PLO Grapples With What Peace Will Look Like : Mideast: The challenge of governing 2 million Palestinians is so formidable that even internal opposition to the peace plan has been silenced.

A grim-faced, obviously empty-handed landlord walked out of the bougainvillea-draped villa that houses the Palestine Liberation Organization’s information department this week, a promise in his pocket in lieu of the rent.

In the office inside, Deputy Information Director Jamal Hillal pointed with a sigh to the lone telephone working on his desk, one of several that once had been there and the only one that had not been disconnected; it bleated plaintively into the warm Tunisian afternoon.

The PLO, on the brink of launching its first transitional government in the land of Palestine, hasn’t paid many of its bills in exile in five months. Salaries are three months behind. Many members of the ruling Central Council, convening in Tunis later this month to approve the historic peace agreement with Israel, are being asked to buy their own airline tickets to attend.

In this atmosphere of crisis and exultation, determination and imminent disaster, the PLO leadership has met this week to decide crucial questions on the shape of the new government in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and how the PLO will take on stewardship of 2 million Palestinians, many of whom will soon begin to depend on it for vital, daily services.

“D-Day is the final day on which the Israelis move out. In the morning, the people will wake up and go about their business in as normal way as possible,” a senior PLO official said. “If your electricity is cut, we can’t tell you, ‘Wait until we form the department’ (to fix it). It’s a very hard job. I don’t know how we are going to manage. . . . But we will have to. Otherwise, they’ll tell us to go to hell.”

After almost three decades of violent, usually frustrating struggle against Israeli occupation, PLO leaders have launched the difficult task of deciding what peace will look like.

In hours of closed meetings, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and his chief aides debated:

* How to structure the negotiating committees that will work out with the Israelis the final details of the interim self-government plan to begin in the West Bank town of Jericho and the Gaza Strip.

* What kind of transitional government the PLO will put in place between the time when Israeli troops withdraw and elections are held nine months later.

* How to form new government departments for crucial services such as water, electricity, health, education, police and social programs.

* What role Arafat and the PLO will play in governing in the occupied territories while still maintaining their role as representatives of 5 million to 6 million Palestinians outside Israel and Palestine.

So formidable is the work ahead, between now and the time Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho begins in mid-December, that the bitter opposition to the peace plan that marked the PLO leadership meeting--where three members of the Executive Committee resigned on the eve of the signing last month--has been silenced, at least for now.

“These tangible tasks are so daunting that the idea of opposition-non-opposition becomes irrelevant,” Hillal said. “We have to get down to business, and most of the people in the occupied territories have shown they are either supportive or at least not against it. The leadership knows now that what could make or break the agreement is what happens on the ground.”

Though concepts and details were still being debated, PLO officials in interviews said it was likely that Palestinians will emphasize the following points in their plan:

* A transitional government authority that most likely would be made up of members of the PLO Executive Committee, besides Palestinians from the occupied territories. The authority would oversee government departments and administer the budget in Gaza and Jericho until elections next year.

* Key PLO departments--such as social affairs, security and information--would likely transfer to Jericho and begin coordinating with volunteer groups already operating there, besides incorporating Palestinian personnel now laboring under the Israeli civil administration.

* Arafat hopes to go to Jericho, perhaps as early as December with the first withdrawal of Israeli troops. He would most likely not take up residence there until at least January. His role is still being debated. Most PLO leaders hope he will remain PLO chairman and president of the Palestinian state, rather than running in the elections to head a governing council limited to the occupied territories.

A more immediate concern is negotiations on implementation of the Gaza-Jericho plan, scheduled to begin Oct. 13 or 14, perhaps in Egypt.

Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Faisal Husseini, Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat--all members of the official Palestinian negotiating team in Washington that was overtaken by the secret Norway talks that produced the Gaza-Jericho agreement--were closeted in meetings here in recent days. And it appeared certain that the PLO leadership would assert a much more direct role in the upcoming talks.

PLO officials said they want to see a Palestinian-Israeli steering committee appointed to oversee the upcoming talks, whose details--on borders, security, economics and the like--would be discussed by smaller working groups, meeting steadily between Oct. 13 and the beginning of Israeli withdrawal.

The PLO is also likely to urge the United States and Russia, the original co-sponsors of the peace talks, to participate as steering committee members. “We want the co-sponsors to be still there, not only as witnesses but as a driving force for the negotiations,” a senior Arafat aide said.

A key point of debate in recent days has been the question of how direct a role the PLO should take in moving in to govern in Gaza and Jericho once the Israelis begin to withdraw. Some of the leadership had proposed simply putting Gaza and Jericho under the jurisdiction of the PLO Executive Committee, the group’s Cabinet-in-exile.

But it appeared more likely the PLO would attempt to exert its influence over the transitional authority by placing several Executive Committee members on its governing board, along with representatives of the territories; at the same time, it would give Palestinians in the territories, prohibited from direct PLO affiliation until now, a more direct participatory role in the organization.

PLO sources said it is likely the 87-member Central Council will be expanded soon after its Oct. 10 meeting to include new representatives from the occupied territories. Arafat, they said, has delayed the move until after this month’s session to avoid giving the appearance that he was stacking the council to win approval for the peace plan.

More importantly, the PLO sees a need to maintain an independent presence outside Gaza and Jericho, both to represent up to 5 million Palestinians who do not live in the West Bank and Gaza and to emphasize that the Palestinians’ ultimate goal is not interim self-government, but a Palestinian state.

“The Executive Committee has to continue its work, because the aim of the PLO is not early empowerment, the aim is the independence of the occupied territories,” Executive Committee member Suleiman Najjab said.

Finally, many PLO officials are hoping to use discussions over the next few months as an opportunity to begin the process of nation-building for Palestine. Many fear that, unless the seeds of strong institutions, political pluralism and human rights are built into the structure now, Palestinians ultimately may wind up with nothing better than the autocratic regimes common in the Middle East for centuries.

Hence, they are calling for one committee to draft a constitutional declaration for the new transitional governing authority that would build these principles into law.

Part of that issue relates to what role the PLO will play in elections, once held. Will Arafat’s mainstream Fatah group, for example, run candidates for the ruling council against contenders from the Islamic opposition, Hamas, or from the internal Palestinian opposition? PLO officials say it is more likely that, at least in the first round of balloting, candidates will run on electoral lists representing political trends in the territories: a progressive list, for example, against a national bloc and an Islamic list.

And if defeated at the polls, they say, Fatah is ready to hand over power. “We are not against opposition. It’s free democratic elections. Fair and free,” a senior Arafat aide said. “As much as we have been in authority, we are ready to be in opposition.”