Peace a Hard Sell to Many Palestinians

Faisal Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian negotiating team, folded his arms across his chest, rolled back on his feet a bit and listened to the lengthy question from a Jerusalem teacher about the new agreement with Israel on Palestinian self-government.

“What guarantees do we have that the Israelis, snakes that they are, will not cheat us?” the schoolteacher asked. “How do we know they will honor this agreement? How can we be sure, thieves that they are, the Israelis will not steal our land again?”

Husseini’s eyes narrowed with annoyance, and his reply was quick and cutting. “Do you really think the Israelis would go through all this, begin to return our lands and recognize our right to self-determination only to take it away again?” he asked. “For what? For the fun of taking it away?

“Look, this agreement is intended to open a new era between us and the Israelis, an era based on mutual acceptance, on trust, on peace,” Husseini continued. “And that is how we must enter into it, not with hatred and suspicion and rejection.”

Husseini, who himself had questioned the wisdom of the deal that the Palestine Liberation Organization has struck with Israel and who had argued against concessions that might be too great, won the day at the Arab Graduates Society.

“We have to carry the people with us,” Husseini said. “They have questions, and we must try to give them answers. They are worried, and we must try to reassure them. This is the struggle for the birth of our nation.”

The 120 men and women, sitting on plastic chairs on an outdoor basketball court, were an easy sell even as they asked about the exclusion of Arab East Jerusalem from the agreement, about Israel’s continued jurisdiction over its settlements in the West Bank, about finances for the new government.

Members of the Palestinian intelligentsia, most of them wanted to be persuaded that the agreement with Israel on progressive stages of autonomy will lead to freedom from the Israeli occupation, to Palestinian independence and, most of all, to peace.

But among many other Palestinians, from illiterate goatherds to firebrand Muslim imams, there is a strong sense of suspicion and skepticism that will make the agreement more difficult to sell.

“Nobody has come to Gaza to explain anything,” Akhram Azhar, a university student, said in Gaza City. “Look, the PLO will now do all the dirty jobs of occupation that the Israelis want to do. It will definitely not have the popular support it had before.

“Now, it’s the opposition factions that are the revolutionary pioneers,” Azhar said, ticking off the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the rival Democratic Front and Islamic Jihad.

This is not news to Jaber Fiddah, the leader in Gaza of Fatah, the largest PLO faction. “Palestinians are good, very good at saying no,” Fiddah said. “We have to persuade them to say yes this time. It won’t be easy, but we must succeed.”

Fatah, acting on behalf of the PLO and its chairman, Yasser Arafat, has begun a series of daily rallies across the West Bank and Gaza Strip to build support for the agreement.

Although two public opinion polls showed strong support for the agreement among urban Palestinians, no one can be sure without elections where the majority stands.

“We have the momentum, but we have to increase it,” Fiddah said. “Let’s be blunt--there are fears of a civil war once we have autonomy, and there is already violence against the agreement. We must win the support of the masses so that we can prevent this sort of intrigue.”

Fatah’s rivals are also holding rallies, not as numerous or as big but still strong enough to challenge the agreement and its supporters.

There have been clashes as militants on both sides have attempted to break up the rallies of the others. About 300 members of the Muslim fundamentalist group Hamas used wooden clubs to disperse a rally Wednesday of a new political party in Gaza City in support of the agreement; on Sunday, Fatah supporters opened fire with submachine guns over the heads of those attending a Popular Front rally in the Gaza town of Rafah.

“The minority must respect the opinion of the majority,” Husseini reminded his audience in Jerusalem. “If we do this correctly, we will reach our Palestinian state with its capital at Jerusalem.”

Many, if not most, Palestinians will judge the accord by whether it improves their lives, which now seem more impoverished than ever. For them, peace means a better life, and that will take a lot of money.

Mohammed Akhras, 19, a laborer at the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim on the West Bank, said: “In reality, we cannot object to Arafat. We put him over our heads for the fight he has made for us. But we hope not just that he will come back. We hope all Palestinians will come back.

“We also hope,” Akhras continued, “that he will bring lots of projects and factories with him. Arafat must provide these jobs now before he is really welcomed.”

Abdul Rajid, 24, interrupted at his work pressing cinder blocks at a crude little cement factory in the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp outside Jericho, replied simply, “God knows,” when asked if life would be better with self-government.

“They (PLO leaders) say they will open factories here,” Rajid reasoned. “If they do, the people will be able to live. If not, the situation will be worse.”

Ahmed Elwan, 34, a public relations officer at the PLO delegation’s headquarters in a brand-new villa in Gaza City, was optimistic about both politics and money.

“We are now suffering economically very much in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “But we have had many offers of financial aid from all over the world. Whatever happens, it couldn’t be worse than the situation now.”

Jabir Jaber, a butcher at the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, said: “Any solution that removes the Jews and stops them from arresting and killing our children is acceptable to me.

“There is no other option than that, and no other option than to do what they did. If these other guys (the critics of the agreement) have any ideas, let them come forward now.”

Within the occupied territories, opposition is coming largely from two different camps--from Marxists who believe Arafat has failed to achieve the revolution they believed should come with liberation and from Muslim fundamentalists who see Arafat as selling out their Islamic heritage.

“As Muslims, Arafat’s coming or not coming does not concern us,” said Ahmed, the 38-year-old imam at the Jericho refugee camp’s mosque. “The issue even between the Israelis and the Palestinians does not concern us.

“But this peace plan, this is not a victory. It is a loss. There can never be a ruler who can be responsible for Palestine because it is a Muslim land. . . . What Arafat is doing is a sacrilege. And this is the position of the true believers.”

* SUPPORT FOR PALESTINIANS

Israel’s foreign minister backed a Jordan-Palestinian state. A12