggested
cutting off all forms of U.S. military aid to Israel as
punishment. "What chutzpah," Begin fumed to his aides. On the
hustings, Begin went further. "By what morality were you
acting, Mr. American Secretary of Defense?" he asked
rhetorically before a campaign crowd. "Haven't you heard of 1.5
million little Jewish children who were thrown into the gas
chambers?"  Weinberger, who in fact had not urged stopping aid
to Israel, issued a calm statement saying that he was "sorry
that Mr. Begin is proceeding on an erroneous assumption."

Despite Begin's outlandish utterances, there was a perceptible
relaxation by weeks' end of the fear that the Tammuz raid might
set off some new and shocking chain reaction in the Middle
East. Egyptian President Sadat had declared that he would
remain faithful to the Camp David peace process despite
Israel's "Intolerable" act. Said Sadat: "We started [the peace
movement] and we're not ready at all to give it up."  The
foreign ministers of the 21-member Arab League issued a tough
but predictable resolution condemning the attack, calling for
a halt to all U.S. assistance to Israel and demanding U.N.
sanctions in retaliation for the assault. Arab League
Secretary-General Chedli Klibi declared the session to be "one
of the shortest and most successful Arab meetings to date."

This week the Arabs will ask the Security Council to condemn
Israel. In addition to calling for sanctions, which almost
certainly will be vetoed by Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador
to the U.N., Iraqi Foreign Minister Saadoun Hammadi has
demanded that the council order Israel to open its own atomic
facilities for inspection and subject them to eh safeguard
system of the IAEA. Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Blum, on
the other hand, has proposed making the Middle East a
nuclear-free zone -- a ploy that would require Arab states to
recognize Israel as an equal partner.

Meanwhile, Iraqi reaction to the raid has continued to be
remarkably restrained. The country's basic strategy so far
seems to be to let Israel condemn itself with its own words.
Iraq has already earned a wide measure of world sympathy. A
violent, desperate act cannot yet be ruled out, but Iraq does
not seem interested in wasting valuable support.

In its timing, at least, Israel may have been right about the
raid. So thinks a senior Western diplomat in Beirut, who feels
that the Israelis suspect, correctly, that as the Reagan
Administration clarifies its Middle East policy, "it will
almost certainly move more in favor of the Arabs. So, if a
strike against Iraq were necessary, there would never be a
better time." The same diplomat doubts that Israel will soon
strike the Syrian missiles in Lebanon. Says he: "Any attempt
to remove the missiles will involve Israeli casualties, and the
last thing the Israeli Prime Minister needs as the country moves
toward a general election is Israeli dead and wounded."

In the aftermath of the raid, Americans as well as Israeli
officials have suggested that not all Arabs were outraged, or
even unhappy, about the demolition of Iraq's atomic reactor,
despite the Arabs' apparently solid front. Prior to the raid,
both Syria and Saudi Arabia were intensely suspicious of the
Saddam Hussein regime. If either country -- not to mention the
warring Iranians -- took Hussein's atomic ambitions as
seriously as the Israelis did, they would be relieved by the
attack. So too the Egyptians. Insists an Israeli Foreign
Ministry official: "We have discreet information that the Saudis
are happy, and some Egyptian officials have expressed quiet
satisfaction."

In the corridors of French power, there was also a sense of
relief that the Iraqi reactor was gone, although diplomats were
sharply opposed to the Israeli tactics. Foreign Minister
Cheysson had already declared that "we Socialists would never
have signed this [nuclear] contract. At least not without a
clearer idea of Iraqi intentions. And not without clearer
guarantees that it could be sued only for peaceful purposes."
Paris would likely demand much tougher restrictions for the
reactor is asked to rebuild it.

But a number of deeply disturbing issues remain. The first is
the increasingly truculent unpredictability of Israel, at least
under Menachem Begin. The Reagan Administration -- and
Congress -- needs to pursue the unpleasant implications of the
fact that no hold on Israeli behavior seems to be strong enough.
The same examination is needed within Israel, which runs the
risk of ever increasing isolation if even relatively new
friends, like Egypt's Sadat, must brace for a shocking surprise
just three days after a public show of Israeli esteem.

It is equally obvious that nothing short of a comprehensive
Middle East agreement, including a just settlement for the
issue of Palestinian self-determination, will bring true peace
to the region. After the Tammuz raid, no Arab country can
accept Secretary of State Haig's thesis that Soviet adventurism
is a greater threat to the area. No less a figure than Saudi
Arabia's King Khalid made the point last week during a visit to
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Without movement
toward that regional goal, even the most conservative Arab
states may give up any hope of gaining satisfaction from the
West, and instead seek to put new pressure on Israel.

Most complicated of all is the issue of nuclear proliferation
and the argument invoked against a nuclear installation that it
perceives to be a threat is justified. That course is
foolhardy. As Columnist Carl Rowan wrote in the Washington Star:
"If Israel's nuclear nonproliferation strike is right and
proper, then would it not be equally moral for an aggressor to
attack suspected nuclear weapons in Israel?"

At a mass meeting in Tripoli, Libya's strongman, Muammar
Gaddafi, took precisely that stance. With Palestine Liberation
Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat present, Gaddafi declared
that "Israel made it legitimate for us to destroy the Israel
reactor."

Alas, there are too many other rival states around the world
where hatred and radioactive isotopes mix -- India and
Pakistan, for example -- for the principle of pre-emptive
strikes to be condoned.

Since it won its war for existence in 1948, Israel has scored
a number of brilliant military successes, and it clearly added
to that number last week. But while feats of arms have brought
survival, they have not brought peace. As the dust settled in
the Iraqi desert and the fires guttered out in the smashed
nuclear reactor in Tammuz, Israel was not about to be abandoned
by its friends, especially the U.S. Yet there was a growing
international feeling that the embattled nation must try harder
to make an accommodation with its Arab neighbors if it is ever
to enjoy the true security that it has pursued with such zeal
for so long.