Israel, PLO Adopt Plan to Stem Strife in Gaza : Mideast: Army will scale back manhunts in return for end to Arab attacks. Accord follows daylong clashes.

After a day of furious clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli troops in the strife-torn Gaza Strip, Israeli military commanders agreed Tuesday evening to scale down their searches for fugitive guerrillas in return for Palestinian efforts to restore a cease-fire.

Nearly 70 Palestinians were reported wounded, and one, a boy of 15, was killed as Israeli soldiers fired repeatedly throughout the day on thousands of stone-throwing Gaza youths who were manning barricades of burning tires to protest the army’s intensified manhunts of the past week.

Plans for Israel’s smooth withdrawal from Gaza this month are now in serious jeopardy--and with them prospects for Palestinian self-government. The military commanders met Tuesday with leaders of Fatah, the mainline group within the Palestine Liberation Organization, to shape an agreement they hope will defuse the explosive tension in the region.

According to reliable but unofficial Israeli and Palestinian sources, Israel agreed to cut back on its patrols, street deployments and, most of all, its undercover ambushes. Fatah said it will insist that its militia, the Fatah Hawks, observe their orders and end attacks on Israeli targets.

“We hope the bloodshed will be stopped. We have agreed on practical steps to solve the situation,” PLO official Sufian Abu Zaydeh said after he and four other Palestinian representatives met Maj. Gen. Matan Vilnai, Israel’s southern regional commander, at the Erez checkpoint at the entrance to the Gaza Strip. “We believe we can stop this escalation of violence, and we know we must.”

Further discussions were under way at a political level: between Israeli and PLO delegations in Cairo and between PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and a special Israeli envoy, Jacques Neriah, an adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in Tunis, Tunisia--to ensure that the street-level clashes do not destroy the overall peace process.

“It is very important, and we’re doing so in all possible ways, to clarify to everyone, to the organizations, to the population, to Fatah, that we are not at war with them,” a senior Israeli officer in Gaza asserted. “We are (only) at war with those who try to prevent progress in the peace process. We are at war with those who try to injure soldiers and civilians traveling here.”

Rabin warned, however, that the violence of the past week showed the need for a detailed agreement on security arrangements during the autonomy period and that Israel will insist upon it. This might delay by “a week or so” the proposed Dec. 13 start of Israel’s military pullback from Gaza and the Jericho district in the West Bank, he said.

“I’m not talking about stalling negotiations--I am talking about reaching a detailed agreement if we are to prove to Israelis and Palestinians that we have a good basis,” Rabin said in Rome, where he was attending the meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“I believe that both Israelis and Palestinians--I refer to responsible Palestinian leaders--have to find ways to overcome tension to continue to strive toward our goal. Violence and counter-violence lead nowhere.”

Rabin reportedly proposed compromises to Arafat on several key issues in the negotiations on implementing the autonomy accord and offered to meet with the PLO leader to conclude those talks.

In backing away from the sharpening confrontation in Gaza, Israel and the PLO expect not only to restore the underpinnings of the agreement on Palestinian self-government but also to benefit from their joint tackling of a serious crisis, one that they have a common interest in resolving, and thus strengthen their partnership.

“These are the final steps,” said Environment Minister Yossi Sarid, a leader of the dovish Meretz Party in Rabin’s coalition government. “It is not surprising they are difficult. It’s a lot like climbing a mountain, with the last few hundred meters the hardest.”

According to Palestinian participants in the meeting with the Israeli commanders, the army agreed to cut back its forces in parts of the Gaza Strip starting today and thus reduce day-to-day friction. The military also said it will remove a number of roadblocks and open some closed streets.

The Palestinian leaders agreed to press the Fatah Hawks to observe the de facto cease-fire that had been in effect for two months. The group had announced Monday that it was returning to the armed struggle against the Israeli occupation in response to the killing of one of its members in an ambush and the arrest of its commander and his deputy on suspicion of involvement in Israeli deaths.