July 14, 1982

WHEN you're in your 20's and on the way up in your company, lunchtime in New York can be a problem. You really can't eat in places like Lutece or the Four Seasons. It would take too long and cost too much and, if the lunch was on the expense account, it might raise the eyebrows of supervisors. On the other hand, the young executive-to-be doesn't want to be thought of as a person who lunches in mere coffee shops or fast-food places. You are, as someone once remarked, what you eat.

More than five weeks after the Israeli Army invaded Lebanon and fought its way northward to Beirut, the number of civilian casualties remains unknown. The chaos of the warfare, the destruction of city neighborhoods and refugee camps, the haste with which bodies were buried in mass graves and the absence of impartial agencies gathering statistics have made a reliable accounting impossible. It is clear to anyone who has traveled in southern Lebanon, as have many journalists and relief workers, that the original figures of 10,000 dead and 600,000 homeless, reported by correspondents quoting Beirut representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross during the first week of the war, were extreme exaggerations. It seems equally clear that the much lower figures provided later by the Israelis do not include all the casualties suffered in Lebanon since the operation began June 6.

The Koch administration is planning to eliminate a tax incentive program for developers of new high-rise apartment buildings in parts of Manhattan. Officials said the incentives were no longer needed to stimulate new housing construction in some areas, particularly on the congested Upper East Side, but the precise boundaries have not yet been determined. The decision follows much criticism of Mr. Koch's tax incentive policies, and city officials said the criticism had contributed to the Mayor's decision to fix limits during the last year on all three of the city's major incentive programs. The newest changes being developed involve lucrative tax exemptions available to developers since 1970 under a program known as 421a, which offers sharply lowered taxes for up to 10 years on new rental, cooperative and condominium apartment buildings. Developers were given exemptions of 100 percent of the taxes on their new buildings, with taxes phased in until they reached the full amount in the building's 11th year.

''The legitimate needs and problems of the Palestinian people must be addressed and resolved - urgently and in all their dimensions.'' -George P. Shultz, Secretary of State-designate. (A12:4-5.)

The Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, which suffered heavy losses in the failure on July 5 of the Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City, has placed John R. Lytle, a vice president in the oil and gas group, on ''special assignment,'' a bank spokesman confirmed yesterday. The 47-year-old Mr. Lytle, who has been with the bank since 1959, had been responsible for Continental's lending to oil and gas producers in Oklahoma and nearby states. Continental, the nation's sixth-largest bank, had invested more than $1 billion in loans generated by Penn Square and in loans made directly to the failed bank. Most of the Penn Square loans reportedly went to small oil and gas producers in Oklahoma. With energy prices declining in recent months, many of these poorly capitalized and high-cost producers apparently were unable to meet their loan payments, according to banking sources, and this caused Penn Square's failure.