Israelis raid guerrilla target

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 6

Israelis raid guerrilla target

NZPA-AP Tel Aviv Israeli Air Force planes had raided a Palestinian guerrilla position in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley yesterday, the military command announced. The planes had returned safely and the pilots had reported direct hits on their target near the village of Barr Elias, 12km west of the Syrian border, it said. The base, near the BeirutDamascus highway contained a multi-storey building used as a headquarters by the Popular Front for the Liberation of PalestineGeneral Command, said military sources.

The P.F.L.P.-G.C. is • headed by former Syrian Army captain, Ahmed Jebril, and is based in Damascus. The position, 2 km west of Barr Elias, was the target of an Israeli raid on July 29 when reports from Lebanon said Israeli planes had missed their target and caused no damage or casualties. The last strike was on August 2, when Israeli planes bombed the headquarters of the Syrianbacked Syrian Social Nationalist Party in the Bekaa valley town of Shtoura. Earlier, Christian-Muslim clashes with automatic weapons and anti-tank rockets erupted in the Bekaa Valley City of Zahle and new fighting flared in Beirut along the “green line” dividing Muslim and Christian sections. It was the first time since April, 1981, that fighting on any scale had been reported in Zahle, Lebanon’s largest Christian city. In Beirut Lebanese politicians reacted cautiously to a new opposition front of Muslims, Leftists, and independent Christians seeking widespread political reform.

A former President, Suleiman Franjieh, a Christian, said that he backed parts of the manifesto of the “National Unity Front,” launched on Wednesday, but said that he preferred reforms he and the Syrian President, Mr Hafez Assad, had proposed in 1976 as a solution to the civil war. “The situation in Lebanon does not permit big strides but one step at a time,” said Mr Franjieh, who is 75. The Front, led by the Shi'ite Muslim Amal movement and the mainly Druse Progressive Socialist Party, demands an end to the system of allocating State posts on sectarian lines, which has favoured Christians since independence from France in 1943. The 1976 reforms proposed that Parliamentary seats be equally divided between Christians and Muslims.