December 18, 1984

The hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner to Iran this month in which two Americans were killed is but one terrorist episode in a series that reflects new tension in the Middle East, diplomats and Government officials say. According to the diplomats and government officials in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Middle East, the outburst of terrorism in recent weeks, which has included a series of assassinations of Arab diplomats in Europe representing various nations, stems from a series of factors, some of them interrelated: - The shifting alliances and deepening divisions in the region, which see Jordan and Egypt trying to form an axis of moderate Arab nations to oppose Syrian influence. - The split within the Palestine Liberation Organization, in which Yasir Arafat has aligned himself with King Hussein of Jordan to preserve his leadership from the challenge of Syrian-backed factions. - The rise throughout the area of Islamic fundamentalism, particularly among Shiite Moslems in Lebanon and elsewhere, influenced - and aided - by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Iran.

THE policy question concerning human gene therapy is no longer whether to attempt such treatments, but when trials in patients should begin, according to a report released yesterday by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Gene therapy designed to treat individual patients without causing changes that could be inherited is just an extension of conventional medical science and technology and does not raise new ethical issues, the report said. ''The factor that most distinguishes it from other medical technologies is its conspicuousness in the public eye,'' the report said. Some critics have asserted that such treatments would be the beginning of misguided attempts to redesign the human race.

Walter Gilbert, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, resigned yesterday as chairman and chief executive of Biogen N.V., one of the companies in the forefront of the search for an anticancer drug. Biogen has been reporting sizable losses, and analysts speculated that Mr. Gilbert may have been under pressure to resign. In an announcement from Cambridge, Mass., where it has laboratories, Biogen said that the 52-year-old Mr. Gilbert would remain a member of the company's board and its scientific oversight committee.

Now that years of sparring with the Securities and Exchange Commission over his business practices are behind him, Robert E. Brennan, founder and chairman of First Jersey Securities Inc., is remaking his image and that of his firm. Instead of being seen as the force behind an aggressive Wall Street broker, peddling low-priced ''emerging'' companies, the boyishly handsome Mr. Brennan would now like to be known as a committed corporate citizen, a generous philanthropist: in effect, turning a dark cloud into a halo. And he is going after that goal in the same determined spirit in which he pursues everything - handing out press clippings about his recent $5 million gift to his old high school and planning a catchy advertising campaign for television. The first step in this transformation was the consent decrees that First Jersey and its chief signed on Nov. 20, ending a five-year battle with the S.E.C. The commission dropped its charges of price manipulation, but in return First Jersey and Mr. Brennan were enjoined from breaking the securities law. If they do, they will face criminal charges, rather than the usual civil penalties. First Jersey is the only Wall Street firm working under such an injunction, according to the S.E.C.

The Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company cut its prime lending rate yesterday by half a percentage point, to 10 3/4 percent, the lowest level since August 1983, when it stood at 10 1/2 percent. Although no other major banks immediately followed the move, it was widely believed most would do so shortly, probably today. Some predicted that the prime rate would soon drop even lower.