Israeli Embassy

The British government today ordered the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat and a Palestinian official it named as a PLO guerrilla in connection with a secret Israeli spy operation and a PLO arms cache in Britain. "The Israeli ambassador has been informed today that a member of his diplomatic staff must leave the country by the end of this month," a government spokesman said.

A car bomb intended for the Israeli Embassy blew up today on a bridge minutes after police had chased the car away from the embassy. Three people were killed and 15 wounded. The semiofficial Cyprus News Agency said an Arab man who owned the explosives-packed car was arrested while trying to run away from the scene. A caller claiming to represent terrorist Abu Nidal's group told NBC-TV in New York that Nidal's organization was responsible for the bombing.

Israel has handed over classified documents to independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh for his Iran-Contra investigation under a cooperation agreement reached after a year of negotiations, an Israeli official said Monday. In return, Walsh apparently agreed to revoke his subpoenas of four Israelis who arranged the 1985 and 1986 shipments of U.S.-made anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, the official and a U.S. lawyer indicated.

Authorities tightened security at Rome's main synagogue after a series of anti-Semitic outbursts alarmed members of Italy's Jewish community, officials said Friday. Five members of a neo-fascist youth group, the Fronte della Gioventu, were arrested Wednesday night after they were found scrawling anti-Semitic graffiti in a public square. Most of it was related to the Israeli crackdown in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip that has left 26 Palestinians dead.

An Arab-American group has placed posters on subway cars in Washington demanding the expulsion of Amos Yaron, a military attache at the Israeli Embassy, over his alleged role in the 1982 Beirut refugee camp massacre. The Washington-based American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the nation's largest Arab-American interest group, bought space on 107 cars for the month of December, a spokeswoman for the capital's transit agency said.

Israel's ambassador to Mexico, Moshe Arad, will probably be the next ambassador to the United States, the newspaper Maariv reported Friday. The job of envoy to Washington has been vacant since Sunday when Meir Rosenne finished his tour of duty. Israel's splintered leadership has been unable to agree on a new ambassador. Maariv said Arad, 50, a career diplomat, was summoned back to Jerusalem to discuss the final details of his appointment, including when he would start in Washington.

Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on a U.S. Embassy auto carrying three officials to work from a Cairo suburb Tuesday, slightly injuring the embassy security chief and his deputy, officials said. The attack involving three assailants was the first on U.S. Embassy officials in Egypt. The U.S. State Department in Washington said embassy security chief Dennis L. Williams and his deputy, John Hucke, were slightly injured and were treated at a nearby embassy health office.

Three gunmen in a speeding automobile opened fire today on a station wagon carrying three U.S. Embassy officials to work, slightly injuring the embassy's security chief and his deputy before speeding away. Sources at the U.S. Embassy said Dennis Williams, the security chief, and his deputy, John Hucke, suffered superficial injuries from splintered glass and were treated at a nearby hospital and released.

"The Israeli-American relationship rests on two pillars: strategic cooperation and moral affinity," a senior Israeli official told a visitor Friday. "Usually, when we screw up we damage one of those pillars. But on rare occasions we are capable of damaging both. And that's what we did with Pollard." The official was referring to Jonathan Jay Pollard, the spy who was sentenced Wednesday to life imprisonment for stealing U.S. military secrets and passing them on to Israel.

In hindsight, Israel's decision to cooperate partially with the United States in the prosecution of spy Jonathan Jay Pollard was a blunder. In the process of providing only selective information to U.S. investigators, Israel has seriously strained its relationship with the United States, and an American devoted to Israel has been sentenced to life in prison with virtually no chance of parole. Israel must accept a great deal of the responsibility for this entire tragedy.