Israelis Close to Peace Pact With Syrians

The Middle East peace effort showed continued progress Thursday as Israeli and Syrian negotiators said they are nearing an agreement to end almost half a century of hostility, while Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization continued haggling over plans for Palestinian self-government.

Syria’s chief delegate to the Washington peace talks, which have been overshadowed this week by the Israel-PLO agreement, said he hopes Israel and Syria can complete a declaration of conditions for peaceful relations--including Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights--before the current round of negotiations ends next Thursday.

“We are continuing our serious discussion, and I hope that by the end of this round we shall be able to ensure some success concerning that important draft,” Syrian delegate Mowaffak Allaf told reporters. The assessment was his most optimistic since the talks began 22 months ago.

“We made progress and we reached agreements on points that in earlier rounds seemed to be unbridgeable, and suddenly this week they became bridgeable,” said Israeli Ambassador Itamar Rabinovitch, who heads the Israeli delegation in the talks with Syria. “I hope that this is an indication of things to come.”

The movement on the Israel-Syria track clearly was driven by the unprecedented agreement on Palestinian autonomy that was hammered out in secret Israel-PLO talks in Oslo, Norway.

Despite hints that Syrian President Hafez Assad was miffed at being bypassed by the Oslo talks, Syrian delegates have made it clear that the Israel-PLO accord clears the way for Damascus to seek its own peace treaty with Jerusalem.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher said that the Israel-PLO pact “will be a catalyst for progress” in the other negotiating tracks. Israel is bargaining separately with Syria, Jordan and Lebanon as well as with the Palestinians.

In Jerusalem and at PLO headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, officials were searching for just the right words to clear the way for mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO. Israeli officials insisted that the PLO eliminate from its charter repeated references to the destruction of Israel. The PLO seems ready to comply, but officials said it may take some time to do so.

In a sharp reminder that the agreement between Israel and the PLO has not ended the violence, an Israeli soldier was killed on the occupied West Bank on Thursday afternoon.

Sgt. Zion Alkobi was fatally injured while driving south of Hebron, according to an Israeli military spokesman, when Palestinian gunmen opened fire with automatic rifles and the car went out of control and flipped over. A second soldier was injured but survived, the spokesman said.

The gunmen are suspected of belonging to the militant Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas, which has already declared its opposition to the Israel-PLO accord.

“I have no doubt that the intent of the continuing terrorism by some of these (Palestinian) organizations, principally the worst attacks, comes from the attempt to hurt chances of this breakthrough, of finding a new way of solving the problem,” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said.

Elsewhere, a jubilant Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, completed a tour of Arab capitals to explain the abrupt change in PLO policy and objectives. He predicted that the Palestinian flag will soon fly over Jerusalem, a forecast sure to anger Israelis. Under the Israel-PLO agreement, Palestinian self-rule will eventually be established throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but the status of Jerusalem is left to later negotiations.

“The Palestinian state is within our grasp,” Arafat said in Casablanca, according to Reuters news service. “Soon the Palestinian flag will fly on the walls, the minarets and the cathedrals of Jerusalem.”

In a triumphant message sent by fax from Tunis to a conference on the future of Palestine at Birzeit University on the West Bank, Arafat said: “I am sure I will see you soon. You will see the PLO back in its homeland. We will go together to see our Jerusalem.”

Despite the soaring rhetoric, Arafat must first persuade PLO hard-liners to accept a deal that closes out the organization’s cherished goal of replacing what is now Israel with an Arab state.

According to Palestinian and Israeli sources, Israel wants a firm, decisive statement from the PLO acknowledging Israel’s legitimacy and renouncing the organization’s goal of destruction of the Jewish state. To speed up the process, Israel has agreed to move ahead with the self-rule plan as soon as the PLO Executive Committee approves an acceptable statement.

According to Palestinian sources, Arafat is insisting on several additional Israeli concessions, including an end to the travel curbs imposed on residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the return of more than 100,000 refugees who fled after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and the right of Palestinians to an independent state after five years of autonomy.

The Israel-PLO agreement last week caught Washington by surprise, and on Thursday, Christopher reasserted the role of the United States in Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

“These major events have a long aftermath, and so we will have to be working away at implementation for some time,” the secretary of state said in an interview on National Public Radio. “The United States is not going to declare a victory or stand aside. We’re going to say this is a huge step when it’s signed but we’ll be working with them on implementation.”

Also Thursday, the World Bank announced a $4.3-billion economic development plan for the West Bank and Gaza Strip covering the next 10 years.

Kempster reported from Washington; Parks reported from Jerusalem.