Palestinian Politician Assassinated in Gaza : Mideast: Slaying of Arafat friend marks escalation of violence in advance of self-rule.

A leading Palestinian politician and longtime friend of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat was assassinated Thursday in a sharp escalation of political violence in advance of self-rule here.

Asad Saftawi, 58, the headmaster of a local school, was shot in the head and neck by two masked gunmen as he picked up his son from class just before noon, according to witnesses. The assailants first shot Saftawi from several yards away and then came closer, smashing his car window, to fire again.

A founder of Fatah, the main group within the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saftawi was the third of its Gaza activists to be assassinated since the PLO and Israel agreed on terms for Palestinian autonomy. The leader of the Fatah Vanguards, Mohammed Abu Shaban, a lawyer, was killed a month ago and his assistant last week.

The killings have heightened fears of a murderous struggle for power among Palestinians as Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank district of Jericho. Such strife would seriously undermine the transfer of power to Palestinian authorities early next year. And the assassination of such a prominent figure as Saftawi means that anyone could be hit.

“We are really worried about it,” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said of the potential turmoil. He heard about Saftawi’s assassination while visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip and sent a message of condolence to the family.

Arafat, a friend of Saftawi since their university days in Cairo nearly 40 years ago as well as one of his closest comrades in founding Fatah, lamented Saftawi’s killing.

“I have lost a brother, a maker of peace, one of the leaders of Palestine,” Arafat said in Paris, where he is on a two-day visit. The assassination was part of a “big conspiracy,” Arafat added, but he did not say whom he blamed.

Fearing a cycle of killings now, Dr. Zakaria Agha, a member of the Palestinian peace delegation from Gaza, called for a meeting of rival factions to prevent further attacks. “If this killing continues, it will be a civil war,” Agha warned.

Claiming responsibility for Saftawi’s assassination, a telephone caller told the Associated Press in Damascus, Syria, that Saftawi was killed by the previously unknown Arab Palestine Organization because of “treacherous contacts” he allegedly had with Israeli intelligence on Arafat’s orders.

“All other traitors will meet the same fate,” the caller warned. He said the group is made up of guerrillas who formerly belonged to Ahmed Jibril’s radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and who oppose the PLO-Israel accord.

Saftawi had survived an earlier assassination attempt in July, 1992, that was blamed on the fundamentalist group Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. But Thursday, Hamas denounced his murder.

“We in Hamas strongly condemn these physical liquidations,” Hamas declared in a leaflet distributed here. “We are against political assassinations as a language of dialogue among Palestinians.”

“At a time when the cause of our Palestinian people is passing through the most critical times . . . a hired gang comes out . . . and carries out a campaign of political assassinations,” Hamas added.

Saftawi, who had advocated Israeli-Palestinian coexistence in two neighboring states while many other Palestinians still talked of destroying the “Zionist entity,” served as an intermediary between Israel and the PLO for a number of years, carrying messages to and from Arafat, some of them from Rabin, as early as 1989.

In April, Rabin stopped at Saftawi’s home in Gaza’s Beit Lahiya district for tea--a visit that was broadcast on Israeli television to the astonishment of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Saftawi’s body was taken to his home from the hospital, where he had died minutes after arrival. Members of the Fatah Hawks fired shots into the air as a salute, and hundreds of mourners arrived carrying Palestinian flags. Many people pushed forward to kiss the body, which was wrapped in a white shroud with bloodstains around the head. He will be buried today. Saftawi was regarded as one of Fatah’s principal thinkers, working out its ideology as well as its early organization in Gaza. He spent four years in jail, starting in 1973, for handling PLO funds here, and he was held without charge for three months in 1988 at the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation.

Although the killing cast a pall over negotiations between the PLO and Israel on implementation of the autonomy accord, the two delegations reached agreement on an initial release of Palestinian prisoners after a stormy session that indicated how difficult the talks will be.

In a joint announcement, Israel and the PLO said that women and young people, elderly or sick men--about 715 prisoners altogether--will be released early next week. “The release of prisoners will be implemented gradually and continually,” the statement said, and delegates said the timetable will be discussed at further talks. Israel holds about 13,400 prisoners--9,500 in military facilities, the rest in civilian prisons.

The accord was the first concrete agreement to come out of the talks at Taba, Egypt, on implementing Israel’s pact with the PLO on Palestinian autonomy.