September 1, 1993

Israel and P.L.O. Ready to Declare Joint Recognition

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

OSLO -- Israeli and Palestinian negotiators resumed their formal Middle East peace negotiations here yesterday, but officials said the real diplomatic action was going on secretly

in Europe, where Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization were drawing up statements of mutual recognition.

The statements are crucial to the three-part diplomatic process beginning to unfold between Israelis and Palestinians. One part consists of their agreement in principle for Palestinian self-rule, which would go into effect initially in Gaza and Jericho, to be quickly followed by the rest of the West Bank.

Text Published in Israel

The broad outlines of this accord have already drawn up in secret and were approved by the Israeli Cabinet early today. P.L.O. officials said approval is also needed from their executive committee in Tunis, after which the draft is expected to be signed in Washington.

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot published a transcript of the agreement, which Israeli officials said was authoritative.

The draft is remarkably detailed, though it does not mention the P.L.O. because the Israelis would not do so until the process of mutual recognition had been worked out. Instead, it says the accord is between "The Government of the State of Israel and the Palestinian team representing the Palestinian people."

Jerusalem Must Wait

Most strikingly, the accord postpones dealing with nettlesome issues like the status of Jerusalem, refugees and the future of Jewish settlements -- all of which would be addressed in negotiations about the permanent status of the occupied territories, to be held within two years.

Instead, it posits an elected Palestinian council that would govern Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza for a transitional period of no more than five years, after which the final status of the territories would be determined.

The council would be elected within nine months after the agreement begins and would be able to pass some laws. In a major concession by Israel, Palestinians living in Israeli-annexed eastern Jerusalem would have the right to take part in the elections.

At the same time, authority would be transferred to the Palestinians in education and culture, health, social welfare, taxation and tourism. The Palestinian side would also be allowed to form its own police force.

The second part of the unfolding diplomacy involves turning the broad accord into a detailed and feasible program, for instance establishing exactly where the Israeli troops would redeploy, what powers the Palestinian police would have over Israelis and what taxes the Palestinians could levy.

This could take months.

The third part is the exchange of mutual recognition agreements, which the two sides are trying to write in the secret talks in Europe. Israeli officials said it was not certain that they would succeed, but even if they do not, the agreement on Gaza and Jericho could go ahead.

Israeli-P.L.O. mutual recognition, which only weeks ago would have been thought impossible, would enable the two parties to take their now-secret peace negotiations and make them a formal, public channel.

In effect, the covert relationship of the last few months would be brought out of the cold, and the two bitter enemies would become mutually recognized partners for peace.

17 Secret Meetings Reported

Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst of Norway said on Monday that senior Israeli and P.L.O. officials held 14 secret meetings in Norway and 3 in another country this year before they initialed their secret blueprint on Aug. 20.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are hoping that the statements of mutual recognition would invigorate the whole process and encourage concessions on points of substance. Israeli political figures said the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Uri Savir, was meeting in Oslo with envoys sent by the P.L.O. chairman, Yasir Arafat, to try to write the language of those declarations.

Israel wants the P.L.O. to abrogate its 1964 covenant, which calls for the destruction of Israel; to renounce the use of violence against Israel inside and outside the occupied territories, and to formally and unequivocally recognize Israel's right to exist.

P.L.O. officials say they are ready to do so, but the exact wording awaits an agreement. P.L.O.

officials say that for them to formally abrogate their covenant would require a meeting of the

Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' parliament, and that cannot be done on short notice.

Arafat Declaration Asked

In the meantime, they are proposing that Arafat issue a declaration that would say the combination of the 1988 and 1991 declarations on Israel by the exile parliament "supersede all aspects of the covenant which might contradict them," a senior P.L.O. official said.

The 1988 declaration called for a two-state settlement based on the 1947 United Nations partition plan for Palestine. The 1991 resolutions called for peace with Israel.

In addition, the P.L.O. would make some unambiguous statement renouncing violence as a means of protest against Israel inside and outside the occupied territories. The exact wording of that point is delicate, since the Palestinians still under occupation do not want to forswear non-violent means of protest.

Israel to Accept P.L.O.

In return, Israel was being asked to recognize the P.L.O. as the representative of the Palestinian people and the sole Palestinian partner for these and any future peace negotiations, the diplomats said.

Officials on both sides said that even with the best of intentions, coming up with agreed texts will not be easy.

In the public diplomacy, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators meeting in Washington gathered at the State Department today for their 11th round. Ostensibly, they were supposed to also be working on the details of the Gaza-Jericho plan. But Arab and Israeli officials said that for now, the Washington channel is simply a facade and that the serious bargaining is still being done in secret in Europe.

The Palestinian negotiators in Washington were so removed from the real diplomatic action that they had not seen the final text of the draft on Gaza and Jericho -- until an Israeli journalist translated for them the text in Yediot Ahronot.

Lesser Details for the Talks

Only after the major issues have been resolved in the talks in Europe -- like how much of the Jericho area Israel will cede to Palestinian self-rule, how the Palestinian police will relate to Israeli settlers in Gaza and Jericho, where Israeli troops will be permitted to operate in the Palestinian regions – will the lesser details be turned over to the negotiators in Washington, who are working in the public spotlight, the diplomats said.

Some of these are very difficult issues that have bedeviled Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in the past.

According to the draft accord, Israeli soldiers would continue to control the external borders and watch over the roughly 4,000 Jewish settlers who will remain in Gaza and the Jericho area.

Within two months after the agreement takes effect, the two sides would sign an agreement on how and where Israeli troops would redeploy from populated Palestinian areas in Gaza and Jericho. The withdrawal is to be completed within four months. A committee made up of Israelis and Palestinians would arbitrate disputes.

With all of this secret diplomacy going on in Europe, American officials are on the sidelines, as are some Arab nations.

King Hussein Flies to Syria

King Hussein of Jordan flew unexpectedly to Damascus for emergency talks with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria. Both men were unaware of the Israeli-P.L.O. talks and were said to have been none too pleased to find out that Israelis and Palestinians were moving ahead without them.

The Reuters news agency quoted a Syrian presidential spokesman, Jubran Kourieh, as taking a slap at the Palestinians for making a private deal, saying the accord "came as a surprise for the Arab governments because there was no prior coordination."

Officially Syria has neither endorsed nor rejected the accord. King Hussein has only given a tepid endorsement that also conveyed his anger at not being consulted.

Comments by Christopher

Secretary of State Warren Christopher strongly hinted today that the United States might soon end its ban on a dialogue with the P.L.O., which Washington established after a P.L.O. faction's failed raid on an Israeli beach in 1990.

"There's been no change with respect to our policy on the P.L.O. at the present time," Christopher said. "On the other hand, this is a rapidly changing environment, and we're following developments very closely."

Christopher said the United States would be willing to help with the one thing the Palestinians want most from Washington right now: money to enable them to run Gaza and Jericho. Without an infusion of cash, "Gaza is Somalia," said Nabil Shaath, Arafat's representative at the talks.

"It's clear that the early empowerment aspect of the agreement will require some funding to be carried out, and we will be glad to assist to develop sufficient funds for the Palestinians to carry out their responsibilities under the agreement," Christopher said.

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September 5, 1993

SPECIAL REPORT

The Making of a Mideast Peace Pact

By CLYDE HABERMAN with CRAIG R. WHITNEY

JERUSALEM -- At the time, in April 1992, the somewhat gray and academic meeting in Tel Aviv hardly seemed a place where dreams might be built. But if the tentative and potentially momentous new agreement reached by Israel and the P.L.O. could be said to have a birthplace, it was the gathering in Tel Aviv.

There, Yossi Beilin, then an opposition Labor member of Parliament, got to know Terje Rod

Larsen, head of a Norwegian institute researching conditions in the Israeli-occupied territories. If

Beilin wished, Larsen said, he could put him in touch with senior Palestinian officials.

The Israeli did not leap at the opportunity, in part because he had more pressing matters on his mind, like the approaching national election in June. But he was interested enough to ask a university professor friend to keep in touch with the man from Oslo.

Norway Takes Secret Role

By mid-July, the Labor Party was voted into power, Beilin was Israel's new Deputy Foreign Minister, and Larsen was back in Jerusalem, renewing his offer. What in April had been an uneventful meeting of policy researchers led directly in September to another gathering in Tel Aviv, where this time a senior Norwegian diplomat proposed to Beilin that Norway become the secret passage for direct talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership, which is based in Tunis.

That was the start of the Oslo Connection.

A Variety of Sites

In the months to follow, on elegant country estates and in ordinary hotel rooms, representatives of Israel and the P.L.O., enemies to the death for three decades, met secretly and stitched together a set of principles that is supposed to lead them out of their long struggle. The core of their plan has been known for the last week:

Assuming that the two sides can get past difficulties that have popped up in the last few days, they will soon formally recognize each other -- something that seemed almost impossible only weeks ago -- and set in motion a shift of authority in the territories from Israel to Palestinians, starting in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho.

As radical a change as this is, its thunder built gradually. Officials and others interviewed in Israel, Norway and the United States -- knowledgeable P.L.O. officials were not available -- say there was no single turning point, no startling pronouncement that suddenly made it happen.

Rather than high drama in Norway, participants say, there was a more subtle combination of relaxed settings, home-cooked meals, mutual esteem, a knack for telling the right joke to ease a tense situation and, more important, an ability to keep secrets. "That was the difficult part -- keeping our mouths shut," said Professor Yair Hirschfeld of Haifa University, Beilin's academic friend and a key go-between from the start.

No more than a dozen people knew exactly what was going on at all times, participants say. The regular delegations to the Middle East peace talks were kept in the dark. So were local Palestinian leaders and Israeli Cabinet ministers.

While the Norwegians kept the United States informed almost from the start, the Americans were never actively involved, sticking instead both to the episodic talks in Washington and to their policy of not dealing with the P.L.O. or its chairman, Yasir Arafat.

In Washington, senior Clinton Administration officials said the United States would be ready to resume its dialogue with the P.L.O. when it met Israel's terms of renouncing terrorism and unequivocally recognizing Israel's right to exist.

Administration officials said that they would begin sounding out lawmakers on Tuesday about removing the legal barriers to the dialogue, which was broken off in 1990 after a P.L.O. faction's abortive raid on an Israeli beach.

The Motivation On Both Sides, Thirst for Progress

Perhaps even more critical than tight lips and country homes was the fact that Israel and the P.L.O. both badly wanted their meetings to succeed, each for its own reasons.

The P.L.O. was in disarray. Arafat was scrambling to hold onto power, the organization's once-fat bank accounts were drying up, in large measure because of its own political miscalculations, and its loyalists were losing ground fast in the occupied territories to Islamic militants gathered under the banner of Hamas. Arafat needed a deal that would leave no doubt he was still on top.

The Israelis were also eager. They had lost faith in the negotiations stumbling along in Washington with Palestinians from the territories who, it became painfully clear, could not deliver the goods. Knowing he would ultimately be judged on whether he fulfilled his campaign promise to come to terms quickly with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin endorsed the secret contacts, even if he was not persuaded they would work and even though, as he said the other day, it meant dealing with enemies he detests.

In suspending his skepticism, he worked in tandem with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who had become involved in the Norwegian dialogue in early spring and then guided it along until he himself met secretly with a senior P.L.O. official in Norway, capping the talks with a draft agreement initialed on Aug. 20.

Throughout their political lives, Rabin and Peres have fought nasty battles for Labor Party supremacy. It is axiomatic among Israelis that anything one of them does is intended at least in part to undercut the other.

But starting in spring, the two politicians worked closely together, cementing an odd symbiosis that they had formed through the years of rivalry. Peres, a man with grand ideas but fragile public support, and Rabin, more of a nuts-and-bolts analyst but also a tough ex-general who can persuade Israelis that he will not sell them out to the Arabs, found that they could not succeed without each other. This time, jealousies shriveled before their task.

"Look, we're grown-up people," Peres said this week. "We're not searching anymore for power. We're leading the nation toward the future, to save ourselves from being Balkanized in Israel and the territories, to spare us a Yugoslavia-like situation."

The Beginning: From Tel Aviv To London to Oslo

None of this seemed dimly on the horizon when Beilin and Larsen shook hands in Tel Aviv and discussed daily life in Gaza and the West Bank.

Larsen is director general of FAFO, the Norwegian Institute for Applied Social Science, which was preparing a report on living conditions in the territories and was looking for Israeli cooperation both in and out of Government. Beilin, a close Peres associate, was interested in the project but otherwise engaged. He put the Norwegian in touch with Yair Hirschfeld, who teaches Middle East history at Haifa University. Right after the elections, Larsen came back. His focus now, officials say, was not research so much as an attempt to put the new left-leaning Israeli Government in direct touch with senior Palestinians who might be able to reach an agreement that had eluded official delegates in Washington. Again, the Israeli said the Haifa professor was the best contact.

But he clearly was interested in exploring new possibilities.

Norway's No. 2 Envoy

On Sept. 10, 1992, Larsen returned once more, bringing with him Norway's No. 2 diplomat, State Secretary Jan Egeland. They sat down with Beilin and Professor Hirschfeld at the Tel Aviv Hilton. Egeland's offer was straightforward:

Norway could be a bridge between Israel and the P.L.O., not as a mediator but as an expediter, one graced with diplomatic sophistication, familiarity with the key figures and distance from the region and prying cameras.

Not that Norway's relations with Israel had always been smooth. They were especially strained after an Israeli hit squad gunned down a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in July 1973. They thought he was an agent of the Arab guerrilla group that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. They shot the wrong man.

As an additional sign that the Norwegians meant business, Johan Jorgen Holst, the Defense Minister and seven months later Foreign Minister, supported the idea. By no coincidence, his wife, Marianne Heiberg, was the author of the FAFO study that got these negotiations started.

Yes, he was intrigued, Beilin said. Actually, he later told associates, he had no solid reason to believe that this effort could produce anything -- a doubt that would persist for months. And he wanted to be personally removed; it would be politically damaging if word leaked out that he was secretly meeting officials of the outlawed P.L.O. Once again, his point man was Professor Hirschfeld.

On a December morning, the 49-year-old professor walked into the Gallery Lounge of the modern Forte Crest St. James's hotel in central London. He was to have breakfast with Larsen.

But after a brief conversation, the Norwegian slid out of his seat and left the room. In his place sat Ahmed Suleiman Khoury, a senior P.L.O official in charge of finances and better known by the nickname Abu Alaa.

'No Blood on His Hands'

Abu Alaa, a highly educated businessman in his 60's, belonged to Arafat's Fatah group -- "brilliant and tremendously tough, elegant and polished," as Larsen described him. To the Israelis, he was an acceptable partner, high-ranking but with "no blood on his hands" as an active participant in anti- Israel terrorism.

From this first talk, Professor Hirschfeld said, "it was very clear that the P.L.O. felt it had to make moves now, that Hamas was getting stronger in the territories and that the 'outside' people in Tunis felt they had to bring about successful negotiations."

But he added: "It was an exercise to see if an agreement was possible. It wasn't a negotiation. And they felt the same way on the other side."

Technically, Professor Hirschfeld was committing a crime at the London hotel. Israeli law prohibited such private contacts with declared terrorist groups, including the P.L.O. But the law was repealed a month later, and officials say that gave extra impetus to the secret discussions.

On Jan. 20 the Haifa professor and the P.L.O. finance chief moved their talks to Norway, the first of 14 sessions in that country. At the start, Abu Alaa had only an assistant or two. Professor Hirschfeld was accompanied by a colleague, Professor Ron Pundak of Tel Aviv University, who shared the tasks of taking notes, typing papers and making plane reservations because secrecy requirements ruled out secretaries.

Residence of Kings

The first talks were near the town of Sarpsborg, 60 miles east of Oslo, where the Borregard paper company owns a mansion that during the Middle Ages was the summer residence of Norwegian kings. It is a grand estate surrounded by acres of fields and forest -- the perfect place, the Norwegians thought, for the Israelis and Palestinians to take off their jackets and ties, sit in front of the fire and get to know one another.

And no one else.

"We told the staff that it was a meeting of eccentric professors who would talk all hours and order up sandwiches at three o'clock in the morning because they were working on a book," Larsen said. Private cars were used instead of official black limousines to bring them from hotels in Oslo. And Foreign Minister Holst was present, as he would be at all the meetings, not actively joining the discussions but standing by to lend a hand when snags developed.

Progress From Setbacks To Living Together

They indeed did develop, sometimes in relation to outside events, most times not.

After Israel had expelled 415 accused extremists to southern Lebanon in mid-December as a response to a series of killings by Hamas, the Washington talks broke down, not to resume for four months. But the Oslo Connection held.

In March, however, another wave of killings in Israel led to a sealing-off of the territories, and the grim atmosphere spread to Norway. "There was a feeling that we were somewhat lost and couldn't get ahead," Professor Hirschfeld said. But the crisis passed, he added, in part because United States officials who were aware of the contacts since early November had encouraged them to continue.

At this point, neither Peres nor Rabin reportedly was in the picture.

Yet Abu Alaa and Professor Hirschfeld -- as early as their second Norway session in February -- had already drawn up a draft agreement, what would prove to be the first of many.

By this point, the concept of linking Gaza and Jericho had been introduced.

Transferring a limited form of self-rule to Palestinians in Gaza first was no problem for the Israelis. Increasingly, they viewed the overcrowded coastal strip as nothing but a political and financial headache, a seething source of terrorism and a death trap for Israeli soldiers forced to patrol its towns and refugee camps. Give it up, a large majority of Israelis said.

But to whom?

For Arafat, Gaza alone was no prize. If he were to agree to Israel's demand that for now he put aside discussion of Jerusalem's future and the final status of the territories, he wanted more: a foothold in the West Bank to underline the point that the territories are a single unit forming his hoped-for Palestinian state.

A Compromise: Jericho

Small and sleepy Jericho seemed the right place, but it was hardly without problems. For one thing, the Israelis insisted that during an interim self-rule period they remain in control of the bridge links to Jordan. For another, they rejected Palestinian demands for a "corridor" of their own across Israel to connect Gaza and Jericho. Arguments on these and other points would consume another half-year.

Still, there was a piece of paper, and that was something. "We had mapped out the geography of the Rubicon," Professor Hirschfeld said.

In March, Beilin, who himself never went to Norway, decided that he had to take what he knew to Peres. According to knowledgeable officials, the Foreign Minister expressed interest but was far from overwhelmed. He took several weeks to read the draft.

It proved to be an important period for Peres. He has an active mind, and was known to be frustrated by Rabin's tight personal hold on responsibility for the direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations. If he were to supervise the back-channel talks in Norway and not tell the Prime Minister, it would look to many like another attempt at an end run in the eternal Rabin-Peres rivalry.

Besides, Rabin would know something was up from intelligence reports. "Yitzhak is informed twice about every one of Peres's actions," an unidentified Government official told the newspaper Yediot Ahronot this week. "Once, Peres tells him about it, and a little earlier he learns about it from the security services."

In April, having read the Abu Alaa-Hirschfeld draft, Peres went to the Prime Minister. Officials say they coordinated their efforts from then on. If anything, they say, Rabin was more skeptical than the Foreign Minister. Nevertheless, losing patience with the regular Washington channel, he decided the secret talks were worth a try, regardless of his personal feelings about the P.L.O.

Bracing for the Pain

"I am ready for painful compromises," he said this week. "In general, peace is not made with friends. Peace is made with enemies, some of whom -- and I won't name names -- I loathe very much."

It was also decided in April that the Norway talks had to be raised to an official level. Abu Alaa reportedly had begun to insist on dealing directly with a Government official as a test that Jerusalem meant business and was not engaged merely in an academic exercise.

The designated official was Uri Savir, recently installed as Foreign Ministry director general, a senior job rarely given to someone so young, only 40. "He' s a brilliant diplomat, very charming and also deeply committed to the cause of peace," said Professor Hirschfeld, who remained on the Israeli team throughout.

Another important addition was Yoel Zinger, an Israeli lawyer who had moved to Washington to join a law firm there. Zinger was an expert on international law and had drafted agreements that ended Israel's invasion of Lebanon a decade ago. Perhaps as significant, he was an army reserve officer who had Rabin's respect and trust. Indeed, a knowledgeable official says, it was Zinger who ultimately persuaded the Prime Minister in early summer " that this was a serious arrangement, that if the other side knew Israel was serious, it could lead to vital concessions."

From the end of April when Savir took charge to late August, there were 11 meetings in Norway, with Abu Alaa joined by a P.L.O. legal adviser, Taher Shash.

These sessions moved from place to place: another country estate, in Grinsheim, near Lillehammer; a labor union hall north of Oslo; several hotels in downtown Oslo, and Foreign Minister Holst's roomy house in Hoff, on the outskirts of the capital.

Drinking and Chatting

In each location, participants say, the key was a relaxed atmosphere. Israelis and Palestinians lived together in the same house for days at a stretch, taking all meals together, drinking and chatting well into the night. At the Holst home, Mrs. Heiberg, the Foreign Minister's wife, served home-cooked meals and Chilean wines.

"We had to take dietary rules into account," Holst said, "and we ate a lot of lamb."

And there were the jokes passed back and forth.

"They shared a sense of humor," Larsen said of Abu Alaa and Savir. "Each time tension rose, it was broken off by some joke or by a cryptic reference to a joke they all understood."

"It was an informal relationship -- intense, complex, characterized by passionate and silent poetry," he said.

During the discussions, a form of verbal shorthand developed in which people like Peres and Holst were called the fathers, top leaders like Rabin and Arafat became the godfathers, and officials at Beilin's level were the sons.

"Has the father talked to the godfather about this?" one would ask.

"Yes," came the reply. "He told the son yesterday that he would like to have another meeting."

"We had hundreds of such calls," Egeland said.

Final Issues: The Agreement Is Concluded

But jokes and shared meals, officials say, did not camouflage the fundamental difficulties involved in hammering out an agreement between two peoples whose mutual suspicions and hatreds had not miraculously disappeared by a Norwegian fireside.

"All of us were skeptical throughout," Professor Hirschfeld said. "The potential for failure lasted throughout, and there were lots of ups and downs in July."

He declined to say what they were. But officials say problems remained over control of the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan, the "corridor" issue and a persistent resurfacing of Jerusalem's status, an issue that the Israelis insisted was absolutely not negotiable at this stage.

Recognition Is Broached

During the summer, another issue arose: mutual recognition by Israel and the P.L.O., on condition that the Palestinian group abandon terrorism as a tactic and drop sections of its covenant calling for Israel's destruction.

With Israeli recognition, the United States is considered likely to resume its talks with the P.L.O. This central issue is apparently one reason that the expected P.L.O. approval of the draft agreement has slowed down in the last few days.

As the Israeli officials in Norway fielded each of these new problems, they asked for guidance from Jerusalem, where Rabin and Peres reportedly put together the replies in secrecy. But there was also a perceived need here for "reality checks."

One such check was a trip to Cairo in June by Nimrod Novick, a close Peres associate. There, he learned of Arafat's favorable response to the Gaza- Jericho plan through Osama al-Baz, foreign affairs adviser to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Another check was a meeting in Cairo in late July between Environment Minister Yossi Sarid and Nabil Shaath, a senior P.L.O. figure. The same month, yet another session was held in Jerusalem by Health Minister Haim Ramon and Dr. Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab who is close to Arafat.

None of these contacts altered the fact that the real channel was in Norway.

In August, Savir told Peres that a deal was at hand. Gaza-Jericho and mutual recognition were in the plan, as were Israeli control of the borders and an outline for economic cooperation. Gone were the Jerusalem question for now, the Gaza-Jericho corridor and the Allenby Bridge dispute.

Peres Climbs the Stairs

On Aug. 19, Peres flew to Oslo, ostensibly as part of a routine trip to Scandinavia. Late that night, after all the dinner guests had gone, he climbed the stairs of the government guest house. Waiting for him in a large room was Abu Alaa. The two men shook hands as they met for the first time.

Officials say the actual initialing of the agreement was done by Abu Alaa and by Savir. Peres could not act since his fellow Cabinet ministers had not given their formal approval. But the Foreign Minister's presence there in the early hours of Aug. 20 affirmed that it had the blessing of the Israeli Government at the highest levels. Early that morning, the newspaper Maariv reported, Peres phoned Rabin at home, awakening him.

"We signed," he said.

"Mazel tov," the Prime Minister reportedly replied. "Good work."

There was still much to be done. The Washington-oriented Rabin sent his Foreign Minister to California last week to show the agreement in secret to the vacationing Secretary of State, Warren Christopher.

U.S. Keeps a Distance

Israel also wanted the Americans to overstate the role they had played in the negotiations, on the theory that Israelis might be persuaded to accept the plan more easily if they viewed it as something Washington really wanted. But the Americans balked at that idea.

Now, the formal signing of the accord has been delayed by disputes within the P.L.O. But the man who was there from the beginning, Yair Hirschfeld, is convinced that it is only a matter of time.

He has already crossed his Rubicon, he said: "If I understand anything about politics, we reached the point of no return.

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September 10, 1993

P.L.O. and Israel Accept Each Other After 3 Decades of Relentless Strife

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Enemies to the death for three decades, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization opened a new era in their blood-soaked history today by recognizing each other's legitimacy and the rights of both to represent their people's dreams.

Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman, said in a letter to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that his group recognized Israel's right "to exist in peace and security," renounced "the use of terrorism and other acts of violence," and was ready to discipline any of its loyalists who break this pledge.

And in a separate letter to Norway's Foreign Minister, who had served for months as an intermediary in secret talks between the two sides, Arafat called on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to begin "the normalization of life." Israeli officials took that as an Arafat appeal to end the Palestinian uprising known in Arabic as the intifada, although that was not spelled out.

Rabin Stood Firm

The Israelis said Rabin was adamant that the intifada be curtailed. It was a measure of Arafat's determination to reach an agreement that he yielded on this point even though most Palestinians in the territories consider the uprising an indispensable tool to resist the Israeli occupation.

For his part, Rabin wrote a terse letter to Arafat saying that in light of these Palestinian commitments, his Government "has decided to recognize the P.L.O. as the representative of the Palestinian people and to commence negotiations with the P.L.O. within the Middle East peace process." Unlike Arafat, who closed his letter with the word "sincerely," Rabin dispensed with such pleasantries and simply put his name.

Arafat signed his letter to Rabin behind closed doors late tonight in Tunis, where the P.L.O. is based. When Rabin follows suit at a signing ceremony in Jerusalem on Friday morning, it will clear the way for yet another agreement on a plan to transfer authority in the territories from Israeli to Pale stinian hands, starting with a form of self-rule in Gaza and the West Bank city of Jericho.

Breathtaking Change

That accord, the product of months of secret negotiations conducted mainly in Norway, is to be signed at the White House on Monday by high-ranking officials on each side. No names have been announced, but the Israelis said they would probably be represented by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and the Palestinians are expected to send Mahmoud Abbas, the P.L.O. official who supervised the negotiations. Farouk Kaddoumi, the P.L.O. foreign minister, opposed the agreements

Washington has been the locale of the most recent Middle East peace talks, and both sides seem to want United States involvement in the peace process.

No amount of protocol or formal language, however, could obscure the breathtaking change that has now swept across this land for which Jews and Arabs have fought and died across the last century.

For Israel, recognition of the P.L.O., formally endorsed by the Rabin Cabinet this evening, means that it is prepared at last to come to terms with a detested Arab leader whose followers have taken countless Israeli lives and whose name is uttered by many Jews in the same breath as Hitler's.

For the P.L.O., it means that it has come at last to accept that Israel is here to stay and that this fact will not be altered by killings, resistance or its 1964 covenant calling for armed struggle to "destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence." In rejecting that part of the covenant now, Arafat

acknowledges that if he is to obtain the state he hopes to lead in a few years, he must settle for the territories of Gaza and the West Bank and he is not about to "liberate" all the land that used to be called Palestine.

The leap that has been made is so large that the normally phlegmatic Rabin told members of his Labor Party today that he had "butterflies in my stomach."

Coming to Terms

It does not mean that he likes dealing with the P.L.O., he said, and aides added that none of this means the Prime Minister puts his trust in Arafat. But if there is to be peace with the Palestinians, the only negotiating partner available is the P.L.O., Rabin asserted.

"You don't make peace with friends," he said. "You make it with very unsavory enemies."

Peres, who guided the secret talks in Norway and who met with a senior P.L.O. official in Oslo last month, spoke more positively about the shift that has taken place, insisting that the Government had remained true to longstanding principles and to its commitment to Israeli security.

"We haven't changed -- it changed," he said, referring to the P.L.O. "Arafat is announcing that he opposes terrorism and will fight the terrorists. He recognizes Israel and its right to exist in peace."

From Clinton, Praise

On a visit to Cleveland, President Clinton added his endorsement, saying after a phone conversation with Rabin, "This is a very brave and courageous thing that has been done."

Still, as momentous as the breakthrough is, Israeli officials say with somewhat nervous sighs that now comes the difficult part, including hammering out essential details for Palestinian self-rule and contending with hard-line resisters on each side.

Although there were signs of rallying 'round the P.L.O. in the territories, including a march in Gaza City by several hundred Arafat supporters, widespread opposition remains among Palestinians who believe that they got too little from the Israelis and that self-rule will not lead to a state.

In Damascus, a radical Palestinian leader, Ahmed Jabril, said that 10 Syria-based opposition groups would seek to upend the agreement, adding, "We are capable of finding ways and means to do it." Moreover, no pledge by Arafat to curb violence is binding on militant Islamic groups like Hamas, a serious threat to the P.L.O.

Weary of Conflict

On the Israeli side, Government officials say that the people will support them, for they are tried of decades of conflict. But the officials acknowledge that they must persuade Israelis that the new course will not undermine their security.

After decades of viewing Arafat as a scraggly bearded devil, many Israelis will not easily negotiate the mental U-turn now required to treat him as a partner in peace. A widely shared opinion was expressed on television tonight by Ariel Sharon, the former general and opposition Likud Party elder. "There is room for reconciliation with the Palestinians," he said. "There is room for peace with them. There is no room for peace with Arafat."

Given such emotions, officials say it is not clear whether they will allow Arafat to move into Gaza and Jericho with other P.L.O. leaders expected to arrive in a few months.

As a further complication, Rabin is threatened with a possible walkout by Shas, the only religious party in his governing coalition. A day after its leader was forced to resign as Interior Minister in a corruption scandal, Shas was still on the Prime Minister's side. But if it leaves, Rabin will lose his assured majority in Parliament and may have to depend on Arab votes to win approval for his peace plan. While that would be legally valid, the absence of a clear Jewish majority could be politically damaging, Government officials acknowledge.

Problems for Arafat

Arafat has legislative problems as well. Technically, he must have more than just the approval of the P.L.O. executive committee, which he received today after days of delay caused by internal disputes over the wording of the mutual recognition accord. To alter the P.L.O. charter on this score he must also get a two-thirds majority of the Palestine National Council, a parliament-in-exile for the Palestinians. That is likely to involve still more delays and bitter fights.

With the clock ticking and convinced that time lost works against them, Israeli officials agreed to a short cut in the form of a solid commitment by the P.L.O. leadership to recognize Israel's right to exist, to resolve disputes through negotiations and not bombs, to assume responsibility for P.L.O. elements that resort to acts of violence and to discipline them.

But in return, the Israelis drove a hard bargain. Rabin, who was Defense Minister when the uprising erupted in 1987 and who vowed to crush it by breaking bones, was said to be especially insistent on curbing the uprising, which has ebbed considerably on its own. "It's almost a personal thing with him," one official said.

In response to this demand, Arafat said in his letter to the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Johan Jorgen Holst, that after the self-rule agreement is signed he will call on Palestinians in the territories to "take part in the steps leading to the normalization of life, rejecting violence and terrorism.

An even thornier problem delaying mutual recognition, Israeli officials said, was the language of the P.L.O.'s renunciation of offending sections of its covenant. The wording was finally nailed down only today. According to the Israelis, the P.L.O. had wanted to dispense with these sections by calling them "obsolete." In the end, it agreed to the more forceful construction of "inoperative and no longer valid."

All this was set down on pieces of paper lacking letterheads -- a protocol requirement that Israelis officials considered necessary because, they said, they are not on an equal plane with the stateless Palestinians.

Once the documents are signed, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators must flesh out their outlined agreement on Palestinian self-rule, or autonomy, in Gaza and the West Bank.

For the Palestinians, the goal is clear: a state of their own. The Rabin Government opposes a state, however, and says that it envisions eventual confederation between the Palestinian "entity" and Jordan.

A Pilot Project

The "declaration of principles" that is expected to be signed on Monday at the White House provides for immediate autonomy in Gaza and Jericho as a pilot project, tentatively to start in six months. Soon after, the Israelis say, they will hand the Palestinians responsibility for many functions of daily life elsewhere in the West Bank, but they will not pull back their forces, as they plan to do in Gaza and Jericho.

After an anticipated nine months or so, Palestinians, including those living in East Jerusalem, will elect a council to administer this autonomy in the territories. Israel, while withdrawing its troops from populated areas, will remain in charge of overall security, foreign relations, Israeli settlers living in the territories and the safety of Israelis who may pass through. In addition, the highly delicate question of Jerusalem's future will be left for later.

But much needs to be worked out on basic matters, such as how large the Jericho district is and what sort of cooperation will exist between the Israeli army and the "strong local police force" that the Palestinians are to create. Details must also be arranged on plans for economic cooperation.

"The signing of documents is only the beginning of a very difficult task and the daunting challenges that lie ahead," said Hanan Ashrawi, spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks that have continued in Washington while the real agreements were reached elsewhere.

Rabin also said that the agreement is only "a test case" and that much more remains to be done. But he said of the deal with the P.L.O., "I see this as the lowest risk in order to give peace a chance."

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September 14, 1993

MIDEAST ACCORD

Statements by Leaders at the Signing of the Middle East Pact

Following is a transcript of remarks by President Clinton, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Mahmoud Abbas, a P.L.O. negotiator, at the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement in Washington, as recorded by the New York Times. Arafat and Abbas spoke in Arabic, and portions of remarks by Rabin and Peres were in Hebrew. Clinton's closing remarks were recorded by the Federal News Service, a private transcription service, and provided by Reuters.

PRESIDENT CLINTON

Prime Minister Rabin, Chairman Arafat, Foreign Minister Peres, Mr. Abbas, President Carter, President Bush, distinguished guests. On behalf of the United States and Russia, co-sponsors of the Middle East peace process, welcome to this great occasion of history and hope. Today we bear witness to an extraordinary act in one of history's defining dramas -- a drama that began in a time of our ancestors when the word went forth from a sliver of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. That hallowed piece of earth, that land of light and revelation, is the home to the memories and dreams of Jews, Muslims and Christians throughout the world.

As we all know, devotion to that land has also been the source of conflict and bloodshed for too long. Throughout this century bitterness between the Palestinian and Jewish people has robbed the entire region of its resources, its potential and too many of its sons and daughters. The land has been so drenched in warfare and hatred, the conflicting claims of history etched so deeply in the souls of the combatants there, that many believe the past would always have the upper hand. Then, 14 years ago, the past began to give way when, at this place and upon this desk, three men of great vision signed their names to the Camp David accords. Today we honor the memories of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. And we salute the wise leadership of President Jimmy Carter.

Then, as now, we heard from those who said that conflict would come again soon, but the peace between Egypt and Israel has endured. Just so this bold new venture today, this brave gamble that the future can be better than the past, must endure.

Two years ago in Madrid another President took a major step on the road to peace by bringing Israel and all her neighbors together to launch direct negotiations, and today we also express our deep thanks for the skillful leadership of President George Bush.

Ever since Harry Truman first recognized Israel, every American President, Democrat and Republican, has worked for peace between Israel and her neighbors. Now the efforts of all who have labored before us bring us to this moment -- a moment when we dare to pledge what for so long seemed difficult even to imagine: that the security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people, and there will be more security and more hope for all.

Today the leadership of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization will sign a declaration of principles on interim Palestinian self-government. It charts a course toward reconciliation, between two peoples who have both known the bitterness of exile. Now both pledge to put old sorrows and antagonisms behind them and to work for a shared future shaped by the values of the Torah, the Koran and the Bible. Let us salute also today the Government of Norway, for its remarkable role in nurturing this agreement.

But above all, let us today pay tribute to the leaders who had the courage to lead their people toward peace, away from the scars of battle, the wounds and the losses of the past, toward a brighter tomorrow. The world today thanks Prime Minister Rabin, Foreign Minister Peres and Chairman Arafat.

That tenacity and vision has given us the promise of a new beginning. What these leaders have done now must be done by others. Their achievement must be a catalyst for progress in all aspects of the peace process. And those of us who support them must be there to help in all aspects, for the peace must render the people who make it more secure. A peace of the brave is within our reach. Throughout the Middle East there is a great yearning for the quiet miracle of a normal life. We know a difficult road lies ahead. Every peace has its enemies, those who still prefer the easy habits of hatred to the hard labors of reconciliation, but Prime Minister Rabin has reminded us that you do not have to make peace with your friends, and the Koran teaches that if the enemy inclines toward peace, do thou also incline toward peace.

Therefore, let us resolve that this new mutual recognition will be a continuing process in which the parties transform the very way they see and understand each other. Let the skeptics of this peace recall what once existed among these people. There was a time when the traffic of ideas and commerce and pilgrims flowed uninterrupted among the cities of the fertile crescent. In Spain, in the Middle East, Muslims and Jews once worked together to write brilliant chapters in the history of literature and science. All this can come to pass again.

Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Chairman, I pledge the active support of the United States of America to the difficult work that lies ahead.

The United States is committed to insuring that the people who are affected by this agreement will be made more secure by it and to leading the world in marshaling the resources necessary to implement the difficult details that will make real the principles to which you commit yourselves today. Together let us imagine what can be accomplished if all the energy and ability the Israelis and the Palestinians have invested into your struggle can now be channeled into cultivating the land and freshening the waters; into ending the boycotts and creating new industry; into building a land as bountiful and peaceful as it is holy. Above all, let us dedicate ourselves today to your region's next generation. In this entire assembly, no one is more important than the group of Israeli and Arab children who are seated here with us today.

Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Chairman, this day belongs to you. And because of what you have done, tomorrow belongs to them. We must not leave them prey to the politics of extremism and despair, to those who would derail this process because they cannot overcome the fears and hatreds of the past. We must not betray their future.

For too long the young of the Middle East have been caught in a web of hatred not of their own making. For too long they have been taught from the chronicles of war; now we can give them the chance to know the season of peace. For them we must realize the prophecy of Isaiah, that the cry of violence shall no more be heard in your land, nor wrack nor ruin within your borders. The children of Abraham, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, have embarked together on a bold journey. Together today with all our hearts and all our souls, we bid them Shalom. Salaam. Peace.

SHIMON PERES, Foreign Minister of Israel

Mr. President, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen: Mr. President, I would like to thank you and the great American people for peace and support. Indeed I would like to thank all those who have made this day possible. What we are doing today is more than signing an agreement; it is a revolution. Yesterday a dream, today a commitment.

The Israeli and the Palestinian peoples who fought each other for almost a century have agreed to move decisively on the path of dialogue, understanding and cooperation. We live in an ancient land and as our land is small, so must our reconciliation be great. As our wars have been long, so must our healing be swift. Deep gaps call for lofty breezes. I want to tell the Palestinian delegation that we are sincere, that we mean business. We do not seek to shape your lives or determine your destiny. Let all of us turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels. We shall pray with you. We shall offer you our help in making Gaza prosper and Jericho blossom again.

As we have promised, we shall negotiate with you a permanent settlement and with all our neighbors a comprehensive peace, peace for all. We shall support the agreement with an economic structure. We shall convert the bitter triangle of Jordanians, Palestinians and Israelis into a triangle of political triumph and economic prosperity.

We shall lower our barriers and widen our roads so goods and guests will be able to move freely all about the places holy and other places. This should be another Genesis. We have to build a new commonwealth on our old soil: a Middle East of the people and a Middle East for their children. For their sake we must put an end to the waste of arms races and invest our resources in education.

Ladies and gentlemen, two parallel tragedies have unfolded. Let us become a civic community. Let us bid once and for all farewell to wars, to tricks, to human misery, let us bid farewell to enmity and may there be no more victims on either side.

Let us build a Middle East of hope where today's food is produced and tomorrow's prosperity is guaranteed, a region with a common market, a Near East with a long-range agenda. We owe it to our own soldiers, to the memories of the victims of the Holocaust. Our hearts today grieve for the lost lives of young and innocent people yesterday in our own country. Let their memory be our foundation we are establishing today, a memory of peace on fresh and old tombs.

Suffering is first of all human. We also feel for the innocent loss of Palestinian lives. We begin a new day. The day may be long and the challenges enormous. Our calendar must meet an intensive schedule.

Mr. President, historically you are presiding over a most promising day in the very long history of our region, of our people. I thank all of you ladies and gentlemen, and let's pray together. Let's add hope to determination as all of us since Abraham believe in freedom, in peace, in the blessing of our great land and great spirit.

[Speaking in Hebrew ]. From the eternal city of Jerusalem, from this green, promising lawn of the White House, let's say together in the language of our Bible: "Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him that is near," sayeth the Lord, "and I will hear."

Thank you.

MAHMOUD ABBAS, P.L.O. Negotiator

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: In these historic moments with feelings of joy that are mixed with a maximum sense of responsibility regarding events that are affecting our entire region, I greet you and I greet this distinguished gathering. I hope that this meeting in Washington will prove to be the onset of a positive and constructive change that will serve the interests of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

We have come to this point because we believe that peaceful coexistence and cooperation are the only means for reaching understanding and for realizing the hopes of the Palestinians and the Israelis. The agreement we will sign reflects the decision we made in the Palestine Liberation Organization to turn a new page in our relationship with Israel.

We know quite well that this is merely the beginning of a journey that is surrounded by numerous dangers and difficulties and yet our mutual determination to overcome everything that stands in the way of the cause for peace, our common belief that peace is the only means to security and stability and our mutual aspiration for a secure peace characterized by cooperation -- all this will enable us to overcome all obstacles with the support of the international community. And here I would like to mention, in particular, the United States Government, which will shoulder the responsibility of continuing to play an effective and distinct role in the next stage so that this great achievement may be completed.

In this regard, it is important to me to affirm that we are looking forward with a great deal of hope and optimism to a date that is two years from today, when negotiations over the final status of our country are set to begin. We will then settle the remaining fundamental issues, especially those of Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements. At that time, we will be laying the last brick in the edifice of peace whose foundation has been established today.

Economic development is the principal challenge facing the Palestinian people after years of struggle during which our national infrastructure and institutions were overburdened and drained. We are looking to the world for its support and encouragement in our struggle for growth and development, which begins today.

I thank the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Russian Federation for the part they played and for their efforts and their sponsorship of the peace process. I also appreciate the role played by the Government of Norway in bringing about this agreement. And I look forward to seeing positive results soon on the remaining Arab-Israeli tracks so we can proceed together with our Arab brothers on this comprehensive quest for peace.

Thank you.

YITZHAK RABIN, Prime Minister of Israel

President of the United States, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen: This signing of the Israeli-Palestinian declaration of principle here today -- it's not so easy -- neither for myself as a soldier in Israel's war nor for the people of Israel, not to the Jewish people in the diaspora, who are watching us now with great hope mixed with apprehension. It is certainly not easy for the families of the victims of the war's violence, terror, whose pain will never heal, for the many thousands who defended our lives in their own and have even sacrificed their lives for our own. For them this ceremony has come too late.

Today on the eve of an opportunity, opportunity for peace and perhaps end of violence and war, we remember each and every one of them with everlasting love. We have come from Jerusalem, the ancient and eternal capital of the Jewish people. We have come from an anguished and grieving land. We have come from a people, a home, a family that has not known a single year, not a single month, in which mothers have not wept for their sons. We have come to try and put an end to the hostilities so that our children, our children's children, will no longer experience the painful cost of war: violence and terror. We have come to secure their lives and to ease the soul and the painful memories of the past -- to hope and pray for peace.

Let me say to you, the Palestinians, we are destined to live together on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who have attended their funerals and cannot look in the eyes of their parents; we who have come from a land where parents bury their children; we who have fought against you, the Palestinians -- we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough.

We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people -- people who want to build a home. To plant a tree. To love -- live side by side with you. In dignity. In empathy. As human beings. As free men. We are today giving peace a chance -- and saying to you and saying again to you: enough. Let us pray that a day will come when we all will say farewell to the arms. We wish to open a new chapter in the sad book of our lives together -- a chapter of mutual recognition, of good neighborliness, of mutual respect, of understanding. We hope to embark on a new era in the history of the Middle East. Today here in Washington at the White House, we will begin a new reckoning in the relations between peoples, between parents tired of war, between children who will not know war.

President of the United States, ladies and gentlemen, our inner strength, our high moral values, have been the right for thousands of years, from the book of the books. In one of which, we read: To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace. Ladies and gentlemen, the time for peace has come.

In two days the Jewish people will celebrate the beginning of a new year. I believe, I hope, I pray that the new year will bring a message of redemption for all peoples-- a good year for you, for all of you; a good year for Israelis and Palestinians; a good year for all the peoples of the Middle East; a good year for our American friends who so want peace and are helping to achieve it.

For Presidents and members of previous Administrations, especially for you, President Clinton, and your staff, for all citizens of the world, may peace come to all your homes. In the Jewish tradition it is customary to conclude our prayers with the word Amen. With your permission, men of peace, I shall conclude with the words taken from the prayer recited by Jews daily, and whoever of you who volunteer, I would ask the entire audience to join me in saying Amen. [Speaking in Hebrew ]. May He who brings peace to His universe bring peace to us and to all Israel. Amen.

YASIR ARAFAT, P.L.O. Chairman

In the name of God the most merciful, the passionate. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: I would like to express our tremendous appreciation to President Clinton and to his Administration for sponsoring this historic event, which the entire world has been waiting for. Mr. President, I am taking this opportunity to assure you and to assure the great American people that we share your values for freedom, justice, and human rights -- values for which my people have been striving.

My people are hoping that this agreement, which we are signing today, marks the beginning of the end of a chapter of pain and suffering which has lasted throughout this century. My people are hoping that this agreement which we are signing today will usher in an age of peace, coexistence and equal rights. We are relying on your role, Mr. President, and on the role of all the countries which believe that without peace in the Middle East, peace in the world will not be complete.

Enforcing the agreements and moving toward the final settlement, after two years to implement all aspects of U.N. resolutions 242 and 338 in all of their aspects, and resolve all the issues of Jerusalem, the settlements, the refugees and the boundaries, will be a Palestinian and an Israeli responsibility. It is also the responsibility of the international community in its entirety to help the parties overcome the tremendous difficulties which are still standing in the way of reaching a final and comprehensive settlement.

Now, as we stand on the threshold of this new historic era, let me address the people of Israel and their leaders, with whom we are meeting today for the first time. And let me assure them that the difficult decision we reached together was one that required great and exceptional courage.

We will need more courage and determination to continue the course of building coexistence and peace between us. This is possible. And it will happen with mutual determination and with the effort that will be made with all parties on all the tracks to establish the foundations of a just and comprehensive peace. Our people do not consider that exercising the right to self-determination could violate the rights of their neighbors or infringe on their security. Rather, putting an end to their feelings of being wronged and of having suffered an historic injustice is the strongest guarantee to achieve coexistence and openness between our two peoples and future generations.

Our two peoples are awaiting today this historic hope. And they want to give peace a real chance.

Such a shift will give us an opportunity to embark upon the process of economic, social and cultural growth and development. And we hope that international participation in that process will be as extensive as it can be. This shift will also provide an opportunity for all forms of cooperation on a broad scale and in all fields.

I thank you, Mr. President. We hope that our meeting will be a new beginning for fruitful and effective relations between the American people and the Palestinian people.

I wish to thank the Russian Federation and President Boris Yeltsin. Our thanks also go to Secretary [of State Warren ] Christopher and Foreign Minister [Andrei V. ] Kozyrev [of Russia ] to the Government of Norway and to the Foreign Minister of Norway, for the positive part they played in bringing about this major achievement.

I extend greetings to all the Arab leaders, our brothers, and to all the world leaders who contributed to this achievement.

Ladies and gentlemen, the battle for peace is the most difficult battle of our lives. It deserves our utmost efforts because the land of peace, the land of peace yearns for a just and comprehensive peace.

[Speaking in English] Mr. President, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

PRESIDENT CLINTON

We have been granted the great privilege of witnessing this victory for peace. Just as the Jewish people this week celebrate the dawn of a new year, let us all go from this place to celebrate the dawn of a new era, not only for the Middle East but for the entire world.

The sound we heard today, once again as in ancient Jericho, was of trumpets toppling walls, the walls of anger and suspicion between Israeli and Palestinian, between Arab and Jew. This time, praise God, the trumpets herald not the destruction of that city but its new beginning.

Now let each of us here today return to our portion of that effort, uplifted by the spirit of the moment, refreshed in our hopes and guided by the wisdom of the Almighty, who has brought us to this joyous day. Go in peace. Go as peacemakers.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES / May 15, 1948

Zionists Proclaim New State Of Israel;

Truman Recognizes It And Hopes For Peace;

Tel Aviv Is Bombed, Egypt Orders Invasion

By GENE CURRIVAN Special to The New York Times

Tel Aviv, Palestine, Saturday, May 15 -- The Jewish state, the world's newest sovereignty, to be known as the State of Israel, came into being in Palestine at midnight upon termination of the British mandate.

Recognition of the state by the United States, which had opposed its establishment at this time, came as a complete surprise to the people, who were tense and ready for the threatened invasion by Arab forces and appealed for help by the United Nations.

In one of the most hopeful periods of their troubled history the Jewish people here gave a sigh of relief and took a new hold on life when they learned that the greatest national power had accepted them into the international fraternity.

Ceremony Simple and Solemn

The declaration of the new state by David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the National Council and the first Premier of reborn Israel, was delivered during a simple and solemn ceremony at 4 P.M., and new life was instilled into his people, but from without there was the rumbling of guns, a flashback to other declarations of independence that had not been easily achieved.

The first action of the new Government was to revoke the Palestine White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration and land purchase.

In the proclamation of the new state the Government appealed to the United Nations "to assist the Jewish people in the building of its state and to admit Israel into the family of nations."

The proclamation added:

"We offer peace and amity to all neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and reconstitution of the Middle East."

World Jews Asked to Aid

The statement appealed to Jews throughout the world to assist in the task of immigration and development and in the "struggle for the fulfillment of the dream of generations -- the redemption of Israel."

Plans for the ceremony had been laid with great secrecy. None but the hundred or more invited guests and journalists was aware of the meeting until it started, and even the guests learned of the site only ten minutes before. It was held in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a white, modern-design two-story building. Above it flew the Star of David, which is the state's flag, and below, on the sidewalk, was a guard of honor of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

As photographers' bulbs flashed and movie cameras ground out reels of the scene, great crowds gathered and cheered the Ministers and other members of the Government as they entered the building. The security arrangements were perfect. Sten guns were brandished in every direction and even the roofs bristled with them.

The setting for the reading of the proclamation was a dropped gallery whose hall held paintings by prominent Jewish artists. Many of them depicted the sufferings and joys of the people of the Diaspora, the dispersal of the Jews.

The thirteen Ministers of the Government Council sat at a long dais beneath the photograph of Theodor Herzl, who in 1897 envisaged a Jewish state. Vertical pale blue and white flags of the state hung to both sides. To the left of the ministers and below them sat other members of the national administration. There are thirty-seven in all, but some were unable to get here from Jerusalem.

At 4 P.M. sharp the assemblage rose and sang the Hatikvah, the national anthem. The participants seemed to sing with unusual gusto and inspiration. The voices had hardly subsided when the "squat, white-haired chairman, Mr. Ben-Gurion, started to read the proclamation, which in a few hours was to transform most of those present from persons without a country to proud nationals. When he pronounced the words, "We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel," there was thunderous applause and not a few damp eyes.

After the proclamation had been read and the end of the White Paper and of its land laws pronounced, Mr. Ben-Gurion signed the document and was followed by all the other members of the administration, some by proxy. The last to sign was Moshe Shertok, the new Foreign Minister and the Jewish Agency's delegate to the United Nations. He was roundly applauded and almost mobbed by photographers.

The ceremony ended with everyone standing silently while the orchestral strains of the Hatikvah filled the room. Outside, the fever of nationalism was spreading with fond embraces, warm handshakes and kisses. Street vendors were selling flags, crowds gathered to read posted bulletins, and newspapers were being sold everywhere.

As the sabbath had started, there was not the degree of public rejoicing that there would have been any other day.

The proclamation was to have been read at 11 P.M. but was advanced to 4 because of the sabbath. Mr. Shertok explained that the proclamation had to be made yesterday because the mandate was to end at midnight and the Zionists did not want a split second to intervene between that time and the formal establishment of the state.

In the preamble to the declaration of independence the history of the Jewish people was traced briefly from its birth in the Land of Israel to this day. The preamble touched on the more modern highlights, including Herzl's vision of a state, acknowledgment of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and its reaffirmation by the League of Nations mandate and by the United Nations General Assembly resolution of Nov. 29, 1947.

It asserted that this recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish an independent state could not be revoked and added that it was the "self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign state."

The proclamation stated that as of midnight the National Council would act as a Provisional State Council and that its executive organ, the National Administration, would constitute a provisional government until elected bodies could be set up before Oct. 1.

Israel, the proclamation went on, will be open to immigration by Jews from all countries "of thei dispersion." She will develop the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants, it added, and will be based on precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets.

The new state, according to the proclamation, will uphold the "social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex" and will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture."

The statement pledged safeguarding of the sanctity and inviolability of shrines and holy places of all religions. It also contained a promise to uphold the principle of the United Nations.

There was great cheering and drinking of toasts in this blackened city when word was received that the United States had recognized the provincial Government. The effect on the people, especially those drinking late in Tel Aviv's coffee houses, was electric. They even ran into the blackness of the streets shouting, cheering and toasting the United States.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES / May 15, 1948

Proclamation of the New Jewish State

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tel Aviv, Palestine -- Following is the text of the Declaration of Independence of the Jewish state:

The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish People.

Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.

Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries oftheir dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and restoration of their national freedom.

Impelled by this historic association, Jews strove throughout the centuries to go back to the land of their fathers and regain statehood. In recent decades they returned in their masses. They reclaimed a wilderness, revived their language, built cities and villages and established a vigorous and ever growing community, with its own economic and cultural life. They sought peace, yet were ever prepared to defend themselves. They brought blessings of progress to all inhabitants of the country.

In the year 1897 the First Zionist Congress, inspired by Theodor Herzl's vision of a Jewish state, proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to a national revival in their own country.

Balfour Declaration Cited

This right was acknowledged by the Balfour Declaration of Nov, 2, 1917, and reaffirmed by the Mandate of the League of Nations, which gave explicit international recognition to the historic connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and their right to reconstitute their national home.

The Nazi holocaust which engulfed millions of Jews in Europe proved anew the urgency of the re-establishment of the Jewish state, which would solve the problem of Jewish homelessness by opening the gates to all Jews and lifting the Jewish people to equality in the family of nations.

Survivors of the European catastrophe, as well as Jews from other lands, claiming their right to a life of dignity, freedom and labor, and undeterred by hazards, hardships and obstacles, have tried unceasingly to enter Palestine.

In the second World War, the Jewish people in Palestine made a full contribution in the struggle of freedom-loving nations against the Nazi evil. The sacrifices of their soldiers and efforts of their workers gained them title to rank with the people who founded the United Nations. On Nov. 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution for re-establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine and called upon inhabitants of the country to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put the plan into effect.

This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their independent state may not be revoked. It is moreover, the self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign state.

Accordingly we, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist movement of the world, met together in solemn assembly by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people and of resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel.

We hereby declare that as from the termination of the mandate at midnight this night ofthe 14th to 15th of May, 1948, and until the setting up of duly elected bodies of the state in accordance with a Constitution to be drawn up by a Constituent Assembly not later than the first day of October, 1948, the present National Council shall act as the Provisional State Council and its executive organ, the National Administration, shall constitute the Provisional Government of the State of Israel.

Equality to All Promised

The State of Israel will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of shrines and holy places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

The State of Israel will be ready to cooperate with the organs and representatives of the United Nations in the implementations of the resolution of Nov. 29, 1947, and will take steps to bring about an economic union over the whole of Palestine.

We appeal to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building of its state and to admit Israel into the family of nations.

In the midst of wanton aggression we call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the state, with full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions, provisional or permanent.

We offer peace and amity to all neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate, with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and reconstitution of the Middle East.

Our call goes out to the Jewish people all over the world to rally to our side in the task of immigration and development and to stand by us in the great struggle for the fulfillment of the dream of generations--the redemption of Israel.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES / May 18, 1948

The Two Worlds of Palestine

By DANA ADAMS SCHMIDT

Jerusalem -- Palestine, which is now beginning a new and fateful chapter, is a land of extremes. In less than a day's drive, war permitting, one can drive from the opulent Jewish citrus groves on the Mediterranean coast through the harsh hills of Samaria and Judea, where Arab peasants till the narrow valleys and terraces, past the white and yellow-tinted limestone of the Holy City of Jerusalem down to the tropical verdure of Arab Jericho and the humid heat of the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea 1,300 feet below sea level.

In the course of that brief journey one sees not only the geographical range of this tiny strife-torn land, but the range of all the economic, political and cultural factors that enter into the present struggle between Jews and Arabs. It is a journey from an urban to a nomad way of life, from Zionist dynamism to Arab fatalism, from modernity to antiquity.

The Jews of Palestine are a microcosm of the civilizations of the world. Seventy-five per cent of them have concentrated in the plains, of which the greatest stretches from 118 miles down the coast from Lebanon to Gaza. Here they bought sand dunes and swamps from the Arabs (who thought them fools) and transformed them into productive farms. Here they built Tel Aviv, a modern brick and cement city of more then 200,000 and the greatest all-Jewish city in the world. It became the center of Jewish manufacturing, commerce and finance and of an ebullient cultural renaissance in the graphic arts, music and the theatre.

A smaller number of Jews penetrated into the Valley of Esdraelon, where they planted wheat and fodder, others to the Hula Valley farther north and a few to the Jordan Valley, a natural year-round hot-house.

A few have established themselves in the Negeb desert, which is covered with rich loess soil blown in from the east but waterless and inhabited mainly by the nomad Bedouin. Although the Begeb was once considered uncultivable, the Jews have set out in it a score of small experimental settlements linked by waterpipes. They have found the heavy desert dews a valuable ally, have grown watermelons and vegetables and consider the future of the area promising.

This Jewish population in Palestine cannot be supported by agriculture, however much certain Zionists may revere labor on the land. Only 17 per cent of the working Jews now live on the land; the rest are engaged in commerce and industry in the towns. The key to the future for them is industry.

The wartime demand permitted Jewish industry to double its output. Diamond cutting and polishing, specialized mechanical and clothing industries prospered.

The Jews may find an agricultural model in New Zealand, although their methods must be intensive instead of extensive. Industrially, their model may be Switzerland, although they are far from markets and resources.

The majority of immigrants have come and are still coming from Eastern Europe, long the center of Zionism. Of those present, 41 per cent are from Poland, 9 per cent from Russia, 4.2 per cent from Latvia and Lithuania. Because some of the earliest large-scale immigration came from Russia, Russian Jews figure prominently among the leaders in Palestine. David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, and more than half the Executive's members were born in Russia.

The influx of German and Austrian Jews (16 per cent) began after the rise of Hitler. During the war years there was a flow from the Balkans (13 per cent) and from Oriental countries, such as Iraq, Yemen and Syria (6 per cent). The United States has provided 2.3 per cent of the immigrants, most of the financial support, and since the war, international political leadership.

These Jews differ more from one another than do the most diverse elements within any single European country. There is little common ground culturally or any other way between, say, a German Jewish doctor and a Yemenite Jewish craftsman, or either of them and an orthodox Jew with side curls from the ghettos of Poland. German Jews and older immigrants from Poland and Russia form the backbone of the dominant and moderate Labor party. The newer Polish, Balkan and Oriental immigrants drift into the extremist organizations, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and Stern Group.

Four-fifths of them are Eastern European Ashkenazim, who speak Yiddish, one-tenth are Sephardics, who formerly spoke a mixture of old Castillian Spanish and Hebrew. Those from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia play leading parts in cultural life.

Oriental Jews who speak Arabic are the poorest and the least educated and provide a high proportion of laborers. Many of those who fled from persecution in Yemen arrived barefoot, with no property but the clothes on their backs.

The various groups rarely mix socially, each deriding the other for its peculiarities. Germans are called "Jackes" because as true bourgeois they stick to their jackets even in the Palestinian heat.

With the backgrounds of the ghetto, extermination, ostracization and other tragedies they are an inevitable welter of complexes that would provide a psychologist with a lifetime study. Certainly a persecution complex predominates, as revealed in daily dealings with the British.

But the new generation born in Palestine is different. It is aggressive, to be sure. But it is more the aggressiveness of the pioneer than the defensive aggressiveness often associated with Jews in other lands.

The common language of Hebrew--spoken by all the young people--is a bond between them, and differences of origin are submerged.

The slowest to be absorbed in this Jewish melting pot are the Oriental Jews. Although life in Palestine means economic rewards for them, they and their children find it hard to keep up with the Western habits of the others.

Although no immigration has ever been so carefully selective, the oversupply of intellectuals has proved troublesome. In 1936, there was one physician for every 161 inhabitants of Tel Aviv.

Preference given to children and young people has kept Palestinian Jewry a younger society even than that of the United States. Whereas in the United States one-quarter of the population is under 15 years and 20 per cent over 50, in Jewish Palestine two-fifths are under 15 and only 13 per cent are over 50.

Great wealth is rare. Although Jewish wages are two and a half times higher than among the Arabs, living standards are modest. Most people in Tel Aviv live three to a room. In the settlements not every couple can expect a room to itself.

The religious and cultural Zionism of the early settlers has gradually been merged into political Zionism and this into a socialistic outlook on life.

Labor is almost completely unionized. There are 200,000 labor union members, more than one-third of the total population. Wages and working conditions are strictly regulated.

Cooperatives play a vital though not exclusive part--producers' and consumers' cooperatives, credit and savings cooperatives, marketing cooperatives, cooperatives of bus, taxi and trucking companies. Nearly half the agricultural settlements are "kibbutzim" or socialistically organized.

Altogether, it may be said that the Zionist society of Palestine is diversified but predominantly European, economically socialistic, in religious views agnostic, politically acutely conscious, highly organized and centralized.

The Arabs of Palestine are an ancient society whose forefathers have lived here for 1,300 years. Among them family loyalties are everything. It is a society rudimentary in political and economic organization.

Centers of the Arab population are Sumaria, in whose hills Fawxi El Kawulji's Arab Liberation Army has made its headquarters; Galileo and Judea. The sagelike maquis grows in a thick mat around myriads of white boulders. Peasants make a poor living growing olives, wine grapes, figs and apricots.

Zionists commonly indulge in certain fallacies about their Arab neighbors.

Firstly, they imagine that opposition to Jewish immigration comes only from the effendls (the term originally applied to landowners) and other representatives of a vestigial feudalism. On the contrary, Arab opposition is wide and deep. Even though the upper classes alone are articulate, the Arab 'fellaheen' resents the "foreign intruders" and their innovations and has drunk his share of the new wine of Arab nationalism.

Secondly, many Zionists maintain that the Arabs of Palestine do not mind the influx of Jews and would live in peace with them but that "foreign Arabs" from other Arab states have stirred up trouble and led attacks.

In fact, although the Palestine Arab may be even less gifted militarily than others and Syrians and Iraqis constantly crop up in the news, most of the shooting in Palestine has been done by Palestinians.

There are Arabs in Palestine who reject the term "Palestinian Arab," maintaining that there is no such thing; that they are part of the ancient Syria that included the present Palestine. Trans-Jordan and the present republics of Syria and Lebanon from the seventh century until Britain and France broke up the region politically after World War I.

Arab nationalism has developed in the various states; but the most convinced of the nationalists consider themselves part of a single nation of 35,000,000 Arabs of the Middle East.

Thirdly, Zionists contend that the poverty-stricken Arab fellaheen and town dwellers of Palestine and other countries would welcome Zionist assistance in raising their standards of living if the feudal lords to whom most Arabs are indebted gave them a chance.

The standard of living of the Palestine Arabs has in fact been raised above that of other Arab countries. Sharing in the benefits of Zionist enterprise and inflated wartime food prices, the Arab peasant has paid off his debts for the first time in centuries.

But as his misery has eased, the Arab peasant has had more leisure to indulge in political sentiments and has become more anti-Zionist than ever.

One consequence of contact with the Jews and of improved living standards has been to weaken the hold of the Moslem religion on the Arabs. It is a trend noticeable wherever Western materialism has penetrated into Arab countries, and particularly in Palestine.

A quarter of a century ago almost every Moslem Arab wore his red "flowerpot" fez or Bedouin headdress and his long nightshirt-like gallabia. He responded faithfully to the call of the muezzin in the minarets of the mosques. The women were veiled and stayed at home.

Now Western dress is common, at least in the towns, and the mosques are less and less crowded. Women are more often seen unveiled in public.

A great weakness of Arab nationalism has been its concentration on such matters as sovereignty and language, almost to the exclusion of economic and social issues. Political parties and ideologies still scarcely exist except in Egypt and Lebanon. Public office has been passed around among the same families such as the Husseinis for several decades. Economic power is equally concentrated.

There are few points of similarity between the Jews and the Arabs, except that both have a common semitic origin and are dominated by burning but rival nationalisms.

Hence there are few points of contact even in times of peace. With all due allowance for the exceptions, rarely did an Arab enter a Jewish home. It was even more unusual for a Jew to enter an Arab home. The more intellectual Jew often went out of his way to make personal contact with

Arabs, but more often than not he was rebuffed. Friendly business relations remained just that.

Something of a bridge between the two was provided by widespread knowledge of English on both sides and by the ways of the Christian Arabs, who took more readily to Westernism.

Second-generation Jews who learned Arabic at school were more acceptable to Arab neighbors than their elders, but it was a rare Arab who learned Hebrew.

The differences in the lives of the two peoples is reflected in vital statistics. The Jews' annual birth rate is relatively high, 24 per 1,000; their death rate is 8.1 per 1,000.

The Moslem Arabs' birth rate is 48.6 per 1,000; their death rate is 20.7 per 1,000. The Christian Arab rates in between.

That means that, while Jewish natural increase is 15 per 1,000 a year, that of the Arabs is nearly double that.

The clash between the Zionist and Arab worlds in Palestine is going to have far-reaching consequences.

Immediately there is a strong likelihood of epidemics. Egypt and Syria had cholera epidemics last winter. Now the frontiers are practically open. Armed men and refugees stream back and forth without control. Already there has been an outbreak of typhus at Acre.

It is possible that in the near future Arabs will turn vengefully on Jews who live among them. There are 260,000 such Oriental Jews in the Middle East, another 400,000 in North Africa.

The flight of Palestine Arabs has made room for Jewish immigrants. Many of the Arabs will never return to their former homes. A Jewish majority in Palestine as a whole, which had seemed unattainable in view of the high Arab birth rate may now be achieved.

The disillusioned Arab volunteers and refugees steaming into surrounding countries are, meanwhile, asking questions. What was wrong with the leadership? With the nationalist slogans?

Why, they are asking, could not the Arabs support a military effort such as that of the Jews, organize supply lines, equip their men with the best?

There will be excuses, of course. The British will be blamed for selling the country to the Jews. Americans will be blamed for sending arms secretly to the Jew. "Diabolic" Jewish propaganda will be blamed. The occupation of certain Arab areas of Palestine by regular Arab troops may be hailed as victory.

But the old Arab leadership will have been challenged. Existing standards of nationalism, will have been challenged. The younger, more progressive nationalists will demand a change as never before.

Since the objectives of Zionist and of Arabic nationalism in Palestine were mutually exclusive, there were only two ways out.

Either the two peoples must be separated by partition, as proposed by the United Nations last Nov. 29, or one of the two must succumb. A combination of the two circumstances, to the disadvantage of the Arabs, has now become reality.

But the wider nationalism of the Arab world has by no means succumbed and it may be stimulated by defeat to self-examination and renewed efforts. Peace between the Arab and the Zionist worlds is not in sight.

Dana Adams Schmidt, a foreign correspondent for The Times, recently went to Palestine after reporting on conditions in Greece and other countries in the Near and Middle East.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES / October 30, 1956

Israelis Thrust Into Egypt And Near Suez; U.S. Goes To U.N. Under Anti-Aggression Pact

By MOSHE BRILLIANT Special to The New York Times

Tel Aviv, Israel -- An Israeli military force thrust into the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt today. It was reported to have reached within twenty miles of the Suez Canal.

Army sources said the Israelis were west of the crossroads where the road to Kuntilla branches off from the Suez-Quselma highway.

The Israelis were said to have halted there and to have dug in.

A Foreign Ministry statement said the operation had been started "to eliminate the Egyptian fedayeen [commando squad] bases in the Sinai Peninsula."

Army sources said the Israelis had smashed the Egyptian position at Kuntilla and Ras el Naqb at the southern end of the international border. The forces then advanced more than seventy-five miles.

No fighting was reported on the northern end of the border or in the Gaza strip, which is heavily populated.

'Too Big for a Reprisal'

Reports from the Sinai area described the fighting as "too big for a reprisal and too small for a war." Details of the fighting were not available tonight, but reliable sources said there had been no aerial bombardment of Egyptian positions.

It was not clear tonight whether the Israelis proposed to push on to the Suez Canal or withdraw to Israeli territory, as they have done after reprisal raids. A high official said: "I do not know. It depends on developments."

Yesterday the Israeli Government attributed its decision to call up reserves to what it said was a renewal of commando activities, to the Egyptian-Jordanian-Syrian military alliance negotiated last Wednesday, to Arab declarations that "their principal concern is a war of destruction against Israel" and to the movement of Iraqi forces to Jordan's border.

According to information here, the Egyptians have a considerable part of their Army in the Sinai Peninsula. Their land forces are reported equipped with the latest Soviet Stalin tanks as well as British Centurion.

Israeli sources said an Egyptian destroyer, two minelayers and another warship were seen approaching the Israeli coast off Haifa late this morning, a few hours before the fighting started on the Sinai Desert.

News of the invasion was made public in a communiquÈ from Army General Headquarters. This said:

"Units of the Israeli defense forces have penetrated and attacked fedayeen bases in the Kuntilla and Itas el Naqb area and have taken up positions to the west of the Nakhi road junction toward the Suez Canal.

"This operation was necessitated by the continuous Egyptian military attacks on citizens and on Israel land and sea communications, the purpose of which was to cause destruction and to deprive the people of Israel of the possibility of peaceful existence."

French Ambassador Pierre Gilbert was reported to have been critical when he sought information in an interview with Foreign Minister Golda Meir tonight.

British Ambassador Sir John Nichols was reported to have taken a position not far from that of the Americans, who had sharply condemned the Israeli military build-up.

Premier David Ben-Gurion replied this afternoon to two notes of warning from President Eisenhower. Mr. Ben-Gurion's message was delivered to United States Ambassador Edward B. Lawson. The note was reported to have explained the great danger to Israel from fedayeen attacks and from the establishment of a unified Egyptian-Jordanian-Syrian command under Egyptian control. This development was said here to presage a wider scope of fedayeen operations.

U. S. Begins Evacuation

Foreign military attachÈs were notified of the development at 8 o' clock tonight (1 P.M, Eastern standard time), one hour before the statement was issued to the press by Maj. David Landor, a Government spokesman.

The Israelis believed the time was ripe for action against Egypt because threatened Soviet

intervention was obviated by the Kremlin's troubles in Eastern Europe.

While the Israeli troops were moving, sixty wives and children of United States technical assistance officials were evacuated to Athens in a United States Army transport plane. Fifty more dependents of embassy personnel are being evacuated tomorrow.

Earlier today the United States embassy posted notices to 2,000 citizens registered with the consulate here. They were advised "to leave Israel without delay."

An embassy spokesman said commercial airlines and shipping companies had been approached about providing transportation facilities on a commercial basis.

The British and French embassies said they were not urging their nationals to evacuate.

Subterfuge Used

The decision to move into Egypt was taken at a Cabinet meeting this morning. As a subterfuge, it was officially stated after the session that the meeting had been inconclusive and that it would be resumed Wednesday. The vote in the Cabinet was not made public.

Earlier today as Army spokesman reported a well had been blown up between [MISSING TEXT] and Nie Am north of the tip of the Gaza Strip. The spokesman reported encounters with fedayeen in this same area during the night.

Reports from the area said an Army patrol near [missing text] challenged Arab raiders in the darkness at 3 A.M. The Arabs opened fire and the Israelis shot back.

When the shooting subsided, the Israelis captured two men and found two wounded Arabs in fields. They found a bloody trial of other men who appear to have been wounded and got away.

Israeli who interrogated the prisoners said one of them spoke in an Egyptian dialect. He refused to give his name. The others were dressed in uniforms of the fedayeen and were Palestinian Arabs. They said the first man, known to them as Yusuf, commanded the group. They said they crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip at midnight.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES / June 11, 1967

Cease-Fire in Syria Accepted; Israelis Hold Border Heights; Soviet Breaks Ties to Israel

By SYDNEY GRUSON Special to The New York Times

Tel Aviv, June 10--Israeli sources said today that after less than 30 hours of fierce fighting Israel's armed forces had won a major victory over Syria.

It has been a bloody and bitter fight in the north up onto high ground unlike the rolling terrain that the Israelis faced in their lightning advance earlier in the week against the forces of the United Arab Republic and Jordan.

The fighting ended at 6:30 P.M. Israeli time with the acceptance by both sides of the cease-fire demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

The Israeli forces at that time, according to the state radio here, were on a line running through Masadah, El Quneitra and Butmiyah, with the deepest point about 12 miles into Syria.

Settlements Protected

This was far enough east for the Israelis to feel assured that the score of settlements under heavy bombardment all week now are safe from further harassment.

The end of the fighting on the third front of the six-day war came with every one of Israel's major objectives achieved.

She has cleared the Egyptians from the Sinai Peninsula and from the Gaza Strip, taking control of the waterways leading from the Red Sea to Elath, the southern port; "liberated" the northern settlements, united the two halves of Jerusalem and destroyed whatever may have lingered of the myth of Arab military strength, particularly that to the United Arab Republic.

Maj. Gen. Moshe Dayan, Israel's Defense Minister, and Lieut. Gen. Odd Bull, the United Nations representative, met here early this afternoon on arrangements for the cease-fire. The Israelis offered their full cooperation, according to sources here.

United Nations observers on both sides are scheduled to go to forward positions tomorrow in an attempt to make arrangements for the supervision of the cease-fire. The observers from the Syrian side will come from Damascus and those from the Israeli side from the Daughters of Jacob Bridge north of Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee).

Russian-speaking foreign correspondents on the northern front reported that they had overheard conversations in Russian, indicating the presence of Soviet advisers with the Syrian troops. The Israelis would not comment on the possible presence of the Russians.

Soviet army officers have been known to advise and train Syrian units, particularly tank and artillery forces. A great deal of Syria's military equipment is Soviet.

The Israelis regretted the break in relations announced today but were undeterred by it. The Syrians, in Israeli eyes, have been the main pawns of the Russians in the Middle East, the ones on whom the Russians could rely more steadily than on President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic, with his ambitions of Arab leadership and pre-eminence in the so-called nonaligned world.

All the southwestern corner of Syrian is in Israeli hands, including the steeply rising high ground that extends from below sea level around Lake Tiberias to 3,000 feet around El Quneitra.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES / March 27, 1979

Egypt and Israel Sign Formal Treaty, Ending a State of War After 30 Years; Sadat and Begin Praise Carter's Role

By BERNARD GWERTZMAN Special to The New York Times

Washington -- After confronting each other for nearly 31 years as hostile neighbors, Egypt and Israel signed a formal treaty at the White House today to establish peace and "normal and friendly relations."

On this chilly early spring day, about 1,500 invited guests and millions more watching television saw President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin for Israel put their signatures on the Arabic, Hebrew and English versions of the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country.

President Carter, who was credited by both leaders for having made the agreement possible, signed, as a witness, for the United States. In a somber speech he said, "Peace has come."

The First Step of Peace

"We have won, at last, the first step of peace--a first step on a long and difficult road," he added.

Later, at a state dinner, Mr. Begin suggested that Mr. Carter be given the Nobel Peace Prize, and Mr. Sadat agreed.

At the signing ceremony, all three leaders offered prayers that the treaty would bring true peace to the Middle East and end the enmity that has erupted into war four times since Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948.

By coincidence, they all referred to the words of the Prophet Isaiah.

"Let us work together until the day comes when they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks," Mr. Sadat said in his paraphrase of the biblical text.

'No More War,' Begin Says

Mr. Begin, who gave the longest and most emotional of the addresses, exclaimed: "no more war, no more bloodshed, no more bereavement, peace unto you, shalom, saalam, forever."

"Shalom" and "salaam" are the Hebrew and Arabic words for "peace."

The Israeli leader, noted for oratorical skill, provided a dash of humor when in the course of his speech he seconded Mr. Sadat's remark that Mr. Carter was "the unknown soldier of the peacemaking effort." Mr. Begin said, pausing, "I agree, but as usual with an amendment"--that Mr. Carter was not completely unknown and that his peace effort would "be remembered and recorded by generations to come."

Since Mr. Begin was known through the negotiations as a stickler for details, much to the American side's annoyance, Mr. Carter seemed to explode with laughter at Mr. Begin's reference to "an amendment."

Minutes later, Mr. Begin was deeply somber as he put on the Jewish skull cap and quoted in Hebrew from Psalm 126.

The signing was followed by an outdoor dinner on the South Lawn at the White House for 1,300 guests.

The treaty was the result of months of grueling, often frustrating negotiations that finally were concluded early this morning when a final compromise was reached on the last remaining issue—a timetable for Israel to give up Sinai oil-fields.

Under the treaty, Israel will withdraw its military forces and civilians from the Sinai Peninsula in stages over three years. Two-thirds of the area will be returned within nine months, after formal ratification documents are exchanged. The ratification process is expected to begin in about two weeks.

In return for Israel's withdrawal, Egypt has agreed to end the state of war and to establish peace. After the initial nine-month withdrawal is completed, Egypt and Israel will establish "normal and friendly relations" in many fields, including diplomatic, cultural and economic relations.

Breakthrough at Camp David

The outline for the peace treaty was achieved in September when Mr. Carter, Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin met at Camp David, Md., for 13 days. In addition to the treaty, they also agreed on the framework for an accord to provide self-rule to the more than one million Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied areas of the West bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip.

The Camp David accords were opposed by most countries in the Arab world for two reasons. The Arabs regarded the decision by Mr. Sadat to sign a peace treaty with Israel as a betrayal of the Arab cause, since it suggested that Egypt would no longer be willing to go to war against Israel to help Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians to regain territory.

Arabs also viewed the self-rule agreement for Palestinians as insufficient because it did not guarantee the creation of a Palestinian state.

As a result of that opposition, today's signing was greeted by criticism throughout the Arab world. Echoes of that were heard in Washington, where about a thousand Arabs demonstrated in Lafayette Park, several hundred yards from the signing ceremony. Their anti-Sadat chants could be heard at the White House.

"We must not minimize the obstacles that still lie ahead," Mr. Carter said. "Differences still separate the signatories to this treaty from each other and also from some of their neighbors who fear what they have just done.

"To overcome these differences, to dispel those fears, we must rededicate ourselves to the goal of a broader peace with justice for all who have lived in a state of conflict in the Middle East.

"We have no illusions--we have hopes, dreams, prayer, yes--but no illusions."

Mr. Carter read out a long passage that turned on a metaphor of peace being waged like war. It was later disclosed by the White House that the section was quoted from an essay written by the Rev. Walker L. Knight in the House Mission Magazine of the Southern Baptist Convention.

At the end of the ceremony Mr. Carter, Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin grasped each other in a three-way handclasp. Despite the show of cordiality, there were signs that differences between Egypt and Israel were far from over.

In his speech, Mr. Sadat never referred to Mr. Begin, whom he reportedly does not like personally. By contrast, Mr. Sadat praised Mr. Carter as "the man who performed the miracle."

"Without any exaggeration, what he did constitutes on of the greatest achievements of our time," President Sadat said.

In the printed text of his speech, Mr. Sadat made a strong appeal to Mr. Carter to lend "support and backing" to the Palestinians and reassure them that they would be able "to take the first step on the road to self-determination and statehood."

Sadat Cites 'a Grave Injustice'

The following was in the text of Mr. Sadat's address, but he did not read it publicly:

"No one is more entitled to your support and backing than the Palestinian people. A grave injustice was inflicted upon them in the past. They need a reassurance that they will be able to take the first step on the road to self-determination and statehood.

"A dialogue between the United States and the representatives of the Palestinian people will be a very helpful development. On the other hand, we must be certain that the provisions of the Camp David framework on the establishments of a self-governing authority with full autonomy are carried out. There must be a genuine transfer of authority to the Palestinians in their land. Without that, the problem will remain unsolved."

The remarks about the Palestinians would have been provocative to Mr. Begin, who has declared he will never permit a Palestinian state to be established. He has called the Palestine Liberation Organization the most "barbaric" group since the Nazis.

Later, Mohammed Hakki, the Egyptian Embassy's spokesman, said that the section on the

Palestinians, which was on page seven of the printed text, had been "inadvertantly" omitted because Mr. Sadat had turned two pages, instead of one, and accidently skipped that portion.

Mr. Begin's speech seemed highly charged with personal emotions, especially in two separate allusions to Jerusalem. These amounted to a reassertion of the Israeli stand on Jerusalem, in a context that was likely to prove embarrassing to Mr. Sadat.

The Israeli Prime Minister said that it was "the third greatest day in my life." The first, he said, was the day of Israel's independence, May 14, 1948, and the second "was when Jerusalem became one city and our brave, perhaps most hardened soldiers, the parachutists, embraced with tears and kissed the ancient stones of the remnants of the wall destined to protect the chosen place of God's glory."

This was a reference to Israel's capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war and Israel's subsequent annexation of that part of the city to become part of Israeli Jerusalem.

A major point of difference between Israel and the Arabs is the future of Jerusalem, with the Arabs, including Egypt, insisting that Israel must relinquish control over the eastern sector, and Israel's declarations that it will never yield it.

Last night, Mr. Sadat underscored the continuing problem when, in the course of a 90-minute meeting with Mr. Begin, he invited the Israeli Prime Minister to make a one-day trip to Cairo next Monday but declined an invitation to visit Jerusalem.

Mr. Sadat visited Jerusalem in November 1977, and it was that dramatic trip that started the process leading to today's treaty signing.

Egyptian officials said that Mr. Sadat wanted to put off another trip to Israel until progress was achieved on the Palestinian negotiations, which are to start in about six weeks.

The peace treaty negotiations went though a series of ups and downs and surprises.

They began in October in Washington with expectations of an early conclusion. Although the basic treaty text was approved by both Egypt and Israel by early December, three months more were needed to obtain agreement on differing interpretations of the treaty--the subject of a separate document of "agreed minutes"--and over issues such as when ambassadors would be exchanged and target dates for beginning and concluding the Palestinian self-rule negotiations.

Mr. Carter finally resolved most of the questions during a weeklong trip to the Middle East earlier this month.

Even though both Governments approved the treaty, it was not completed until late last night when Mr. Begin and Mr. Sadat agreed that the Sinai oilfield would be returned to Egypt seven months after the treaty was ratified, instead of the nine months Israel had preferred and the six months Egypt had earlier asked.

In addition, Mr. Begin agreed to turn over the El Arish area within two months instead of the three months originally proposed by Israel.

An arrangement was also made to insure Israel a right to buy oil from the fields without interruption.

Even this morning, in the final draftings, differences arose over whether to call a body of water the Gulf of Aqaba or the Gulf of Eilat. The Arabic and English texts refer to it as "Aqaba," the name of the Jordanian port by that name. The Hebrew version calls it Eilat, after the Israeli port adjacent to Aqaba.

The White House made public the texts of all the documents included in the peace treaty package. These include the actual preamble, nine articles, three annexes and one appendix that comprise the actual treaty text. In addition, there is a document of "agreed minutes" covering differing interpretations of the treaty.

A letter signed by Mr. Begin and Mr. Sadat--and covering the controversial "linkage" question of when negotiations on the Palestinian self-rule questions would begin--one month after ratification of the treaty--and when the negotiations would conclude--about a year afterwards--was also released, as were certain clarification letters from Mr. Carter and maps.

July 12, 1999


As Barak and Arafat Meet, Hopes for Peace Resurface


By DEBORAH SONTAG

EREZ CROSSING, Gaza -- At this sun-baked juncture between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the first Israeli-Palestinian summit meeting in seven months began Sunday with an embrace and an exchange of gifts.

Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, presented Ehud Barak, the new Prime Minister of Israel, with a dove-shaped Hanukkah menorah. Barak gave Arafat a leather boxed set of the Koran and the Bible.

And then the two men, a retired guerrilla fighter and a retired general who had spent most of their lives in violent conflict, engaged in a 65-minute ice-breaker of a conversation, which seemed to go swimmingly. When they emerged, Barak discreetly grabbed Arafat, who looked frail, by the elbow of his fatigues and helped him up steps onto a stage.

Standing side by side at lecterns, both leaders professed that a new era of peacemaking lay ahead, one in which they would be partners. Arafat nodded vigorously as Barak, with pursed lips and a resolute glare, said he was "determined to overcome all the obstacles."

The rhetoric and the body language signaled a radical shift in the tense, hostile relations that marked the tenure of Barak's predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, even if the meeting produced good chemistry more than anything tangible.

Meeting Arafat just five days after he assumed office, Barak did allay an anxiety of the Palestinians by promising that he would move quickly to carry out the most recent peace agreement, the so-called Wye River memorandum, named for the Maryland site where it was negotiated. The agreement has been frozen since December.

But Barak did not engage another of Arafat's chief concerns, about the recent expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. He repeated his coalition's platform, saying that there would be no new settlements and no demolition of existing ones. And he deferred a substantive conversation on that and all other issues until after his return from a one-week trip to Washington that starts on Thursday.

Saying that Barak's resounding election victory in May had raised hopes for peace throughout the region, Arafat addressed the Israeli Prime Minister as "my friend and my partner."

"I am confident today that together we can give the peace process seriously and truly the chance it deserves," Arafat said. "It's time to put an end to the cycle of violence and confrontation."

Answering in kind, Barak sounded determinedly, even lyrically, hopeful. He did, though, say also that a renewed peacemaking effort would inevitably have "ups and downs and crises."

" Chairman," he said, using Arafat's title as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, "fathers, mothers and children, Palestinians and Israelis alike, are waiting, expecting us, the leaders, to provide them with a safer, better future. We should find every drop of determination and leadership in our own souls to do the job and change the landscape of this region."

Two days after taking office last week, Barak set off on a whirlwind diplomatic tour intended to kick start the stagnant peace effort. He began with a cordial meeting with Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, on Friday, and, following Sunday's meeting, he will see King Abdullah of Jordan and President Suleyman Demirel of Turkey before flying to the United States.

For the Palestinians, this first meeting with Barak was fraught with expectations. They wanted not only a change in atmospherics, which they definitely got, but a promise that some tangible benefits would be forthcoming. Like Barak, Arafat is more patient than those who surround him, but the Palestinian people are frustrated and demanding a peace dividend from their aging leader.

"I was very moved by their beautiful words," said Mohammed Jabr, a Ramallah resident, who watched the event on television. "But now that I have wiped away the tears of my emotions, I would like to see some actions."

Last December, about a week before the Israelis were supposed to turn over a large chunk of the West Bank, Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, suspended compliance with the Wye River memorandum after carrying out the first of its three phases. He said that the Palestinians were failing to meet their obligations to improve security.

When Barak was elected on a peace platform, the Palestinians expected him to immediately thaw out the frozen Wye agreement, which provided interim steps to peace, like the return of land and prisoners. But, instead, he unnerved them by saying he would prefer to delay carrying out Wye until the pending final status accords were negotiated. That way, the final negotiations could begin immediately and all the issues, including land, Jerusalem, and the return of refugees, could be looked at as a whole, he said.

Sunday, Arafat demanded that the Wye River accord be carried out.  And Barak said it would be; Israeli Army officials are reportedly making preparations for the next hand-over of land -- about 7 percent of the West Bank, reportedly in the Ramallah area.

Barak may have made some headway, too. Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian Cabinet Minister, said after the meeting that if the next phase of the Wye agreement were carried out swiftly, the Palestinians would consider moving into the final status talks before the third phase -- the hand-over of a final 13 percent of land, reportedly in the Hebron area -- was undertaken.

"We will implement Wye and we will coordinate with the Chairman and the Palestinian Authority the way by which the advancement of the final status negotiations will be combined with Wye's implementation," Barak said.

Beside the land, some other components of Wye, like the approval of a seaport in Gaza and the release of more political prisoners, could probably be carried out relatively quickly.

Arafat demanded that Israel immediately stop all Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank, calling it "illegal and destructive to the peace process." But the composition of Barak's coalition, which includes the settlers' party, two ultra-Orthodox parties and a relatively hawkish Russian immigrant party, would make it difficult for him to take too hard a line on the settlements.

And the settlers' organizations, whose leaders say they have tried in vain to see Barak, are gearing up to test him.

"The really painful problem that should be troubling the Prime Minister is whether we're going to evacuate settlements, whether thousands of Jews will be evacuated from their homes," Pinchas Wallerstein, a settler leader, told Israeli Army Radio. "Yes or no?"

The Palestinians have also been concerned that Barak would ignore them, devoting more energy to pursuing peace with Syria. Barak, however, has said that he will seek peace on both fronts at once in his ambitious pursuit of harmony in the whole region.

Sunday, Arafat surprisingly went out of his way to endorse the total regional approach. He said he hoped to see "peace on all tracks, including Syria and Lebanon."

Repeatedly, Arafat referred to the new Israeli Prime Minister as a possible heir to the partnership he once forged with Yitzhak Rabin, the late Prime Minister who was a mentor to Barak.

In the style of Rabin, Barak chose to welcome Arafat Sunday by descending a stairway from the military compound building where he was waiting and striding to greet the Palestinian leader.

Barak, dressed in a navy blue suit, put his arm around Arafat, who was clad in his traditional olive-drab khakis, with a kaffiyeh scarf wrapped around his head, shook his hand, and they set off into what is bound to be a complicated relationship.

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September 4, 2000 In a Divided Israel, Thousands Rally for the Ex-Shas Party Leader as He Goes to Jail By DEBORAH SONTAG RAMLE, Israel, Sept. 3 -- It was quite a send-off for a felonious politician. Alongside a drab prison, on a huge stage erected for a going-away party, the rabbis took their seats. In the crowd below, acolytes of Aryeh Deri, the former leader of the Orthodox Shas Party, danced rhapsodically as a religious rock group warmed up with a few electric bars of last year's hit song, "He's Innocent." Thousands chanted "Police state!" under the impassive surveillance of blue-uniformed Israeli police officers. And that was just the beginning of a three-hour rally that culminated in Mr. Deri's solemn march from dais to prison. Accompanied by a phalanx of officers, he clung to the rabbis' parting gift, a velvet-covered Torah scroll to keep him company during his three-year sentence for corruption. While the clanging prison door seemed to seal his downfall, the crowd saw him elevated instead, from charismatic politician to "tzaddik," or righteous man. "Aryeh Deri is a symbol for all of us who were born in Morocco and Iran and Iraq and Egypt," said Ayala Yosef, 37, a mother of five. "Today represents the apex of the persecution they inflicted on him throughout his political career for standing up for us. But it will backfire. Shas will only grow because they put him in jail." That is far from certain. Weakened by the loss of Mr. Deri's charismatic leadership, by the taint of his conviction and by internal conflicts, Shas has had a rocky year under its new leader, Eli Yishai. Shas pulled out of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's government several months ago. Now, with Mr. Deri behind bars, Mr. Yishai and the party's rabbis will try to figure out what lies ahead for them and whether the party's fate is unbound from Mr. Deri's. After sequestering himself in religious studies for the last year, Mr. Deri, 41, pronounced his political career over. But he would be eligible to run for Parliament after serving his term, and he could even become a cabinet minister again in 10 years. "I came all the way from New York to see him off to prison," said Yoram Siman-tov, an Israeli immigrant who lives in Queens. "And I will return again in a few years to welcome him out. I'm a frequent flier." Over the last 15 years, Mr. Deri built from scratch a political, social and religious movement that blossomed into a linchpin political party and Israel's third largest. Shas's leadership is Orthodox, but its adherents include many traditional, but not strictly religious, Jews of Middle Eastern descent who are drawn to the party's second identity as an ethnic pride movement. Along the way, as they developed a sizable religious school system and social service program, Mr. Deri and his associates took advantage of his position as a public servant, according to the judges who convicted him last year of fraud and bribery. He appealed the conviction and lost. The case brought to the surface ethnic, religious and class tensions. Many secular Israelis saw Mr. Deri's behavior as a threat to the rule of law by the leader of a party that answers to divine law first. Many Shas supporters saw the legal system's behavior as an elite crusade to bring down a powerful Moroccan-born Jew. Today his supporters contrasted Mr. Deri's conviction with the state's decision not to prosecute Ezer Weizman, the former president, who accepted substantial cash gifts from a businessman. "Look what color can do," today's posters said, comparing Mr. Weizman's supposed self-imposed punishment -- retirement to his beach house in Ceasarea -- with Mr. Deri's jail term. Sephardic Jews here often refer to themselves as black and to members of the Ashkenazic elite, like Mr. Weizman, as white. At today's rally, Mr. Deri asked forgiveness from everyone whose path he had crossed in the recent past and urged his followers to "rechannel the pain they've caused us into continuing the Jewish revolution." A leading rabbi, Reuven Elbaz, pronounced the day "Bastille Day for the Sephardic community." Mr. Deri faded from public life after the elections last spring, but the tensions raised by his trial did not fade. They were worsened by Shas's difficult relationship with Mr. Barak. After Shas resigned from his government, the prime minister announced a "civil revolution" to divest the religious parties and authorities of their entrenched power. Today, his cabinet voted to dismantle the Ministry of Religious Affairs, a longtime power base of the religious parties. Those recent political developments fueled the anti-establishment sentiment at Mr. Deri's goodbye party today. Highlighting the increasingly bitter relationship between secular Israelis and Shas, several motorized hang-gliders zoomed back and forth over the rally with pointed messages: "Cursed be the one who takes the bribes," said one banner, citing a verse from the Bible. "This is the civil revolution of Ehud Barak," said Mordechai Ohayon, 25, pointing skyward. "He will create a government of the secular elite that holds its cabinet meetings on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv, with pork chops for all his ministers." Sheinkin street is considered the epicenter of secular Israel. Most mainstream Israeli newspapers denounced "Prison Day" for furthering a cult of persecution around Mr. Deri. "Felon, not martyr," said a Jerusalem Post editorial. "It behooves the Sephardi party's leaders to understand that the facile canonization of a criminal is, in essence, an insufferable attack on the rule of law." The mood today was both frantic and festive, as thousands of Orthodox men and women -- segregated by sex -- prayed, sang and danced under the broiling summer sun. Mr. Deri arrived at the rally -- and at prison -- more than an hour late. Traffic from Jerusalem to this city outside Tel Aviv was tied up by the convoy that accompanied him, by police roadblocks and by some Shas roadblocks with burning tires. Hostility toward the police, and toward journalists, was high, and rabbis kept reminding the crowd that "they are Jews, too." Several journalists were pelted with stones, and a few were wounded. The police used horses to disperse the crowd. "If we were a different party, the prison would be in flames," Rabbi Elbaz said, praising the crowd's restraint. "But we're going to show them all what courtesy really means."

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March 9, 2002

THE DIPLOMACY

U.S. Shifts Gears in Mideast Policy

By TODD S. PURDUM

ASHINGTON, March 8 — For months, the Bush administration's calculus on the Middle East boiled down to this: rising Israeli-Palestinian violence was brutal but did not threaten strategic American interests, and it was bound to ease in time, paving the way for resumption of peace efforts.

On Thursday, President Bush effectively acknowledged that those calculations were wrong: The violence is worse than ever, it threatens the Bush administration's broader Arab alliances in the war on terrorism and possible action against Iraq, and the riskiest thing of all now might be to do nothing — even if there is nothing much new to do.

So Mr. Bush announced that his special envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, would return to the Middle East next week for the first time in 60 days. Administration officials acknowledged today that Mr. Bush had no new secret plan, only signs from the parties that they were prepared to resume talks.

Indeed, under American pressure, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel today dropped his longstanding demand for seven days of quiet before implementation of an American-brokered security plan that includes a cease-fire.

That plan, advanced last year by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has never been made public, but officials have said it includes an immediate cessation of hostilities, an Israeli troop pullback from Palestinian population centers and Palestinian arrests of militants as precursors to a broader peace plan drafted by an international commission led by former Senator George J. Mitchell.

A senior administration official said that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had been pushing Mr. Sharon in phone calls to move forward, even without a lull in the violence, for the last two weeks, and that when both Mr. Sharon and the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, agreed to do so, the time was ripe to send General Zinni.

"Zinni's goal is to get the parties to implement the Tenet security work plan steps immediately, to get them to take steps even before he gets there," the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said today.

But no one pretends the effort will be easy. Mr. Bush had no sooner lamented "the tragic loss of life and the escalating violence," and announced the Zinni mission on Thursday, than the region erupted in the deadliest day of fighting in 17 months. Most of the dead were Palestinians killed in Israeli raids after an attack on a Jewish settlement. Mr. Boucher, in unusually sharp words, demanded an immediate halt to Israel's killings of civilians.

After more than a year of standoffishness and fitful involvement, the Bush administration finds itself back where it was last February, when Secretary Powell made his first trip abroad to the Middle East and quickly found discussions on broader issues like economic sanctions against Iraq subsumed by the violence. Now Vice President Dick Cheney is embarking on an 12-nation trip to discuss far harsher action on Iraq, against the backdrop of even worse violence.

The brutal reality of the seemingly intractable conflict only underscored comments by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in an open meeting at the Pentagon on Thursday. Mr. Rumsfeld said the administration's "efforts have been serious," but his comments also seemed to reflect fresh awareness of the dangers of inaction.

"You have to work it, you have to try to keep seeing that it's not getting worse," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It is unlikely you're going to be able to solve it, to be perfectly honest. Not impossible, but it's very, very difficult. But if you're not trying to work the problem, it can get worse and deteriorate into a much more lethal conflict."

No one can better attest to the disappointments of even robust engagement than General Zinni. Secretary Powell first sent him to the region last November and he was greeted with a furious wave of Palestinian attacks and a crushing Israeli response. His second mission, in January, produced what he described then as "real opportunities for peace," but was overshadowed by Israel's seizure of a 50-ton shipload of Iranian-supplied arms bound for the Palestinian Authority.

General Zinni came home from that mission and the administration had repeatedly said he would not go back until the violence lessened.

But, as the violence worsened, General Zinni himself held out hope. "I think they are pretty close to rock bottom," he said in a recent interview, before it was clear he would return to the region. "That's when opportunity presents itself."

For months, many Middle East analysts have faulted the Bush administration for failing to put forward a more specific plan for moving toward peace, perhaps one that simply repackaged ideas from the Clinton administration-sponsored talks that most experts agree will form the basis of an eventual deal.

But a senior administration official today dismissed that as unrealistic, even if Mr. Bush had accepted it, because Mr. Clinton's Camp David peacemaking was conducted before Mr. Sharon came to office. "Therefore, we've sort of got to start fresh," the official said, adding: "As things happen, clearly we'll be informed by where people move now."

Whatever goals the administration had for Middle East peace have also been caught up in the president's No. 1 priority after Sept. 11: the campaign against terrorism.

"This White House did not understand that the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict was taking its toll on the American leadership in the long- term war on terrorism," said Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East Forum at the Council on Foreign Relations.

James B. Steinberg, former deputy national security adviser in the Clinton White House, said it was now clear that the violence, left unchecked, could impede the administration's larger hopes for toppling Saddam Hussein and assuring stability throughout the Middle East.

"It's not to say that the violence justifies or is a cause of the terrorism," he said. "But it's simply a political reality for the governments in the region that they cannot be seen to support the United States in potential military action against another Arab state when something that's a very important issue to them is seen as not being attended to."

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March 9, 2002

News Analysis: U.S. Envoy's Return Is a Setback for Sharon

By SERGE SCHMEMANN

ERUSALEM, March 8 — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon put the best face on the Bush administration's decision to send its envoy back to the Middle East after a two-month absence, declaring that he would drop his demand for a week of peace before joining in negotiations. Yet after several months of operating against the Palestinians with a virtual green light from the Americans, there was little question that the American re-entry was a setback for Mr. Sharon.

In ordering the envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, back to the Middle East, President Bush in effect declared that Mr. Sharon had gone too far in his latest stepping up of the war, which the prime minister introduced by saying that only heavy losses would bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. That was followed by assaults on Palestinian refugee camps and a death toll today of at least 40.

For Mr. Sharon, moreover, the American intervention could mean that he would be forced to start negotiating again with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader he declared irrelevant last year and restricted to the West Bank city of Ramallah.

If that happened, Mr. Arafat would surely claim a major diplomatic victory, and his political standing among the Palestinians would rise accordingly.

The Palestinian leader also hurried to demonstrate good will, announcing tonight that he had arrested another man wanted by Israelis in the killing of a Cabinet minister, Rehavam Zeevi, in October.

The Israelis had made the arrest of the killing suspects a condition for lifting a siege on Mr. Arafat, but even though he earlier arrested three of those who were wanted, the restrictions were retained.

In the convoluted politics of Israel, the decision of the Americans to return did have some immediate advantages for Mr. Sharon.

The rapid rise in violence in recent weeks, and the absence of any evident chance of respite, had begun seriously to erode his standing in public opinion polls, and there was growing talk of defections from his broad "unity government" either by the right or the left. Some commentators had begun speculating that he could fall within weeks.

And if he fell, everyone agreed, he would lose the Likud Party leadership — and with it the chance to lead the next government — to Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister and Mr. Sharon's political nemesis, who has rapidly gained strength on the right.

If it was the deteriorating security situation that prompted Mr. Sharon to crank up the military pressure, it was quite possibly the political challenge from his right that prompted him to issue the statement that "many losses must be inflicted so that the enemy will feel the heavy price of its actions."

Now, with the American intervention, Mr. Sharon could hope that the violence would be reduced, easing the pressures on him without compelling him to back down publicly on his threats or his resolve. He could say he was doing what his friends and backers, the Americans, were asking him to do, and not what he would do if only he were not being held back. Furthermore, so long as the Americans were involved, it was unlikely that either right- or left- wing parties would bolt his coalition.

"The government was on the verge of collapse, and it has been delayed with the entry of the Americans," said Natan Sharansky, the minister of housing and construction.

But the respite was likely to be short-lived. Beyond that, every step would create huge tensions in the cabinet.

If Mr. Sharon survived the fact of resumed negotiations with Mr. Arafat, and actually negotiated a cease- fire, he would be confronted with the next level of American demands, those spelled out in the Mitchell report. The report, written by a commission headed by former Senator George Mitchell, called, among other things, for a full cessation of any settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza and the resumption of peace talks.

And if some form of peace negotiations resumed with Mr. Arafat, the hurdles would be far greater. The Palestinians would be certain to come to the table demanding at least what the last prime minister, Ehud Barak, had offered them at Camp David in August 2000 — which, however it was presented, was far, far more than Mr. Sharon would ever offer. The Israeli public, moreover, had shifted considerably to the right during the 17 months of fighting, and would be in no mood to support serious concessions. That left only trust- building measures to work on, but those were unlikely if the only motive was mutual fear.

"Even if we do get to a peace process with Arafat, I don't believe it can work," Mr. Sharansky said. "We offer less than they've been offered, there's no public support, and no chance of a final settlement."

For now, Mr. Sharon is likely to continue trying to avoid making the fateful strategic decision on what to do next — whether to seek an all-out victory over the Palestinians, or to resume negotiations and accept the prospects of major territorial concessions.

Though taken as a good-will gesture by the Americans, his decision not to insist on seven days of peace before entering negotiations did not really change his options. It was announced on Friday evening, when the Sabbath prevents many Israelis from watching television, suggesting that the declaration was meant largely for American ears. And the negotiations that Mr. Sharon now said he was willing to enter were those set out in the plan by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, which in fact calls for negotiating a cease-fire, not entering into the more painful requirements of the Mitchell plan.

There was no suggestion for now that Mr. Sharon was prepared to scale down military operations. "We have to show that we are not capitulating," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for the prime minister.

Furthermore, there were reports that he would put the Mitchell plan to a vote of his cabinet, which could mean its rejection, and an attempt to start negotiations on replacing it.

Finally, even if Mr. Sharon's government fell, it would probably be replaced by an even more hard-line government under Mr. Netanyahu.

But that was in the future. For the moment, just calming the highest level of violence ever between Israelis and Palestinians posed a Herculean challenge for General Zinni.

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March 10, 2002

U.S. Nuclear Plan Sees New Weapons and New Targets

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

ASHINGTON, March 9 — Outlining a broad overhaul of American nuclear policy, a secret Pentagon report calls for developing new nuclear weapons that would be better suited for striking targets in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya.

The Nuclear Posture Review, as the Pentagon report is known, is a comprehensive blueprint for developing and deploying nuclear weapons. While some of the report is unclassified, key portions are secret.

In campaigning for office President Bush stressed that he wanted to slash the number of nuclear weapons and develop a military that would be suited for the post-cold war world.

The new Pentagon report, in fact, finds that non-nuclear conventional weapons are becoming an increasingly important element of the Pentagon arsenal. But the report also indicates that the Pentagon views nuclear weapons as an important element of military planning.

It stresses a need to develop earth- penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy heavily fortified underground bunkers, including those that may be used to store chemical and biological weapons. It calls for improving the intelligence and targeting systems needed for nuclear strikes and argues that the United States may need to resume nuclear testing.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the 56-page report. Elements of the report were reported today by the Los Angeles Times.

One of the most sensitive portions of the report is a secret discussion of contingencies in which the United States might need to use its "nuclear strike capabilities" against a foe.

During the cold war, the United States used nuclear weapons to deter a Soviet attack on Western Europe.

But now, the Pentagon report says, the nation faces new contingencies in which nuclear weapons might be employed, including "an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, or a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan." Another theme in the report is the the possible use of nuclear weapons to destroy enemy stocks of biological weapons, chemical arms and other arms of mass destruction.

Pentagon and White House officials turned down repeated requests for interviews on the report. The Pentagon issued a statement this evening noting that the purpose of the review was to analyze nuclear weapons requirements, not to specify targets.

"It does not provide operational guidance on nuclear targeting or planning," the Pentagon statement said. "The Department of Defense continues to plan for a broad range of contingencies and unforeseen threats to the United States and its allies. We do so in order to deter such attacks in the first place."

"This administration is fashioning a more diverse set of options for deterring the threat of weapons of mass destruction," the Pentagon statement continued. "That is why the administration is pursuing advanced conventional forces and improved intelligence capabilities. A combination of offensive and defensive, and nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities is essential to meet the deterrence requirements of the 21st century."

Critics responded to the report by complaining that the Bush administration was not only pushing for the development of new types of nuclear weapons, but broadening the circumstances in which they might be used.

"Despite their pronouncements of wanting to slash nuclear arms, the Bush administration is reinvigorating the nuclear weapons forces and the vast research and industrial complex that support it," said Robert S. Norris, a senior research associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council and an expert on nuclear weapons programs. "In addition the Bush administration seems to see a new role for nuclear weapons against the `axis of evil' and other problem states."

Classified versions of the report were provided to Congress in January but the disclosure now could become a public relations problem for Vice President Dick Cheney, who is scheduled to leave on Sunday for a 10-day trip to Britain and Middle Eastern countries. The disclosure of the administration's ambitious nuclear plans is likely to spark criticism from European groups that have long supported more traditional approaches to arms control. Middle Eastern leaders may be alarmed to learn that the Pentagon sees Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya as potential nuclear battlegrounds.

One of the most sensitive portions of the report is its discussion of countries that do not have nuclear arms. Recalling the Cuban missile crisis, the report noted that the United States might be caught by surprise if an adversary suddenly displayed a new ability involving weapons of mass destruction or if a nuclear arsenal changes hands as a result of a coup in a foreign land.

"In setting requirements for nuclear strike capabilities, distinctions can be made among the contingencies for which the United States must be prepared," the Pentagon report states. "Contingencies can be categorized as immediate, potential or unexpected."

"North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies," it added. "All have long-standing hostility toward the United States and its security partners; North Korea and Iraq in particular have been chronic military concerns."

It said, "All sponsor or harbor terrorists, and all have active" programs to create weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

Among Iraq, Iran, Syria or Libya none has nuclear weapons, though Iraq and Iran are making a serious effort to acquire them, according to American intelligence.

American intelligence officials believe that North Korea may have enough fissile material for one or two nuclear weapons, but there is considerable debate as to whether it has actually produced one.

Significantly, all of those countries have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Washington has promised that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty unless those countries attack the United States or its allies "in alliance with a nuclear weapon state."

The policy was intended to discourage outsider nations from seeking to develop nuclear weapons. But conservatives argue that Washington should be able to threaten the use of nuclear weapons as a way to deter one state from attacking the United States with chemical or biological weapons.

Earlier this month, Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, repeated the policy but then added that "if a weapon of mass destruction is used against the United States or its allies, we will not rule out any specific type or response." His qualified statement along with the Pentagon report raises the question of whether the Bush administration still plans to abide by the longstanding policy.

One former senior American officials said that the development of new weapons to attack non-nuclear states would not in itself contradict American policy since it would be no more than a contingency. But using them would contradict the policy, he said, unless the nations violated their commitments to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by developing nuclear weapons.

"I would not say that developing a bunker-busting nuclear weapon for use against these countries would by itself violate that pledge," the former American official said. "But using nuclear against them would unless they violated their assurance by acquiring nuclear weapons."

The Pentagon report discussed other contingencies as well. The report stated that China is also a potential adversary and is modernizing its nuclear and conventional forces. While Russia has the most formidable nuclear force, the report took the view that relations with Moscow have vastly improved.

"As a result, a contingency involving Russia, while plausible, is not expected," the report states. Still, the report said that the United States cannot be sure that relations with Russia will always be smooth and thus must be prepared to "revise its nuclear force levels and posture."

In addition to surveying the potential situations in which nuclear weapons might be employed, the report discusses the sort of force that might be needed. The Bush administration has said that it plans to reduce strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, a big reduction from the 6,000 or so nuclear weapons that the United States has now.

Critics of the Bush administration say the cuts are roughly the same as the those foreseen by the Clinton administration, which agreed that future strategic arms treaty should reduce nuclear weapons to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads. While the reductions projected by the Bush administration seem deeper, the Pentagon has changed the rules for counting nuclear weapons and no longer counts bombers or nuclear missile submarines that are in the process of being overhauled.

Adding new detail to previous briefings, the Pentagon says that its future force structure will have the following components. By 2012, the United States will have 14 Trident submarines with two in overhaul at one time. They will be part of a triad that will include hundreds of Minuteman III land-based missiles and about 100 B-52 H and B-2 bombers.

"This will provide an operationally deployed force of 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads and a wide range of options for a responsive force to meet potential contingencies," the report says.

But the Pentagon report said that nuclear planning is not merely a question of numbers. The Pentagon also wants to improve existing nuclear weapons and possibly develop new ones.

The report cites the need to improve "earth-penetrating weapons" that could be used to destroy underground installations and hardened bunkers. According to a secret portion of the Pentagon study, more than 70 nations now use underground installations. It notes that the only earth-penetrating weapon that exists is that B61 Mod 11 bomb and that it has only a limited "ground-penetration capability."

The report argues that better earth-penetrating nuclear weapons with lower nuclear yields would be useful since they could achieve equal damage with less nuclear fallout. New earth-penetrating warheads with larger yield would be needed to attack targets that are buried deep underground. The report said it is very hard to identify such underground targets but that American Special Operations Forces could be used for the mission.

Another capability which interests the Pentagon are radiological or chemical weapons that would employed to destroy stockpiles of chemical or biological agents. Such "Agent Defeat Weapons" are being studied. The report also argues that Washington needs to compress the time it takes to identify new targets and attack them with nuclear weapons, a concept it calls "adaptive planning."

In general, the Pentagon report stresses the need for nuclear weapons that would be more easy to use against enemy weapons of mass destruction because they would be of variable or low yield, be highly accurate and could be quickly targeted.

Pentagon officials say this gives the United States another tool to knock out enemy chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. But critics say that the Bush administration is, in effect, lowering the nuclear threshold by calling for the development of nuclear weapons that would be easier to use.

The need to maintain the capability to rapidly expand the American nuclear arsenal in a crisis, such as "reversal of Russia's present course," is also a theme of the report. The Pentagon calls the this hedge "the responsive force." The notion that the United States is reserving the right to rapidly increase its nuclear forces has been an important concern for Moscow, which has pressed Washington to agree to binding limits and even destroy some of its warheads.

The Responsive Force, the Pentagon report says, "retains the option for the leadership to increase the number of operationally deployed forces in proportion to the severity of an evolving crisis," the Pentagon report said. As part of this concepts, bombs could be brought out of the non-deployed stockpile in days or weeks. Other efforts to augment the force could take as long as a year.

To maintain the nuclear infrastructure a number of steps are planned. The Pentagon says that an "active" stock of warheads should be maintained which would incorporate the latest modifications and have the key parts.

The report says that the United States needs a new capability to produce plutonium "pits," a hollow sphere made out of plutonium around which explosives are fastened. When the explosives go off they squeeze the plutonium together into a critical mass, which allows a nuclear explosion. The Pentagon said the production of Tritium for nuclear warheads will resume during the fiscal 2003 year.

Another sensitive political point involves the report's discussion of the United States moratorium on nuclear testing. The Bush administration has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, but says it has no plans yet to resume nuclear testing. But the report suggests that it might be necessary to resume testing to make new nuclear weapons and ensure the reliability of existing ones.

"While the United States is making every effort to maintain the nuclear stockpile without additional nuclear testing, this may not be possible in the indefinite future," it said

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March 18, 2002

NEWS ANALYSIS

Violence and Time on Arafat's Side

By JAMES BENNET

JERUSALEM, March 17 — The Israelis' chief concern in this conflict is security, so for them the Bush administration's proposed cease-fire is not just a means but an end in itself. 

The Palestinians' chief goal is progress toward a state, and to them a cease-fire looks increasingly like an obstacle. 

That basic asymmetry explains why Yasir Arafat has for months demanded political negotiations along with security talks — and why he may be starting to get his way. 

Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, has long argued that to talk about a long-term political solution along with a cease-fire is to reward terrorism. But Mr. Arafat now has politics on his side: Mr. Sharon and President Bush need a cease-fire more than he does. 

After more than 17 months of conflict, the Palestinians feel they are winning.  

It seems like a paradox. But in the last two weeks, as the Israeli Army conducted its most aggressive, lethal campaign in decades into Palestinian areas, Mr. Arafat scored a series of diplomatic achievements: from concessions by Mr. Sharon, to intervention by a suddenly solicitous Bush administration, and on to a United Nations resolution envisioning a state of Palestine alongside Israel.

Now it is Mr. Arafat who is setting conditions for cease-fire negotiations, and Mr. Sharon who is trying to squeeze around those demands to start talking immediately.

There was little obvious effort from the Palestinian side to stop violence today. A suicide bomber struck near a bus in northern Jerusalem, killing himself and wounding the driver, and a Palestinian gunman went on a shooting spree through the town of Kfar Saba, killing an 18-year- old woman and wounding several others before being shot dead.

Despite the violence, the Bush administration's envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, made another trip to Ramallah this evening to negotiate with Mr. Arafat, whom Israel has called
irrelevant. 

Mr. Arafat has demanded, as a condition for talking with Israel about a cease-fire, that all Israeli forces withdraw from Palestinian- controlled areas. Tonight, Palestinian and Israeli security officials met separately to discuss an Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian officials said.

Israeli support for Mr. Sharon is sinking and backing for diplomacy is rising, while Mr. Arafat is under pressure from Palestinians to continue the fight. "I'm not sure why it would be in his interest to stop it, frankly," said Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Jaffee
Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. 

Mr. Sharon, he said, "is the one who's taking more of a beating, both domestically and internationally."

Many Palestinians are also sickened by the terrible violence affecting both sides. But the Palestinians have mastered a harsh arithmetic of pain. They gained little in return for previous halts in the fighting, one diplomat here said, whereas violence brought
them attention. 

"Palestinian casualties play in their favor, and Israeli casualties play in their favor," he said. "Nonviolence doesn't pay."

But the American interest in nonviolence has grown. On a trip through the region to seek Arab support for a possible war on Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney has discovered that Arab leaders expect the United States to stanch the bloodshed here. 

When it comes to a cease-fire, "the guys who need it the most are the Americans," the diplomat said.

Palestinians say they have suffered so much already that they cannot settle for a cease-fire if it does not address ending Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip completely.

"If they are only talking about cease-fire, it doesn't mean anything for the Palestinian people, who have been suffering for 18 months," Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction, said this evening by telephone. "It doesn't work. We've tried that."

Referring to Palestinians' destruction of two Israeli tanks as well as attacks on Israeli checkpoints, Mr. Barghouti said that Palestinians "feel that they defeated the Israeli security theory. The Israelis thought they could make security by force."

A withdrawal from Palestinian- controlled territory "means nothing," Mr. Barghouti said. Only a full withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he said, would assure a cease-fire and "open the gates to a new era and a historical reconciliation between the two people."

After using the stick for months to get Mr. Arafat to crack down on terrorism, there are signs that the Bush administration is trying the carrot. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said that United States was willing to send in monitors to help police a cease-fire
here, a move that would meet a longstanding Palestinian demand. The administration has declined to describe the monitors' specific tasks.

Mr. Arafat cannot afford now to overplay his hand. If he ultimately agrees to a cease-fire and it collapses under another string of suicide attacks against Israelis, Mr. Sharon might receive the political mandate and diplomatic freedom to send his forces
against Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

The debate over how to end the violence divides roughly between two camps. One camp favors what is known here as sequentialism, and the other favors parallelism. 

Under sequentialism, the view held up until now by Israel and the Bush administration, all violence must halt and security must be assured before the two sides begin discussing their political differences. 

Under parallelism, the two types of talks would proceed side-by-side. Palestinian leaders, and even some ranking Israeli security officials, say that Palestinian militants will not stop their attacks until they see tangible progress toward statehood. 

Dr. Khalil Shikaki, a pollster in Ramallah, said that any cease-fire signed on Monday would fall apart within a couple of weeks without political negotiations. But a negotiating track, he said, would give Mr. Arafat an interest in stopping violence. "Even more important," he said, "it will have an impact on public opinion, strengthening
Arafat's case, strengthening his political mandate to move against those who would violate the cease-fire."

Without it, he predicted, Mr. Arafat would not "bleed for a cease-fire."

General Zinni's previous two visits here failed, in the view of some diplomats and analysts, because he talked only about security. This time, diplomats here said, the Americans have indicated they are ready to start talking politics. 

"They do understand that working on security alone ain't going to work," said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They do understand there needs to be a parallel political process."

Even Mr. Sharon appears to be edging toward political talks. Along with a committee focused on security, he has appointed a new committee to handle political matters, led by Shimon Peres, Israel's dovish foreign minister. During General Zinni's previous visits, Mr. Sharon appointed only a security committee, headed by Meir Dagan, a major general in the army reserves and a political hard-liner.

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