Cabinet Meets in Emergency Session to Review Strains in U.s.-israel Relations: Officials Stunned by

The Cabinet convened in closed special session this morning, its second such meeting in two days, to review the serious new strains in U.S.-Israeli relations, the continued fighting along the Israeli-Lebanese border and the renewed efforts by U.S. special envoy Philip Habib to establish what Israel calls a “peaceful arrangement” with Lebanon.

The Israel Air Force went into action again this afternoon, blasting Palestinian artillery positions in the Hasbaya area of southern Lebanon. Terrorist rocket and artillery attacks on towns in northern Israel tapered off last night. Gen. Avigdor Ben-Gal, commander of the northern front, said the relative quiet was the result of the severe damage sustained by the terrorists from Israeli air bombardment rather than diplomatic moves to obtain a cease-fire.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials were stunned and angered by the intensity of the criticism leveled against Israel and Premier Menachem Begin in particular, by top Administration officials in Washington, for Israel’s air raids over Lebanon.

They were especially incensed by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s charge yesterday that Israel had set back “the whole course of security and peace” in the Middle East by its attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor last month and its bombing of Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Beirut last Friday which resulted in heavy civilian casualties.

They contrasted Weinberger’s statement with President Reagan’s “carefully balanced” remarks yesterday. Reagan, at a chance meeting with several reporters, observed that Israeli civilians have also been under attack from “the other side.”

WEINBERGER DRAWS ISRAELI WRATH

Israeli officials were especially vehement in denying Weinberger’s charge, on a television talk show yesterday morning, that Habib had twice been on the verge of a peaceful resolution of the Syrian missile dispute, only to have his efforts undermined by Israeli military actions, first against Iraq and later over Lebanon.

The Israelis said today that as far as they know, Habib made hardly any progress in his mission, begun in May, to persuade the Syrians to remove their SAM-6

anti-aircraft missiles from Lebanon. He certainly never reported to Israel that he was on the brink of reaching a settlement, officials said. On the contrary, he always returned to Israel bearing bad tidings. It was Israel’s repeated self-restraint that prevented a military escalation of the crisis, the officials claimed.

ALSO ANGERED BY CLARK’S REMARKS

Anger was also expressed here over the remarks of Deputy Secretary of State William Clark who told reporters in Washington that the Reagan Administration felt “disappointment and some embarassment” when Begin ordered the air raid on Beirut shortly after State Department Counsellor Robert McFarlane had conferred with the Prime Minister in Jerusalem about Israel’s use of American-supplied weapons in offensive actions.

The gravity of the rift with Washington seemed to down slowly on Israeli political circles. Until this morning, in fact, there seemed to be little appreciation in Jerusalem of how vehemently critical U.S. opinion was of Israeli actions.

One factor which brought home to Israeli politicians and public how serious the situation has become was the television accounts of the havoc wrought by the Israeli bombing of Beirut last Friday. Those accounts in U.S. network television films broadcast here last night and seen previously all over the U.S., were the first inkling Israeli viewers had of the nature of the Beirut raid.

Another factor that left the Israelis shaken was the statement by Ambassador Ephraim Evron in Washington yesterday, after a meeting with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, that this was “one of the toughest times” in U.S.-Israeli relations.

TERMS U.S. COMMENTS UNPRECEDENTED

Amos Eiran, who was a political counsellor at the Israeli Embassy in Washington during much of the 70s and is now active in the opposition Labor Party, told Israeli radio listeners this morning that the comments made by U.S. officials were “unprecedented.”

Other observers compared the atmosphere today with the tense U.S.-Israeli relationship after the Sinai campaign of October, 1956 when the U.S., joined by the Soviet Union, ordered Israel to withdraw its troops from Sinai.

ORDERED TO MINIMIZE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

In an apparent attempt to mitigate hostile opinion, Air Force Commander Gen. David Ivry said the Air Force was under strict orders to keep civilian casualties at an absolute minimum in its strikes against targets in Lebanon. He said Israeli pilots were dropping the smallest bombs possible for the designated targets and the minimum number of bombs.

“The problem is that the PLO deliberately places its military installation civilian surroundings,” Ivry said. “We have not changed our policy of trying not to harm civilians but we have designated new targets which we have not touched before.”

Gen. Ben-Gal, who announced the latest air strikes, acknowledged that it was impossible to completely silence artillery and Katyusha rocket launchers by air attacks since they are highly mobile. “To prevent fire against you completely, you have to be present on the gun site,” he said, implying that in the last resort, Israeli ground forces would have to occupy the Palestinian positions in south Lebanon as they did in 1978.