November 20, 1983

Artillery explosions thundered throughout this city of 600,000 today and rockets shrieked overhead as rival Palestinian factions battled for the Beddawi refugee camp to the north. The shells began falling over a wider area of Tripoli late Friday and by today no section of the city was being spared, the police said. They said the shelling was slightly more intense on Friday but that it was concentrated in a few neighborhoods, particularly those on the north edge of Tripoli, adjacent to Beddawi, and around the port, where Mr. Arafat's men have been active with their rocket launchers. ''Last night was terrible,'' said a prominent lawyer. ''Many people slept in stairwells. Women and children are losing their nerves. They are becoming crazy and taking pills. I went to two pharmacies near my office and they said they had sold all their tranquilizers. You cannot even find aspirins.''

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that the outcome of the struggle within the Palestine Liberation Organization was certain to have ''major implications'' for the future of the American- sponsored peace efforts in the Middle East. Mr. Shultz pointed to a recent statement by King Hussein of Jordan, who said that if the P.L.O. fell under Syrian domination there was a legitimate question of whether it could continue to speak for the Palestinian people. Mr. Shultz's remarks were in a speech delivered tonight before the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in Atlanta. King Hussein declined earlier this year to enter American-sponsored talks with Israel because he could not gain the endorsement of Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman who is fighting for survival in northern Lebanon against a group of Syrian-backed rebels. Some State Department officials have said King Hussein might take courage from the P.L.O. struggle and decide to enter negotiations without waiting for a P.L.O. endorsement. But Mr. Shultz avoided going that far in his assessment of the possible results of the P.L.O. strife.

RUSSIA Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams. By David K. Shipler. 404 pp. New York: Times Books. $17.95. BENEATH the guessing game played by Western observers about who's on top in the Soviet leadership - it is not worth much, but it pays the rent - is another and more serious level of speculation about long-term trends in the Soviet system and society. Those trends are obviously fateful for the world, but questions about them are difficult to answer more than impressionistically. The Soviet Union is too big and complex, and the data are too hard to come by. And, for that matter, how definite can anyone be about long-term trends in any society, including our own?

The experts had predicted that the result would not be close. Unlike the final of the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament last spring, when North Carolina State defeated Houston by 2 points, this game more or less figured to be a showcase for Akeem Olajuwon, Houston's 7-foot center and the basketball fraternity known as Phi Slama Jama. Well, the experts were right about one thing - the score wasn't close today. But it was North Carolina State that won, 76-64, in the Tipoff Classic game that signals the opening of the college season. And if Jim Valvano, the Wolfpack coach, was pleasantly surprised, then his counterpart Guy Lewis was somewhat embarrassed by his team's performance.

AWEEK after losing his comeback attempt, former Democratic Mayor John C. Mandanici of Bridgeport was preparing for another fight. He is planning a court challenge to a state law that prevents him from being a Democrat for two years because he ran on the Taxpayers Party ticket this time. ''This is America,'' Mr. Mandanici said. ''To oust me from the party for two years infringes on my Constitutional rights.''