Can They Pass the Test?

By Bruce W. Nelan

After word of the secret agreement between Israel and the P.L.O. reached the sun-seared slums of the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians streamed out of the teeming Shati refugee camp. They hung their red, black, white and green national flag on an impromptu stage and danced to the music of a small folk band. Suddenly a column of 200 toughs from the hard-line Islamic organization Hamas waded into the celebration, swinging chains and clubs. The melee wrecked the stage, the chairs, even the Palestinian flag, and injured at least 15 people.

In Jerusalem, as the Israeli Cabinet voted its approval of the peace plan that had been secretly worked out with P.L.O. negotiators in Oslo, thousands of right-wing Israelis blocked the streets around government buildings and shouted their opposition to any compromise with terrorists. When demonstrators turned violent, police quelled them with water cannons, then bodily hauled away troublemakers.

The sound of blows and the public clash of ideologies provided a vivid preview of the opposition to come -- and almost certain to grow worse -- on both sides. The Israeli-Palestinian deal is a first step toward a new political arrangement no one can yet fully describe. It is a momentous beginning, offering a glimpse of the chance to end 45 years of hatred and bloodshed in the Holy Land -- but it is still only a start.

That is enough to fuel the hopes of the mainstream moderates in Israeli and Palestinian society. But uncertainty about what has been wrought is so angst- laden that it forces many of those in Israel who fear for their safety to shout, "Too much!" Many Palestinians -- some still more interested in destroying Israel than in building a state of their own -- retort, "Not nearly enough!" Angry and frightened extremists on both sides have plenty of guns and are accustomed to using them. Even the majorities that embrace the agreement are hesitant and fearful as they enter uncharted waters.

This is the supreme test, for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Israelis will have to show they can deal fairly with the P.L.O. they have demonized so long and remain generous of spirit even as fellow Jews accuse them of betrayal. The Palestinians must prove they can govern themselves, maintain order and keep their violent agitators under control, if they hope to receive a payoff in the form of more land and sovereignty in the occupied territories. If they do not, and Islamic and Palestinian rejectionists attack Israel, triggering counterattacks from rightist Israelis only too eager to respond, the experiment will be canceled, never to be repeated in this generation.

For those who support the Oslo agreement, even if halfheartedly, the new Declaration of Principles provides the only ladder available to climb out of a status quo both sides have been finding more and more intolerable. The plan comes in two parts: first, a framework for interim Palestinian self-rule on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; and second, the agreement, still being negotiated, on mutual recognition and an end to the warfare between Israel and the P.L.O.

The fragility of the new order was obvious as the week progressed, and the recognition talks bore no immediate fruit. Both sides share an urgent desire to reach such an agreement, yet translating that into precise language is proving frustratingly difficult. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres insisted that the deal to give self-rule to the Gaza Strip and Jericho would be implemented even without the mutual-recognition pact, but formal, reciprocal acknowledgment of legitimacy is crucial to finding a broad, permanent settlement.

These incremental steps are important by themselves because the old enemies are each in effect conceding that the other has the right to exist. Beyond that, Israel is granting the Palestinians the chance to organize politically on parts of what has long been declared the inviolable Land of Israel. In accepting these opening moves, the P.L.O. still insists that the process must eventually lead to creation of an independent Palestinian state. Whether that will happen, and how, are the issues that inspire bright hopes and dark fears among Israelis and Palestinians alike.

The 17 articles and four annexes of the Declaration of Principles indicate that they are firmly intended to lead to some final political settlement. The document has been painstakingly drafted, covering -- at least in outline -- the most sensitive concerns of both sides. It provides, first of all, for ! Israeli withdrawal from the 140-sq.-mi. Gaza Strip, with its 770,000 Palestinians, and from Jericho, an ancient, somnolent Jordan Valley town of about 20,000, a thin sliver of the 1 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank.

Within four months, Palestinians are to take over the administration of those two places, with Israel retaining responsibility only for their external security and the protection of Jewish settlers. "You will not see the ((occupation)) civil administration at all," says Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin. "The army will redeploy. There will be a local Palestinian police. All spheres of life will be dealt with by the Palestinians."

At the same time, the rest of the West Bank will move toward what is being called "early empowerment," a kind of preliminary self-rule in education, health, social services and taxation. The Palestinians will also win control of the tourist industry, which has suffered greatly during the uprising but could be quite profitable. Israeli occupation authorities and soldiers will remain for a while, but only until a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority is elected to govern the whole of the territories.

When that happens -- and the timetable calls for the changeover to occur in about nine months -- Israeli security forces will pull out of the main cities and towns, though they will remain in the West Bank to guard the borders, the main roads and the Jewish settlements. A "strong" Palestinian police force of several thousand, armed with pistols and rifles, will be created from P.L.O. units now taking special training in Jordan and Egypt. "I think this agreement is going to wear well," concludes William Quandt, the Carter Administration's chief Middle East expert, now at the Brookings Institution. "There's a degree of seriousness that argues well for its prospects."

This interim deal is to last no more than five years, and two years after it is in place, Israel and the Palestinians will begin negotiating the emotionally charged arrangements for what will come next. The Palestinians insist on having their own state, a result the Israelis are not eager to see, though their opposition is softening. Both sides want the emerging Palestinian entity to be tied closely to Jordan, perhaps in a confederation. The hottest issue is Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their capital: Israel is vehemently opposed.

It was wise of both sides to put off resolving these divisive issues while they test each other's sincerity, and perhaps the confidence built up over the trial period will make a final settlement easier. But it will still be enormously difficult for both Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat to deliver on their opposing promises of what a peace accord will look like.

Not surprisingly, the nay-sayers spoke first and loudest. "Traitor" was the favorite word among outraged Israelis. Although Rabin's Labor government was elected 14 months ago on a platform of "land for peace," Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu called for a referendum on a deal he said would only provide ever closer launching pads for P.L.O. attacks on Israel. Rafael Eitan, a former army Chief of Staff who heads the Tsomet Party, charged the government with signing "an agreement with the greatest murderer of Jews since Hitler." In the Knesset, Peres coldly dismissed hecklers with, "You are the men of yesterday. The world has changed."

For his part, Rabin was more muted than Peres, treating the agreement as bitter medicine that simply had to be swallowed. He told his party last week that he had no illusions about that "terrorist organization" the P.L.O. Yes, he said, "they are murderers, but you make peace with your enemies. I can't tell you that some formulas in the agreement don't give me stomach pains. But I have to see also the comprehensive picture. We have to take risks."

That may prove easier for Israelis, who at least adhere to democracy, than for the contentious, fractured Palestinians. The P.L.O. has long been strife- ridden, and the news of the secretly negotiated agreement only added to its turmoil. Arafat was harshly chastised for letting the preliminary agreement postpone for five years the all-important resolution of the fate of Israeli settlements, the future of Jerusalem, and Palestinian sovereignty over the occupied territories. In Damascus radical Palestinian leader Ahmad Jibril warned Arafat that he was risking assassination if he went ahead.

Obviously stung by the accusations, Arafat denied he had caved in to the Israelis, reverting to precisely the kind of rhetoric that infuriates Israelis. "The Palestinian state is within our grasp," he declared. "Soon the Palestinian flag will fly on the walls, the minarets and the cathedrals of Jerusalem." Arafat was more intent on shoring up his own constituencies. Embarking on a week of consultations even more breathless than usual, the peripatetic chairman flew off to reassure Arab leaders in Yemen, Egypt, Sudan and Morocco.

Arafat will be able to bring his Fatah group and most Arab leaders on board, but the secular rejectionists will continue to undermine him as they can. The more serious threat to his agreement looms inside the occupied territories. He is about to take charge of the 30-mile-long Gaza Strip, which contains 44% of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, most of them packed into poverty- stricken refugee camps dominated by violent street gangs and, increasingly, by the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas.

Hamas immediately denounced the peace plan, saying, "We will never agree to be part of this game." So far, Hamas and other rejectionists have not mounted major demonstrations, but they will be heard from after they lay their plans to disrupt coming elections for the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority. Ten of the rejectionist groups met in Beirut last week to plot strategy.

Hard-liners living in the territories, aware now that Arafat and his police force are coming, are more cautious. They realize that Arafat has transformed himself into a moderate in order to make peace and will have to curb his radical enemies. Still, they make it clear that they intend to do what they can to derail the interim plan. "We resisted the Israeli occupation," says Riad Malki, a West Bank spokesman for the rejectionist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, "and we will resist Palestinian autonomy."

Some Palestinians who favor the plan are worried that the P.L.O. might not be up to the task of governance, that it and its police force might be too high-handed, that resistance might turn into civil war the Palestinians could not control. Another widespread concern is that when the exiled leaders return, they will ignore the leadership that has grown up in the territories.

Ordinary Palestinians seem neither hostile nor jubilant yet, perhaps because they are not sure what has happened. "People are in a state of suspension," says P.L.O. activist Sari Nusseibeh. "They are waiting to hear the facts and how this will affect their lives." Nusseibeh is one of the few who "enthusiastically support" the deal. The road to a Palestinian state must begin somewhere, he argues. "We have the choice of continuing to dream of a palace in the sky or building a hut on the ground. From the hut, a palace can be built."

A persistent fear among Palestinians is that the hut is all there is. "We believe Gaza first means Gaza last," insists Malki. Says Osman Hallak, editor of the newspaper An-Nahar in Jerusalem: "I would accept a deal as long as I knew that in the end I would have an independent entity." Nusseibeh believes that this will happen, that the Israeli government is moving toward accepting some kind of Palestinian state. A key Israeli official said last week, "Actually, the road to statehood is open to the Palestinians. It is long, but it is open." A Labor Party official seemed to confirm that privately. The long-standing Labor policy called for returning much of the West Bank but retaining a broad security zone along the western bank of the Jordan River, where there are many Israeli settlements. "I don't think anyone sees that as a final plan," the official said. It is more likely, he speculated, that Israel will turn over the Jordan Valley too and pull its border back close to the line that existed before the 1967 war, but with adjustments in Israel's favor. And what about all those settlements in the valley? "Our negotiating line is that they must remain part of Israel," he said, "but eventually they will have to be given up."

Not far from the Jordan, the sleepy oasis-green town of Jericho is a contrast to Gaza, where the intifadeh uprising has virtually destroyed the economy. The intifadeh has had far less impact in Jericho, where the residents, by comparison with the utter poverty in Gaza, are almost prosperous. Townspeople have heard that Arafat will visit soon, and like most of them, 73-year-old Ahmed Ali Missad says he will be in the street to cheer him. If he comes, says Missad, "it will mean peace. We all want peace." But even here, Palestinians can't suppress the fear that self-rule is an Israeli trick that will turn their town into the symbol of a P.L.O. sellout.

An opinion poll last week showed that 53% of Israeli Jews supported the peace agreement, while 44% opposed it. The negative outcry in Israel was even louder among right-wing rejectionists than among the Palestinians. Having lost the last election partly on the peace issue, Likud could not do much more than shout.

The right wing will cause trouble, says Zvi Alpeleg, a former governor of the Gaza Strip, "but they don't represent a substantial number of Israelis." While Jews used violence against Jews to stop the return of the Sinai to Egypt, this time the threat is likely to be contained by two factors -- Israel's reverence for democracy and its highly effective security forces. Once the Knesset votes to uphold the plan, only a few zealots would try to destroy it. And Rabin, a man with a deserved reputation for toughness, will not shrink from arresting violent subversives. "One should never forget that Israel is still a state, a people and a democracy," Peres warns. "Just as we defend our land and secure our people, we will protect our freedom. At the point where fear begins, democracy is finished."

For all the anxiety about politics and security, rejectionists and violence, the success of the Gaza-Jericho experiment will turn on economics. Poverty and hopelessness account for much of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world as well as the bloodshed by those Palestinians who have nothing to lose. The deal will collapse unless the dreary lot of the Palestinians is rapidly improved. Skeptical Palestinians are willing to give peace a chance as long as their expectations for a better life are satisfied. "In Israel they have everything," says Ibrahim Abu Faid, a resident of Gaza's Shati Camp. "We will too, once we have our own government."

There is little doubt of the ability of the Palestinians to administer their territory; they are doing it now, running public works, hospitals and schools. "They are a population quite capable of running their own affairs," says Quandt, "with more talent and resources to draw on than many bigger countries that have joined the U.N. in recent years." So if Arafat gets rid of the Israeli occupiers and the P.L.O. can deliver a healthy dose of prosperity, the ideologues will find fewer supporters for their campaign of rejection.

P.L.O. officials are aware of that and have already begun calculating how much money might be needed to buttress their political authority. The Declaration of Principles provides for joint economic committees, free-trade zones and Israeli cooperation on energy, water and electricity. Peres shares the view that Palestinians need to live better. "If the whole story will be just a political agreement without economic support," he says, "it will fail. You cannot offer the people national flags for breakfast. You must offer real food."

And where will the provisions come from? "It is the responsibility of the international community to finance our government until our infrastructure is established," says Zahira Kemal, an adviser to the Palestinian peace delegation. The World Bank last week outlined a $4.3 billion development plan covering the next eight to 10 years to rebuild the territories' primitive infrastructure. The Palestinians are counting heavily on outside investment from the European Community, Japan, the U.S. and the Persian Gulf states. In addition, says Ghassan Khatib, a member of the peace delegation, "there are a lot of rich Palestinians, and they are eager to invest in the territories for nationalistic reasons. They want a place to belong to."

A great many states and organizations have a major stake in the experiment's success. Once Arab leaders get over their momentary pique at being kept in the dark, peace agreements could snowball. Jordan has been ready to sign a treaty with Israel as long as Amman is not alone; Syria and Lebanon are as eager as the Palestinians to get back territory now in Israeli hands. Damascus has tried to increase its negotiating leverage by insisting that the Palestinians and Arab states coordinate their agreements with Israel. But now that the Palestinians are out in front, Syria may want to play catch-up without seeming to be following a Palestinian lead. "We hope this agreement with the Palestinians will not alienate the others," says Beilin, one of the plan's architects. "We are ready to proceed with every partner."

The nightmare vision of what could happen if the extremists prevail and the forces for peace cannot hold may also provide an impetus to succeed. The other prospect would be terrible indeed: the Israeli army marching back into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the face of an entrenched P.L.O. and almost 2 million furious Palestinians. That outcome would swiftly wash away hopes for peace in a new wave of bloodshed.

With reporting by Lisa Beyer/Jerusalem, Dean Fischer/Tunis, Lara Marlowe/Jericho and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington