What was going on when I was born?

The Justice Department last night gave New York City clearance to hold its primary elections Sept. 22 for all municipal and judicial offices except the City Council. Governor Carey said he would call a special session of the Legislature next Wednesday to approve the date. The decision was reached after a day of telephone conferences among officials in Washington, City Hall and Albany. The city agreed to abandon plans to make what it had thought would be routine changes in 221 election district lines. But it did change the location of 37 polling places, an action that had already received preliminary approval from Washington. Mayor Koch announced the decision at 6 P.M., at a news conference that had been delayed several times. He released a letter from William Bradford Reynolds, an assistant United States Attorney General, saying that ''the Attorney General does not interpose any objections to the changes in question.''

Church and community groups are renovating thousands of apartments and newcomers are buying scores of private town houses in Harlem. City officials, housing experts and community leaders hope the activity is the beginning of a revitalization that could change the neighborhood's makeup. Harlem, the black Manhattan community whose name has long stood for urban decline, still faces problems beyond those that affect housing everywhere, such as high interest rates. The neighborhood suffers a high crime rate, poor public schools, a housing stock still beset by serious decay and abandonment, and poverty among many of its residents. But Anthony B. Gliedman, the city's housing preservation commissioner, and other officials and real estate experts said in interviews that there had been a ''surge'' of housing activity in Harlem recently. And they said they believed that over the next decade the increased demand for privately owned town houses in Harlem's better areas would spread, spurring the restoration of many of its abandoned and dilapidated multi-family dwellings.

The Administration is considering two le gislative measures that would bypass the normal appropriations pr ocess. This would force Congress to take a single vote on the sp ending cuts necessary to hold the budget deficit for the fiscal ye ar 1982 to the level favored by President Reagan. The President reportedly plans to announce his decision on adopting an alternative legislative method at the same time that he discloses his decision on additional cuts in the military budget, an aide said today. However, that announcement may not come until the week after next, an aide added. White House spokesmen had originally said that Mr. Reagan could have an announcement as early as next Tuesday.

A Federal judge refused today to dismiss the Justice Department's historic antitrust case against the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. He said the evidence he had heard so far showed that the ''Bell System has violated the antitrust laws in a number of ways over a lengthy period of time.'' A.T.&T. had moved for a dismissal after the Justice Department had rested its case, and it was this motion that Judge Harold H. Greene of the United States District Court rejected in a strongly worded 75-page opinion. ''The evidence sustains the Government's basic contentions, and the burden is on the defendants to refute the factual showings,'' the judge wrote.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced plans yesterday to sell 620 buses and 12 commuter rail cars to private corporations and then lease them back in a novel move that would provide tax benefits to the corporations and savings to the authority. The offer was made possible by the new tax legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan last month. It allows public transit agencies to enter into leasing arrangements similar to those enjoyed for years by private corporations. ''This represents an enormous opportunity for private corporations in New York to demonstrate their support for the city and to make money at the same time,'' said Steven Polan, special counsel to the M.T.A. A Pilot Program Later, a spokesman for the M.T.A. noted that the plan was based on a number of assumptions never before tested. ''It's never been done befo re by the public sector, so there are a lot of questions to be resolved,'' said Rand Burgner, the spokesman. ''That's why this is a pilot program, to see if it works for us as ithas for private industry.''

Interior Secretary James G. Watt announced a series of policy changes today including a reversal of a policy allowing the Federal Government to pre-empt state water rights. Mr. Watt told a gathering of Western governors here that because his decisions had responded to the needs of the states and their people, the steam had gone out of the ''Sagebrush Rebellion,'' the drive by some Western states and economic interests to acquire control over Federal lands and resources. Other Policy Statements Among the policy statements made by Mr. Watt to the Western Governors Conference, now meeting in the shadow of the jagged Grand Teton Mountains, were these: - He supports proposals for a huge exchange of Federal land for state lands, even on some basis other than equivalent market value, to help the states consolidate their holdings and develop their resources. Some such exchanges have taken place for years on a parcel-by-parcel basis.

The Soviet Union's campaign against the Polish independent trade union, Solidarity, took a new turn today as meetings were held at factories in Moscow and elsewhere at which Solidarity was denounced for actions at its congress this week. At Moscow's giant Zil truck and auto plant, and at similar gatherings in Leningrad and other cities, workers were assembled to approve an open letter that spoke of a bid by Solidarity for a ''counterrevolution.'' The letter, approved in Moscow, accused the Polish union of trying to provoke workers in the Soviet Union and in other Eastern-bloc nations to ''betray'' Communism. The factory meetings were portrayed as an effort by Soviet workers to warn Poles of the dangers of backing Solidarity. But the Kremlin's underlying purpose appeared to be to arouse indignation among millions of Soviet workers as it ponders a situation that is evidently as grave now, from the Soviet standpoint, as it has been in months.

The decision to join with Israel in a ''strategic collaboration'' represents a gamble by the Reagan Administration that the political windfall will more than offset the expected damage to American interests in Arab countries. On the surface, the new ''strategic relationship'' can be seen as confirmation that a consensus is taking shape in the region, with the United States being a friend or ally of such countries as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, all of which are concerned about a Soviet-sponsored threat to the area. However, despite worry about Soviet activities, those countries are not so concerned that they are willing to cooperate with each other under an American security umbrella. Haig to Meet Saudi Prince It wasAnd i t is this unwillingness that worriedhad Administration aides asworri ed as Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. flew to Spain today f or a meeting with Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

Occupied Sinai, Sept. 8 - A movement of militant Jewish settlers determined to resist Israel's final return of Sinai to Egypt is growing amid the rolling dunes of the desert. Opposed to the withdrawal, which is required next April 28 under the peace treaty, Israeli families are moving from the occupied West Bank into northern Sinai, filtering into unoccupied apartments in the seaside town of Yamit and into house trailers in the settlement of Atzmona, which was established as a protest after the Camp David accords. Organized by the nationalistic settlement movement Gush Emunim, or ''Bloc of the Faithful,'' the campaign is aimed first at mobilizing the Israeli public to demand that the Government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin defer or cancel the ''retreat,'' as the protesters call it, from the remaining strip of Sinai, which runs inside a line from El Arish on the Mediterranean to Sharm el Sheik on the Red Sea. If that political effort fails, the settlers are prepared for what could be a messy, perhaps even violent, confrontation with the Israeli Government and army when the time comes to leave. Some say they will try to bring 20,000 to 30,000 sympathizers into the area and offer passive resistance. Others threaten to take up arms against their own army.

A Socialist member of Parliament was beaten and held for six hours by about 1,000 angry villagers while he was campaigning to create a national park in the Sierra Nevada range in southern Spain, the police said today. The villagers of Guejar-Sierra, who want a tourist resort built instead, freed Angel Diaz Sol early today after he signed a document opposing the park.

President Reagan intervened personally today in the controversy over his proposal to sell Awacs surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia, urging a Republican Senator to stop his effort to enlist a majority of the Senate as sponsors of a resolution aimed at blocking the sale. Senator Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon, said he told the President during a 45-minute meeting at the White House that he could not comply with the request.

A senior official of the Defense Department said today that strategic cooperation with Israel and additional military assistance to that nation would be ''jeopardized'' if a proposed sale of advanced radar surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia was blocked. The senior official, who could not be named under agreed rules, told reporters at the Pentagon that the Reagan Administration would have to reconsider its overall security policy in the Middle East if Congress failed to approve the $8.5 billion sale of aircraft called Awacs and other weapons to improve the Saudi air force. The official said there might be a delay in strategic cooperation with Israel, which started to take shape in conversations among President Reagan, Prime Minister Menachem Begin and their top national security advisers here this week. Haig View Was Different Y esterday, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Prime Minister Begin said the issues of strategic c ooperation and the Awacssale were not related, although there were in dications that the Adminstration hoped the strategic agreement m ight soften Israeli opposition to the sale.