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The P.F.L.P. also cleared up some puzzling questions. The Japanese had been recruited, a spokesman admitted, because they could enter Israel more easily than Arabs—especially since Israel last year decided to waive visas for visiting Japanese. For their part, the Red Army men were looking for new ways to carry out their goal of global revolution; their organization has lost appeal and prestige in recent years. The Palestinian fight was an attractive alternative. The P.F.L.P. also insisted that the hired killers were not on a kamikaze mission. Palestinians living in Tel Aviv, they said, were supposed to help them escape. How the escape could occur through aroused Israeli police and guards, they did not explain.
In the Knesset, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir placed the blame on Lebanon, which she accused of "openly enabling the centers of the terrorist organizations to reside in their midst." Lebanon—recalling that Israel had attacked Beirut airport in 1968 and destroyed civilian planes in retaliation for a fedayeen assault on an El Al plane—braced itself for Jerusalem's revenge. Its 18,000-man army was alerted, and the airport put under tight guard; antiaircraft guns could be seen swiveling beside the runways.
Israel's charge against Lebanon was only partly fair. True, the P.F.L.P. operates in Beirut. The three Japanese terrorists were wearing Lebanese-made clothes, according to the Israelis, who also assert—despite P.F.L.P. denials—that the three had been trained in Lebanon. Yet Lebanon, a half-Christian, half-Moslem country and temporary home for 300,000 Palestinians, could contain the terrorists only at grave risk to its own fragile unity. Every time the government has tried to do so, a political crisis has resulted. Lebanon is the handiest target for Israel, but the P.F.L.P. also has headquarters in Paris, Rome and Pankow, East Germany. Still, Lebanon's jitters could be premature. At week's end Israeli embassies were issuing statements assigning equal blame to Egypt, which "for years has given its blessings to the indiscriminate killings by the terrorist groups as an instrument of its own policies against Israel."