The Galveston Daily News · 26 September 1977

CP-1977-038

Israel Agrees On Truce

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Transcribed from the clipping

Palestinian guerrillas and Christian rightists battling near the Israeli border said Sunday they had agreed on a U.S.arranged cease-fire, but reports from the region indicated the truce failed to halt artillery exchanges.

The guerrillas, who launched a deadly mortar barrage earlier in the day from their stronghold in a 12th century Crusader castle, said “Palestinian forces stopped firing at 5 p.m. in accordance with orders from the leadership.”

But a UPI reporter at the scene said a salvo of the Palestinian rockets slammed into the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya after the deadline — the day’s second guerrilla attack on an Israeli settlement. And a Lebanese journalist on the other side of the border said Israeli gunners also ignored the deadline and pounded key Palestinian guerrilla positions in southern Lebanon.

He said Israeli gun emplacements and Lebanese rightist artillery positions inside Lebanon were focusing on the guerrilla stronghold of Khiam and the Palestinian-held frontier town of Rachaya al Foukhar to the northeast. The shelling was answered by steady Palestinian and Lebanese leftist salvos against the rightist border strongholds of Marjayoun and Kleia, the reporter said.

UPI correspondent Mathis Chazanov reported from Metullah, Israel’s northernmost town and a vantage point overlooking the battle zone in southeast Lebanon, that British-built Centurion tanks moved along the frontier.

Troops in U.S.-built armored personnel carriers moved into Lebanese territory where the Palestinians and the Christian forces supported by Israel have been battling for about 10 days, Chazanov reported.

Israeli military censors for the first time permitted journalists to report the armored vehicle drive into Lebanon, but they banned publication of other details surrounding Israeli activity in the area. Israeli radio earlier reported “a cease-fire appears to have taken hold (in Lebanon) among all sides.”

“Presumably it has been mediated by the Americans,” the government-run network said. The truce was aimed at ending nearly a year of bitter fighting between the Palestinians and their Lebanese leftist allies against Christian rightists, who have been able to survive in Lebanon’s southeast corner only with assistance from Israeli artillery.

Lebanese rightists said formal announcement of the cease-fire awaited Israel’s acceptance of the terms. The cease-fire reportedly calls for an implementation of a peace plan drawn up by Syria and endorsed by the Palestinians and Lebanon’s government in July.

It would send in Lebanese army troops to separate the guerrillas and the Christians in the border region and called for Palestinian forces to pull back at least nine miles from the border. Earlier reports Sunday from both Lebanon and Israel indicated the artillery, tank, mortar and machine-gun duels were slackening in the border region.

Israel said it was taking “very seriously” rocket attacks fired across the frontier into its northern settlements. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the United States passed a “severe warning” to Syria and the guerrillas that “Israel cannot and will not tolerate” continued shelling.

The Palestinians, who have fired Soviet-made Katyusha rockets into Israeli settlements several times in recent days in apparent retaliation for Israel’s aid to the Christians, are “taking the wrong road,” a senior Israeli government source warned, “because Israel cannot sit with folded hands while its population centers are shelled.” “The artillery and tank fire continues.

It is relatively steady,” a Lebanese reporter in the battle zone said Sunday. “But it has fallen off since its peak Saturday and the level of most of the last week.”

Palestinian guerrillas and Lebanese leftists at Beaufort Castle, a fortress built in 1139 atop a crag in southeast Lebanon overlooking the main battle area, fired mortars across a steep valley into Deir Mimass, a cluster of whitewashed buildings halfway up a slope leading to the Israeli border town of Metullah, the reporter said.

At least eight persons were killed and five others wounded in the mortar fire, he said. “It seems the great majority were civilians.”

How this transcription was made

ASSEMBLED FROM 2 SCANS: the six-column front-page story and its jump on 2-A. NOTE for the record — the headline on page one (“Israel Agrees On Truce”) and the headline on the jump (“Israel Accepts Truce”) are DIFFERENT, and the slide also carries a THIRD, unrelated clipping (s096_3, Daily Record, 19 March 1978), which is filed as its own record. Other material on the jump page — a Jewish holiday feature, “Energy Facing…”, “Evangelist Places…” and a smoke-detector brief from Minneapolis — is not transcribed. — The folio line across the top of the front page reads “GALVESTON, TEXAS, MONDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 26, 1977”, with “The County’s Only 7-Day Paper” and “15c Daily, 40c Sunday”. 26 September 1977 was a Monday. The paper’s name is cut off the front-page scan (only a trailing “national” survives at the far left) but it is printed TWICE on the jump scan: the page flag “2-A The Galveston Daily News” and the box rule at the foot, “The Galveston Daily News”. Matches Maria’s label. — Two clippings of one article, joined into a single image for the record (s096_1.png, s096_2.png).

Cite this clipping

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