Israel Pushes Gaza, West Bank Vote : Mideast: As Cabinet discusses a PLO role in peace talks for the first time, Peres proposes step to Palestinian autonomy.

Hoping to salvage the Arab-Israeli peace talks from the angry aftermath of the deportation of 415 Palestinians, Israel on Wednesday proposed holding early elections among Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip to select a leadership that could bring the Israeli-occupied territories to self-government faster.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the election of such “a political leadership,” coming ahead of an agreement on Palestinian autonomy, would give the Palestinian negotiators a clear, popular mandate to conclude the agreement. It could constitute an important first step toward establishing a democratic system in the occupied lands.

Israel is not ready to talk with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Peres said. But the Cabinet discussed the question Wednesday for the first time. If PLO members and supporters won the proposed election, they would be accepted by Israel, Peres said.

“I will talk to anyone who is elected, no matter what his opinions,” Peres said at a news conference. “The only conditions are that he not be involved in terrorism and that he be (freely) elected.”

Such elections, he asserted, would demonstrate to the Palestinians themselves that most support negotiations leading to autonomy and that they do not support groups such as the fundamentalist Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and Islamic Jihad; those groups reject the concept of coexistence with Israel.

Originally, the Palestinian elections were to follow agreement on autonomy. Peres, however, proposed that they be brought forward and held within the next three to four months to boost the Middle East peace negotiations.

But the anger among Palestinians remains so great over the deportations last week that the very leaders likely to win the elections Peres has proposed are warning of a return to armed struggle and guerrilla warfare.

“Talking peace was one of the political options among several,” Faisal Husseini, the head of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks, warned at a news conference. “We are approaching the edge of the armed-struggle option.”

Husseini said that unless the deportations are reversed, he doubts that the Palestinian delegation will return to the talks.

“We are at the very edge,” Husseini said. “We hope someone will do something to give a chance to this dying peace process. . . . We will try to do everything (to reverse the expulsions) because when we are talking about such an option, we know it means more casualties, more lives.”

Two Palestinian brothers were shot and killed in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday when Israeli troops opened fire in the town of Khan Yunis to quell what military sources described as “rioting, pure and simple,” to protest the deportations; 43 more people were reported wounded in the clashes.

According to Palestinian journalists in Gaza, Ismael Abdeen, 27, was shot as he stepped onto his balcony. His brother Naim, 32, was then killed with automatic fire when he attacked the soldiers with stones.

The two deaths brought to 11 the number of Palestinians killed in protests this week over the mass deportation, despite curfews and travel curbs aimed at minimizing the possibility of clashes.

The PLO will ask Arab countries taking part in Mideast peace talks to boycott them until Israel allows the return of the deportees, most of whom are suspected of belonging to militant Islamic groups from southern Lebanon.

Saeb Ereikat, a Palestinian delegate from Jericho on the West Bank, said the PLO will address an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in Cairo today with its request.

The PLO has been in a difficult position since Israel expelled the Islamic activists in reprisal for the killing of five soldiers and a border policeman by Hamas.

The fundamentalist group is now its rival for leadership of the Palestinians. But, politically, the PLO cannot be seen to be rejoicing at the Israeli moves against Hamas.

“The Palestinian side will ask the Arab participants in the peace process to suspend their participation until the deportees are allowed to return,” Ereikat said. “We hope we will win their support and come out with a united Arab stand. Only the return of the deportees will salvage the peace process, which was assassinated by (Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak) Rabin.”

But Rabin and Peres both predicted that when the negotiations reconvene in Washington, probably in February, all the Arab participants, including the Palestinians, will be present.

Peres, who did not participate in the Cabinet decision to expel the supporters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and who has distanced himself from the move, is struggling now to ensure that negotiations with the Palestinians continue. “We will try to do whatever we can to pacify the situation, to open the road to peace, to find creative solutions to the gaps that remain,” he said.