Palestinians Seize Upon a Chance to Map Out Strategy : Mideast: Bold meetings in the occupied lands are devoted to discussing how to cut the best deal with Israel.

Occupied West Bank--For a few hours the other day, this university town shed the oppressive atmosphere common to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A school auditorium was filled to overflowing with teen-agers and young adults, the kind of people often active in the unequal stones-against-rifles battles with Israeli troops during the Arab uprising. On this day, they were sitting still, listening in rapt attention to a parade of speakers discussing future steps toward a Palestinian state.

This kind of talk, viewed as “incitement” by the authorities, is prohibited by law and nightstick. But on this day, no soldiers were in sight anywhere near the public meeting held at the Friends Boys School. No stone-throwing took place, no tear gas was fired; there were no arrests, no beatings.

“We are expressing ourselves politically and we expect to continue doing it. We demand to be treated on an equal basis with the Israelis, with freedom of movement and freedom of speech. We will not accept interference,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian negotiators and featured speaker at the recent Ramallah rally.

Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are seizing an opening afforded by the break in Middle East peace talks to practice politics as never before. Believing that the peace talks, scheduled to continue next month, grant them a kind of immunity to the usual political restrictions, the leaders are campaigning not only to defend their performance at the conference but also to buttress Palestinian claims to an independent state. Some whisper that the meetings themselves represent the birth of a nation.

The town meeting atmosphere in Ramallah was a far cry from the usual clandestine communication by anonymous leaflet and masked messenger during the intifada, the fading 4-year-old Arab uprising. The Israeli government seems unable to make heads or tails of the change. On one hand, a decrease in turbulence has been noted and praised and the meetings tolerated, but there is dismay that the Palestinians are getting, well, uppity.

“The Palestinian delegation has apparently returned with exaggerated self-confidence and think they are permitted to do anything and act like the leaders of an independent state,” Yossi Ahimeir, a spokesman for Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, told the Jerusalem Post. “Until the Palestinian problem is solved . . . (the occupied land is) still under Israeli rule and we will determine all that happens there.”

The local meetings, at which the Madrid delegates lay out their agenda for the next stage of the talks, are the most vivid sign of the creeping repercussions of the peace conference. Prospects for a breakthrough, however slim, are shaking up Palestinian and Israeli politics. Hawks are defensive, doves are confused, believers are becoming wary and skeptics are looking for things to be skeptical about.

“It’s because a new debate has emerged very suddenly,” observed Yaron Ezrahi, a political theorist at Hebrew University. “The discussion is no more whether to talk or not. The discussion is what to talk about, how to cut the best deal and who can best cut it.”

The Palestinians are engaged in a delicate balancing act. Speakers try to lower expectations while, in the same breath, they assure listeners that the path of negotiations will lead them to where they want to go: independence.

“This is a hard message to pass. There are no guarantees. But people need hope, even false hope,” said Ghassan Khatib, one of the delegates on stage in Ramallah.

Sometimes, the audience is unfriendly. Militant Muslim students at Birzeit University greeted Ashrawi with leaflets attacking anyone who compromised the Muslim claim to not only the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also to Israel.

Meantime, Palestinian leaders strive to assert independence at every turn. They are refusing to open their briefcases to soldiers at West Bank and Gaza checkpoints on grounds that the Israelis have no right to see position papers they may carry. The delegates have asked the United States and Soviet Union for protection from search and arrest and to arrange travel permits abroad in order to avoid dealing with military authorities. “If Israel harasses us, we will complain,” Ashrawi said.

The delegates, at last count numbering 14--plus at least four advisers--have already drawn up three position points for the next round of talks, which is expected to take up the issue of self-rule for Palestinians under Israeli control. They will insist that the “interim” arrangements be clearly defined as temporary, that seizure of land and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza stop and that control of terrain and resources be included in the authority granted to Palestinians.

Israel will probably oppose that agenda and argue that such matters are to be left for talks on final arrangements set to begin in three years.

The United States and Soviet Union have called for the next round of talks to begin Dec. 4 in Washington after concluding that the parties--Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians--would not be able to agree among themselves on a time and place.

Palestinians have formed 10 committees to provide their negotiators with data on the state of public institutions over which they hope to gain control, including schools, hospitals and utilities. An “executive office” is planned for Jerusalem to centralize this work. Some dissidents have set up their own “political action committees” to keep an eye on the negotiators.

Israeli reaction to this political effervescence has been mixed. Right-wing politicians have called for investigations into the speechmaking lest someone suggest that the meetings encourage Palestinians to continue their revolt. Soldiers tried to stop reporters from covering a recent open meeting in Bethlehem but relented when it was found that many had made end runs around a roadblock.

Some Israeli observers see the activity as an unstoppable extension of the peace talks. “The Israeli government will have to deal with the fact that it cannot flex its muscles,” wrote Danny Rubinstein, a reporter for the liberal Haaretz newspaper.

Prime Minister Shamir has been addressing his own constituency in bits and pieces. Essentially, his message has been unchanging: Israel will never give up control of the land to the Palestinians. “We aren’t thinking at all about territorial concessions,” Shamir said during a recent conversation with visiting South African President Frederik W. de Klerk.

In mirror opposition to the Palestinian view, Shamir says that Washington and Moscow should retire from the talks. “The involvement of outside elements . . . doesn’t benefit our matters,” he said.

The opposition Labor Party has been struggling to define its own position. At a recent party convention, members agreed to cede parts of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Golan Heights, which Syria covets, in return for peace with its neighbors. The party backed “national rights” for Palestinians, an ambiguity that stops short of endorsing statehood.