Anger boiled in Israel’s capital today as news poured in on the mining of a schoolbus filled with youngsters in the Negev yesterday. The death toll of two may well have been greater and nine injured children are lying in a hospital. It was the kind of incident, observers noted, that rouses even the most cool-headed to call for action. What form that action might take was a matter of speculation here. Some said nothing short of total war would convince the Jordanian Government to check the terrorists and saboteurs using their territory as a base for incursions against Israel. They drew an analogy between the bus mining and other recent acts of terror against civilians with the situation in 1956 when Egyptian fedaheen roamed Israeli roads at night attacking traffic and bombing homes. That situation, it was recalled, was ended by the Sinai campaign.
Attention was focussed on warnings issued only yesterday on the highest levels of Government and by the Israeli representative at the United Nations which held Jordan fully responsible for the stepped up campaign of terror in violation of last June’s cease fire agreements. Prime Minister Eshkol voiced that warning in the Knesset. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Army Chief of Staff Chaim Bar Lev declared at a press conference that what exists now on the Israel-Jordan demarcation line is not a cease fire and Israel will not accept it as such. The warnings by the Prime Minister and by the military chiefs were sounded before the bus mining.
(The Jordanian Government complained tonight to the United Nations Security Council that “Israeli authorities are contemplating a massed armed attack” against the Jordan-held east bank. It said “the gravity of the situation is obvious” and asserted that if the attack were not averted, it “will lead to renewed armed conflict of wider intensity.”
(The Jordanian radio meanwhile broadcast a report from the semi-official Amman newspaper Al Destour justifying the terror raids against Israel. The paper, which is considered to echo the Government’s viewpoint, said that even if it were in Jordan’s power to halt saboteurs from crossing into Israel, “Jordan has no right to prevent Arab patriots from fighting against Israel by the means they think best.” The paper called on other Arab states to rally in support of Jordan which has become “the forefront of the struggle against Israel.”
(Reports that Jordanian villagers are fleeing from the border region reached Jerusalem today from the West Bank. The areas being deserted, the reports said, were mainly in northern sections of the Jordan Valley from where most infiltrators cross into Israel-occupied territories. Observers here attributed the exodus to fear of Israeli retaliation against Arab marauders in the wake of the school bus mining in the Negev yesterday when two were killed and 28 children were injured.)
Some observers wondered whether a system of barbed wire and electronic barriers could really be effective against infiltrators as long as the Jordan Government gives them shelter and covering fire. They pointed out that small border skirmishes can escalate into wars, especially where the safety of civilians is involved.
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