Rabin Puts Pressure on Arafat, Refuses to Resume Talks

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin tightened the screws on Yasser Arafat on Sunday, refusing to send Israeli delegates back to negotiations with the Palestinians until the PLO chairman accepts what had been agreed on in the last round of talks.

“We will let them sweat a bit--Israel’s not in a rush,” Rabin told his Cabinet, putting off Israel’s return to scheduled negotiations on Palestinian self-government to give his government and the Palestine Liberation Organization time to reflect on how to proceed.

Rabin is angry over what he sees as an effort by Arafat not only to trap him into more concessions in the complex negotiations on Palestinian self-government, but to gain greater standing among Palestinians by humiliating Israel.

“What’s the point of reaching agreements?” Rabin asked in a radio interview. “This is not the way to move ahead. We want to get answers. We clearly cannot rely on verbal agreements with the PLO; everything must be in writing.”

But Rabin is also playing to a domestic audience worried about the price of peace with the Palestinians, and his renewed toughness toward the PLO and his insistence on Israel’s security needs are reassuring to many.

“If the basis for discussion is Yasser Arafat’s new demands, then there is no basis right now for continuation of the talks,” said Environment Minister Yossi Sarid of the dovish Meretz Party, reflecting popular support for Rabin’s stand.

Under the accord Israel signed with the PLO in September, Israeli military forces should have begun withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank area of Jericho on Dec. 13.

The deadline was missed because of disputes over border crossings into the territories, the size of the Jericho area and security for Jewish settlements in Gaza.

What might have begun as a tactical repositioning by Arafat in the negotiations appears to have grown into a serious crisis. Now, the Israelis most committed to reaching peace with the Palestinians--Rabin, Sarid and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres among them--are expressing their doubts about the trustworthiness of Arafat and the PLO.

“We gave the Palestinians in this agreement a great historic opportunity. If they want to wait, let them wait,” Peres commented bitterly. “It doesn’t threaten us.”

In Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa said he is talking with both sides and hopes to reach an agreement on resuming direct negotiations between them in a day or so in the Red Sea resort town of Taba.

“We are ready to renew the talks in Taba, but only on the basis of an understanding that the starting point is the Cairo document,” Rabin said, referring to the framework that Israel insists was negotiated last week with Moussa’s mediation.

The PLO says that document was never more than a proposal and an Israeli one at that.

In a reply broadcast on Israel Army Radio, PLO negotiator Nabil Shaath said, “I don’t know which paper Prime Minister Rabin is talking about.” Shaath said there were working papers, handwritten drafts of compromise proposals and minutes of the meetings in Cairo, but no agreements.

Shaath said the two main points at issue were the size of the Jericho district under autonomy--Israel has offered about 22 square miles--and how residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would cross the borders from Jordan and Egypt into the autonomous zones.

Israel insists on maintaining control at the crossings to prevent an influx of weapons and the return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who had fled or were expelled in past Arab-Israeli wars.

Rabin told the Cabinet on Sunday that Arafat wanted changes that would circumvent Israeli border controls and give the Palestinians symbols of sovereignty.

“The things Arafat wants aren’t doodads, but serious things that have not been brought up before,” Rabin told the Cabinet, according to an Israeli official who briefed journalists on the session. “If they try to raise questions, through the hesitations of the PLO chairman, about what was in the agreement, then everything is open.”