Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 30, 1993 TAG: 9308300017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NICOLAS B. TATRO ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
But there are substantial obstacles: both Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat are politically weak, facing serious challenges from within that may undo any agreement they negotiate.
Also, Palestinians are worried that the experiment in self-rule could collapse unless they get real political power and enough financial aid to convince the 1.8 million residents of the occupied lands that peace pays.
Perhaps the biggest threat is the assassin's bullet and an outbreak of fighting between Arafat and Palestinian factions that reject peace negotiations.
"I expect if an agreement is reached, there will be violence. I expect assassinations" by Islamic groups and leftists who reject any compromise with Israel, said Abdel Al-Sattar Qassem, a political science lecturer at Bir Zeit University in the occupied West Bank.
Islamic militants in Gaza's Shabura camp told a reporter recently that they expected to be fighting with activists from Arafat's Fatah faction soon after an agreement was reached.
"If Israel leaves, Gaza will become like Lebanon. There will be civil war," said Abu Mohammed, an activist with the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, who is wanted by Israelis.
For example, threats recently circulated against Faisal Husseini, leader of the Palestinian negotiating team and a possible candidate to head the Palestinian self-governing authority that will replace Israel's military government.
If self-rule turns into a battle for dominance in Gaza, it could ruin chances for Israeli withdrawal from the rest of the occupied territories and creation of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation.
"If they fail, all Israelis will see the failure as the end of any conceivable attempt to reach agreement with the Palestinians," said Joseph Alpher, head of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.
He said this was why the two sides should allow at least a year to train Palestinian security forces and lay down plans to prevent clashes.
There are also serious questions about the political strength of Rabin's coalition government, which holds 62 seats in the 120-member parliament.
The Shas party, with six seats, has threatened to pull out if either of two Shas members is forced to step down, as seems likely, from government posts as a result of corruption investigations.
The Shas bond with the left-leaning government is tenuous anyway, and the right-wing Likud bloc's campaign against making deals with the "terrorist" PLO could make inroads.
Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israelis that Rabin's government was putting the PLO "on the map" with its headquarters only a short ride from Jerusalem.
"Once we withdraw from the territory, Arabs who want to kill us will rule there, and they will rule in areas that are very close to the coastline and to Jerusalem. They will basically surround us, and they will threaten the country's security and existence," Netanyahu said on Israel army radio.
To a great extent the agreement is born of weakness, not strength.
Rabin's government sees Gaza and Jericho as a no-fuss solution. There are few settlers in either area, and the agreement is crafted to allow Israeli forces to remain in such settlements as there are - thus avoiding a traumatic showdown with the 120,000 Jewish settlers and their right-wing supporters.
For the PLO, getting a toehold on Palestinian land is a symbolic step toward the goal of statehood and creates a momentum that could rescue Arafat from a financial crisis and increasingly strident demands for democratic reform.
Sari Nusseibah, a prominent Palestinian adviser to the negotiating team, said Palestinians estimated it would take up to $12 billion to restore the economic health of the occupied lands after 26 years of occupation.
Even so, proponents of the PLO-Israel process predicted the obstacles would be overcome.
Avraham Tamir, who helped negotiate peace with Egypt and was an architect of the 1978 autonomy plan on which the current agreement is based, said it would take three months to implement once details are worked out.
He said the significance of the current pact was who it was with: the PLO. That gave the plan credibility - the lack of which forced Egypt and Israel to abandon efforts to reach a limited Palestinian self-rule plan in 1980.
"What is a historic breakthrough is not Gaza-Jericho. It is that we are dealing with the PLO," said Tamir, a former general who is close to the current negotiations.
by CNB