PLO Calls Relocation of Soviet Jews ‘Act of War’ : Israel: A top Arafat adviser says their resettlement in the occupied areas is likely to end peace overtures.

Reflecting increasing Arab tension over stalled negotiations with Israel, a top Palestine Liberation Organization official has called the resettlement of Soviet Jews in the Israeli-occupied West Bank an “act of war” that is likely to end peace overtures and provoke retaliation.

“We are prepared to end everything. We are not prepared to be bluffed anymore,” Bassam abu Sharif, top political adviser to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, told reporters Wednesday in Tunis, Tunisia.

“We consider this an act of war against the Palestinian people and the Arab nation,” Abu Sharif asserted. “Such an act can only beget similar reactions--that is, acts of war.”

The statement was one of the strongest threats yet from the PLO--which renounced terrorism as part of its current campaign to negotiate for peace in the occupied territories--to return to militancy as a way of driving Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and winning a permanent Palestinian homeland.

It comes just before today’s scheduled meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens and Secretary of State James A. Baker III in Washington to discuss a Middle East peace process that has become increasingly mired in disputes over the PLO’s role in direct peace talks and opposition from Israeli hard-liners.

As months have passed without even a direct meeting between the Israeli and Egyptian foreign ministers, the PLO and some of its Egyptian allies have begun squabbling. Even moderate Arab leaders close to the process have shown signs of growing frustration.

Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister Butros Butros Ghali asserted this week that the Feb. 4 terrorist attack on a busload of Israeli tourists in the Egyptian desert must be considered “the product of anxiety, tension, lack of confidence and despair that affect many parties because of continuing obstacles on the road to peace and continuing intransigence.”

Laying most of the blame on Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir for “plant(ing) obstacles after obstacles” to peace talks, Butros Ghali, one of Egypt’s top diplomats, said the “absence of peace remains a condition that spawns such incidents” as the bus attack, in which nine Israelis died.

Nonetheless, Egypt has been critical of the PLO’s reaction to the incident, which at first failed to roundly condemn it and in fact appeared to equate the killing of Israelis with the killing of Palestinians in the two-year-old uprising in the occupied territories.

Arab leaders have been united, however, in their condemnation of Israel’s moves to resettle emigrating Soviet Jews into the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, a move they view as a serious impediment to any hopes of establishing an independent Palestinian state there. About 200 Soviet Jewish immigrants have been settled so far near the West Bank town of Nablus.

“It is very dangerous,” Abu Sharif said of the resettlement. “We will continue to work for peace, but if no practical steps are taken by the superpowers, we will have to think of ways and means of defending our land.”

In an acknowledgement of the Arab concerns and pressure about resettlement, Soviet officials announced that direct air flights to Israel from the Soviet Union will not be allowed.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Vadim P. Perfiliev told a news briefing: “We do not exclude completely the development of relations with Israel, including international flights, but we think a direct air link presupposes a certain level and character of relations between the U.S.S.R. and Israel. And at present it is completely out of the question to have such an air bridge, an air link, in order to take emigrants to Israel.”