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Not only is Begin less likely than ever to make concessions toward a Middle East peace, but he has added a prickly new problem to the list of matters to be discussed. The Administration had been having a tough enough time with the Begin government when the issue was Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. "Now," sighed one Western diplomat, "we can add Lebanon to the list."
The Palestine Liberation Organization, for its part, has elbowed its way back into the negotiations picture. Badly mauled by the Israelis last week in its southern Lebanese sanctuary and likely to be squeezed farther to the north of the Litani River by the Syrian peace-keeping forces, the P.L.O. is almost certain to continue its recent return to terrorism. Last week in Beirut, P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat and his executive committee declared that after 3% years of relative moderation the organization has gone back to a policy of militancy—of guerrilla attacks, kidnapings and executions.
If the Palestinian terrorism and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon did not wreck the Sadat peace initiative entirely, they may have diverted it toward the very thing the Palestinians most fear: a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. Sadat is more isolated from his Arab brothers than ever, and probably angrier too; he was enraged almost beyond reason by the Palestinian murder of his friend Editor Youssef Sebai in Cyprus last month, and he fully recognized the effect of recent P.L.O. terrorism on his peace initiative.
In earlier times of trouble, Egypt has seen itself as the protector of the Arabs against Israel; in fact, it became involved in the 1967 war partly because of a real or imagined threat by Israel against Syria. All that is changed now. Last week, when Israel invaded another Arab state, Lebanon, there was no talk of mobilizing the Egyptian armed forces, and the Egyptian President at first criticized the Israeli action with notable restraint. It all bore out what influential Egyptians have been saying for weeks: "No more Egyptian blood will be shed for Palestinians."
There had never been any doubt that Israel would respond hard to the latest Palestinian terrorism. Premier Begin had vowed as much when he gravely told the Knesset early last week: "We shall do what has to be done. Gone forever are the days when Jewish blood could be shed with impunity. The shedders of innocent blood shall not go unpunished."
Almost unanimously, Israelis seemed to agree. Despite some urgings for restraint from the U.S. and from Sadat, the Israelis were in no mood to turn the other cheek. Leaders of all Israeli political parties agreed to a Knesset statement declaring that terrorist organizations must be attacked and "exterminated." The occasion called forth a volley of extremist oratory; a small nationalist sect headed by Rabbi Meir Kahane, for instance, openly demanded the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel, including the 574,000 who are Israeli citizens.