Palestinian Negotiators Quit, Protest PLO Plan : Peace talks: The three complain about concessions to Israel. Move reflects discontent in occupied territories.

Three top Palestinian negotiators in the peace talks with Israel are resigning to protest PLO proposals that they consider too soft, senior members of the Palestinian delegation said.

Faisal Husseini, Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat, the moderates who have led the delegation for the past 21 months, flew to Tunis on Sunday to tell Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat that they are quitting because the PLO is making too many concessions to Israel with little in return.

Although the PLO sought to downplay it, the conflict reflected the growing discontent among Palestinians on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Arab East Jerusalem about the negotiations--and more generally about the PLO’s leadership.

“They, too, have had enough,” said Dr. Haidar Abdel-Shafi, the Gaza physician who serves as chief delegate but who has been boycotting the talks. Husseini is the overall head of the Palestinian negotiating team, Ashrawi is the spokeswoman as well as a key negotiator and Erekat is the deputy chief delegate under Abdel-Shafi.

The development threatened to throw the Middle East peace negotiations--which began in October, 1991, and are expected to resume next month--into disarray. And it brought immediate calls from Israeli doves that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin open formal, direct negotiations with the PLO--the real decision-maker among Palestinians--to rebuild the momentum of the peace process.

“If it turns out we have nobody to talk to among residents of the (occupied) territories, we will have to rethink very seriously this matter, perhaps including breaking taboos (against talks with the PLO) that have already been eroded anyway,” Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin said.

Noting with some irony that Israel had for years insisted on negotiating with the “moderate” local Palestinians rather than with the PLO, Beilin added, “It turns out that the PLO in Tunis is more moderate than the PLO here. I think no one, including myself, dreamed this would happen.”

Even Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the hard-bitten former general who heads the Housing Ministry and is a confidant of Rabin, commented that the resignations “created a helluva problem, a big crisis.”

And a Rabin aide pointedly quoted the prime minister’s comments last week on the Palestinians. “Never have I seen such an unstable, splintered and messed-up group,” Rabin had told the leadership of the ruling Labor Party. “It is impossible to know whom we should talk to.”

Despite the challenge to Arafat, there is a widespread expectation that the three delegates will be persuaded later this week to remain in the talks.

“This is not even a family quarrel,” Bassam abu Sharif, a senior PLO official, said by telephone from Tunis. “It’s a misunderstanding, and everything will be put right in a day or two.”

The present dispute, a reflection of the highly fragmented politics of Palestinians here and in exile, was triggered by a PLO “declaration of principles” for Palestinian self-government. The paper was presented to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher last week for relay to Israel.

Given to Christopher in draft form in Cairo by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the paper made a number of concessions, particularly about the status of Jerusalem, that Palestinians here rejected. They refused to present it to Christopher until it had been revised and toughened.

“This is a real crisis of authority,” Ziad abu Zayyad, another delegation member, commented. “The delegation is thought to be a delegation of clerks with only limited authority. True, legitimate authority is in the hands of the PLO, but the delegation does not want responsibility for what are momentous decisions without authority to make them. . . .

“The solution can only come from direct negotiations, at the highest possible level, between Palestinians and Israelis.”

Against the advice of the Palestinian negotiators, Arafat reportedly is prepared to discuss “early empowerment” of the Palestinians, which would give them functional administrative authority immediately while the more difficult issue of territorial jurisdiction is resolved.

Arafat also appears prepared to drop the status of East Jerusalem from the agenda for now in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.

“Gaza-Jericho first . . . would constitute a real breakthrough both in negotiations and on the ground,” the PLO declared in its position paper, according to a copy made available to The Times here Sunday.

The negotiators insisted at the outset of the talks that they were answerable to the PLO and that they were involved because neither Israel nor the United States was prepared to negotiate directly with the PLO.

Abdel-Shafi, a founding member of the PLO, has called for broader powers for the delegation and demanded a democratically chosen leadership for the PLO.

“The issue is not where there are divisions between Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories, because we are one people. . . .” Abdel-Shafi said. “The important issue is how to unite Palestinians in a democratic way.”

Among Palestinians, there is a suspicion that Arafat might try to use the new crisis to drop the delegation and draw Israel into direct negotiations.

“Sometimes we feel that he is focused on using the peace process as a vehicle to ensure a direct role for the PLO,” a senior member of the delegation said.

Husseini, Ashrawi and Erekat were close-mouthed as they left for Tunis early Sunday after two days of almost nonstop discussions among Palestinian leaders here.

“There are serious internal Palestinian issues that have to be addressed, and they will be addressed in a responsible and discreet manner,” Ashrawi told journalists at the airport in Amman, Jordan.

Their anger stems first from the concessions they saw in the PLO draft, second from the PLO’s perceived failure to consult them on substance and finally from what they regard as a hesitant PLO negotiating strategy.

Their move also reflects the frustration among Palestinians in Jerusalem and on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip over the negotiations’ failure to achieve self-government and the concessions being made without tangible results.