Israel Soldier Slain in New Guerrilla Raid : Palestinians Cross Border Out of Jordan, Attack Patrol in Negev

JERUSALEM â€”  In the latest in a steady series of high-stakes Palestinian raids, an Israeli soldier was shot dead by guerrillas who crossed the border from neighboring Jordan, Israeli military officials said Saturday.

A Bedouin scout accompanying the Israelis was wounded in the arm.

The frontier attack and firefight took place late Friday night near Hazeva in the Negev Desert, south of the Dead Sea. The news was kept under wraps by Israeli censors while a search went on for the infiltrators.

“One soldier, Sgt. Maj. Oren Lior, was killed yesterday, and another soldier was wounded when an Israeli army patrol was attacked by two terrorists,� a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces said Saturday.

The raid is likely to become new fuel for Israel in its campaign to get Washington to stop talking to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which it officially blames for such attacks.

Israel government radio reported that the two attackers hid in bushes until an Israeli patrol came by on a routine patrol along the frontier fence. The guerrillas opened fire with Soviet-designed AK-47 rifles and fled into Jordan as the Israelis shot back.

Helicopters from Israel flew overhead and dropped flares to light the rugged landscape. Across the border, Jordanian troops also took up the search; on Saturday afternoon, the official Jordanian news agency said that government troops had caught an unspecified number of “infiltrators� who had penetrated Israel from Jordan.

Reports from Syria said that a renegade Palestinian group opposed to Yasser Arafat’s leadership of the PLO took responsibility for the raid.

During the past several weeks, Palestinian guerrillas have stepped up efforts to cross into Israel, especially from Lebanon. Since Jan. 1, the Israeli army and its allied Arab militia inside Lebanon have killed about 30 would-be raiders before they reached the border.

Two attempted raids from Lebanon last week were aborted by Israeli troops who shot and killed five guerrillas. In addition, two armed teen-age raiders crossed the usually quiet frontier with Egypt into the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip but were captured by Israeli troops. The two were wounded when a grenade one had thrown rolled back toward them.

First Israeli Casualty

Until Friday, no Israeli had been killed in any of the attempted sallies.

Most of the cross-border forays have been initiated by groups opposed to the moderate tone now favored by Arafat, Israeli security sources say. Aides to Arafat abroad claim that such attacks are meant to upset Arafat’s drive to maintain his newly won contact with Washington and his bid to open talks with Israel.

The group that claimed responsibility for the raid from Jordan, the Abu Moussa Brigade, is led by Said Moussa, a Palestinian extremist who broke with Arafat in 1983. Moussa’s group is considered to be under Syrian control, raising the possibility that Saturday’s raid expressed Syrian objections to Arafat’s peace moves.

Syria has long headed a list of Arab nations opposed to easing of tensions with Israel.

Such raids have become the focus of a debate between Israel and the United States over whether Washington should maintain contact with the PLO. The United States opened talks with the PLO last December after Arafat publicly renounced terrorism and explicitly accepted Israel’s right to exist.

Israel, which opposes the talks with its longtime enemy, argues that cross-border raids show that the PLO has not abandoned terrorism, as promised, even if it is dissident factions that carry them out.

One of the raiders from Egypt said in an Israeli television interview that the PLO leader knew of the assault and that the pair was recruited by Fatah, the main PLO faction directly headed by Arafat.

Commenting on the recent string of raids, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, “If there is something in common, it’s the wish of the Palestinian terror groups to attack us from all the directions.�

Washington has warned the PLO about the forays but continues to permit its ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., to meet with PLO leaders. The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday in Tunis, where the PLO is based.

Rabin held Jordan responsible for Saturday’s raid but stopped short of threatening retaliation. “We demand the Jordanian government make sure it is in control of its own territory to prevent this kind of terror,� he said.

Western diplomats here view the increase in raids as having the potential to harden Israel’s resistance to talks with the PLO--especially when Israeli blood is shed, as in this case.

The increase in raids on Israel is also one of a number of factors that appear to be adding urgency to the pace of talks between Washington and the PLO.

Arafat is coming under pressure from his followers to produce results that would lead to some concrete gains for Palestinians. Palestinian refugees based in Arab countries have complained that they are being left out of Arafat’s focus on setting up an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. PLO guerrillas in Arafat’s Fatah faction, restrained from mounting attacks on Israel from outside, are also said to be restless.

In the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, activists who have been battling Israeli rule for the past 16 months see little progress in the U.S.-PLO talks. They are growing edgy over informal peace meetings between local Arabs and Israeli politicians, which they view as inappropriate at a time when Israel continues to crack down on demonstrators and protesters.

On Saturday, Israeli troops fired on stone throwers in Gaza and killed three Arabs. The incident, the bloodiest single-day toll this year, began after Israeli soldiers pasted signs on buildings urging Gazans to curb violence.

Calls broadcast from a loudspeaker atop a nearby mosque incited residents to attack the soldiers. Twenty participants in the attack were wounded, Arab reports said.

SOLDIER SLAIN An Israeli soldier, Sgt. Maj. Oren Lior, was killed by Palestinian guerrillas who crossed over from Jordan, Israeli military officials announced.

The area around Hazeva, where the attack on Lior’s patrol took place, was the scene of an intense search for the guerrillas. Jordanian troops also took up the search on their side of the border.