Four PLO Officials Quit on Eve of Renewed Talks : Mideast: Resignations could signal a leadership crisis just when Arafat needs all the support he can get.

At least four senior officials of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in the occupied territories have resigned on the eve of renewed peace talks with Israel in Cairo today, Fatah sources said.

They said the resignations could herald a crisis in the local Palestine Liberation Organization leadership and an implicit challenge to Arafat just when he needs to marshal all possible support for the Israeli-PLO accord on self-rule.

“The Palestinian negotiations are being run the wrong way,” said Sami abu Samhadana, chief of Fatah’s Gaza Strip office, who quit along with Jamal Dik, a senior West Bank Fatah leader.

The sources said two other Fatah leaders had also resigned: Tawfik abu Khousa, Abu Samhadana’s deputy and Fatah delegate to the Unified Command of the Intifada--the Palestinian uprising--and Zakharia Talmas, head of the Gaza Arab Journalists Assn.

Still more resignations are in the offing, the sources said. Initial Palestinian elation over the pact has given way to doubt and disenchantment as negotiators wrangle over specifics.

Differing Israeli and Palestinian interpretations of the vaguely worded accord signed in September have postponed the scheduled Dec. 13 start of an Israeli troop withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO official Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Maazen, who signed the accord in September, were due to lead the delegations in the Cairo negotiations. Arafat arrived in Cairo on Sunday to brief Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the results of rounds of negotiations last week.

Palestinian sources said younger Fatah leaders in the occupied territories felt resentment and frustration at the leadership of Arafat.

They charged that he favored fawning, wealthy traditional figures--”a salon leadership”--over activists who had led the intifada and paid dearly in prison for their activities.

A central issue was Arafat’s decision last month to name old-line leaders Faisal Husseini and Zakharia Agha to head Fatah’s organization in the West Bank and Gaza, respectively.

Abu Samhadana, among the most prominent leaders of the uprising, which began in Gaza in December, 1987, directed activists from a prison cell for five years.

Dik, considered a leading ideologue, spent more than 13 years in Israeli jails for his activities in Fatah.

Several Fatah principals have chafed at Arafat’s leadership since the peace accord took both Israelis and Palestinians by surprise in September.

Hanan Ashrawi resigned as Palestinian spokeswoman two weeks ago amid media reports that she doubted Arafat’s commitment to democracy and personal freedom.

In Jerusalem, Lt. Col. Meir Mintz, 36, was buried Sunday at the Mt. Herzl military cemetery. Mintz, who was shot and killed in an ambush Friday in the occupied Gaza Strip, was one of only two officers of that rank slain since the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation began six years ago.

The military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hamas offered to stop attacking Israelis if Israel agreed to withdraw all its forces from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Stop all manifestations of violence from the Israeli side and . . . the Palestinian side will stop” its attacks, Mahmoud Zahar, a Gaza-based surgeon and leader of the Hamas group, said on Israel army radio Sunday.

Until now, Hamas has insisted that it will not lay down arms against Israel until the Jewish state is supplanted by an Islamic one.

Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, Israel’s military chief of staff, was quoted Sunday by an Israeli newspaper as saying Hamas’ proposal was not serious.