Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin warned Syria on Saturday to halt attacks by pro-Iranian guerrillas in southern Lebanon, calling on Damascus to prove its willingness and ability to honor the agreements it makes.

Rabin, his voice harsh with anger as he toured Israel’s border with Lebanon after a night of heavy rocket attacks, said his troops would counterattack if the Hezbollah militia continued to fire Katyusha rockets across the frontier. More than 30 rockets landed Friday night, killing one Israeli and wounding 20 others.

Recalling the massive artillery and air bombardment with which Israel drove hundreds of thousands of Lebanese peasants from their villages during its “Operation Accountability” in July, 1993, Rabin left little doubt about the scale of the possible retaliation.

He called the night of Hezbollah rocketing a “gross violation” of the agreement, reached through U.S. mediation with Syria, that brought the 1993 fighting to an end. In that understanding, Israel and Hezbollah pledged to not attack civilian targets and to limit the scope of their hostilities.


Rabin said he had asked Secretary of State Warren Christopher to contact Syria urgently, for there is not only the danger of a sharp escalation in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah but a threat to efforts to reach peace agreements in the Middle East.

“We want to clarify this to the Syrians via the Americans, our partners in the understandings, and we cannot stand by if these violations continue,” Rabin said. “How we will act, and when, I will of course not talk about.”

In Lebanon, Hezbollah leaders said it was Israel that violated the agreement with its recent shellings of Lebanese villages and its naval blockade of southern Lebanese ports. They warned that they will continue to rocket northern Israeli towns in response.

“The Islamic resistance’s announcement that it will shell settlements in northern Palestine indicates our deep commitment to the principle of replying in kind and not to sit silent when (our) villages are targeted,” Sheik Nabil Qawooq, a member of the Hezbollah political bureau, told reporters. Qawooq was referring to northern Israel; Hezbollah does not recognize the Jewish state.


Sheik Kassem Khalil, chief of Hezbollah’s political bureau, initially said its militia would no longer honor the 1993 accord if Israel attacked civilian targets, but on Saturday he suggested that the agreement might be reinstated if both sides backed away from the new confrontation.

“If they abide, we will abide,” Khalil told journalists in Beirut. “If they continue to shell our population centers, then we shall continue to hit their northern settlements.”

Rabin replied that such Hezbollah attacks would “create a major problem” that would extend well beyond southern Lebanon and the Lebanese-Israeli border, for it would put in question Israel’s negotiations with Syria, which resumed in Washington last month after a long hiatus.

Syria, for its part, expressed support for Hezbollah, asserting that the Lebanese have the right to liberate their land. Israel occupies a self-declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon along its border.


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“The Lebanese resistance will go on as long as the Israeli occupation continues in the south of Lebanon, because resistance is the natural and real response to this occupation,” the Syrian government newspaper Tishrin said in Damascus.

Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s ambassador in Washington and its chief delegate to negotiations with Syria, said the latest violence will influence Israel’s position in the talks. He suggested that, if Israel finds Syria unable to stick to the 1993 understanding, it might decide that Damascus might not honor a future peace treaty.

“We are measuring and testing Syria’s ability to keep agreements and understandings also by means of what is going on in Lebanon,” Rabinovich declared. He said he conveyed that message from Rabin to Syria’s U.S. ambassador.


Rabinovich said that, despite upbeat assessments of the recently resumed Syrian-Israeli negotiations, there has been no real progress, just an exploration of possible changes in each other’s positions and a search for common points on security.

“No progress, no,” Rabinovich told state-run radio when asked whether the U.S. mediation, led last week by Christopher, had brought the two countries closer to a long-sought breakthrough.

Israel argues that Syria, as the powerbroker in Lebanon, could check the activities of Hezbollah but does not do so in order to use the tension to apply pressure on Israel in the peace talks.

“If they wanted to prevent the actions by the Hezbollah, they could do it,” Rabin spokesman Oded Ben Ami said.


Tishrin said the escalation of fighting is intended to force Lebanon to accept Israeli conditions for a peace treaty.

Saturday, a tentative calm held across the Lebanese-Israeli frontier, though Israeli gunners in the early morning fired a few artillery rounds into a Hezbollah mountain bastion just north of Israel’s buffer zone.

Despite Syrian claims that Israel has already begun to build up its forces for a major thrust into Lebanon, correspondents driving along the frontier and on the main roads in northern Israel did not see troops being marshaled or long-range artillery brought forward.

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In the Israeli border town of Kiryat Shemona, hit in the rocket attack, men in prayer shawls walked from shelters where their families had spent the night to synagogues for Sabbath services. Rabin toured the town to inspect the damage and boost morale.

Hezbollah’s rocket barrage came after Hezbollah’s senior leader in southern Lebanon was killed Friday morning in an ambush by Israeli helicopter gunships.

Earlier Saturday, an Israeli soldier was killed in a clash with Hezbollah. And after the Katyusha attack across the frontier, Israeli fighter planes and helicopters hit suspected Hezbollah bases in southern Lebanon in one of the heaviest actions in months.

Over the years, Israel has tried to end the cross-border rocket attacks on its northern areas with operations thrusting deep into Lebanon, preemptive attacks by warplanes and helicopters on suspected launching sites and other actions, including the elimination of Hezbollah leaders.


But Hezbollah has returned again and again to unleash rockets, usually into Israel’s “security zone” buffer but sometimes into Israel itself.