MIDEAST : Likud Fights PLO Pact With Scattershot

As the jet flew the 50 Israeli mayors, business leaders and professors east from Tel Aviv, the guide explained just how close the Israeli communities below would be to autonomous Palestine under the accord on self-government. He asked what this would mean for their security.

“The last house in Kfar Sava is just 200 meters from Qalqiliya,” the narrator said, pointing out how the old “green line,” the frontier between Israel and Jordan before the 1967 Middle East War, had faded away between Kfar Sava in Israel and Qalqiliya on the West Bank.

At the microphone was Benjamin Netanyahu, chairman of Israel’s opposition Likud Party. He was seeking allies among influential Israelis, mostly from outside his party, against the autonomy agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“The government (of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin) is going to establish a Palestinian state here,” Netanyahu warned, his voice deep, mellifluous and persuasive. “They don’t admit it in public, but MKs (members of Knesset, the Israeli Parliament) are talking about it in the corridors.”

Likud’s mission now, Netanyahu said, explaining the party’s plans for the weekly flights from Tel Aviv to Jericho and back, is “to expose what the government is trying to conceal from the public.”

Netanyahu, regarded here as the “master of the sound bite” for his ability to articulate his views succinctly, appeared in good form on the inaugural flight and to have recovered from his own surprise at the agreement last August and from Likud’s inability to block it in the Knesset.

But Likud remains a troubled, divided party under Netanyahu’s leadership.

Although senior members of Rabin’s Labor Party concede that opinion polls show that Likud would win an election now, political commentators and campaign consultants say they doubt Likud would actually be able to do so--especially if Rabin called for an early vote after securing peace agreements with Syria and other neighboring countries.

Despite its bitter opposition to the autonomy accord, Likud has had little success in putting forward an alternative.

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Netanyahu, demonstrating Likud’s uncertain approach, last week reversed his position on the accord with the PLO, telling Jewish settlers on the West Bank that a government he led would not be bound by it--after insisting for four months that it would be a diplomatic and legal obligation.

“He moves, flustered, from opinion to opinion, from act to act, trying to seem at one and the same time like a smooth yuppie . . . an authoritative opposition leader . . . and an extremist,” the respected liberal commentator Nahum Barnea wrote in Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s most-read newspaper. “Every intelligent or bad idea that has come up in recent months in the right-wing parties has found itself immediately in Netanyahu’s mouth.”

Likud’s problems go beyond Netanyahu, although he won the chairmanship last spring as the leader most likely to take the party back to power.

Likud had hoped to become the rallying point for an alliance of forces opposed to the accord and, thus, benefit politically. But those forces have remained largely separate and divided--the settlers movement on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, the ultra-religious and other political parties that are far to the right of Likud.

But what has dismayed Likud’s supporters and potential allies the most has been renewed quarreling among party leaders, particularly between Netanyahu and his two principal rivals, former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and former Foreign Minister David Levy.

Sharon last week announced his intention to seek the premiership, within Likud or outside it, at the next election.

Netanyahu himself dismisses the in-fighting. “The constant fomenting of internal discord is something the Likud has suffered from for more than a decade,” he said, recalling the intrigues against Menachem Begin, then Yitzhak Shamir. “Now it is apparently my turn.”

Israel’s Scattered Opposition

After Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stunned the world by reaching an accord with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, analysts expected foes of the pact to galvanize around the opposition Likud Party and its leader, Bejamin Netanyahu. It hasn’t quite worked that way. Now, many within his party are grumbling about his leadership. Who is Netanyahu and who are his challengers?

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU Chairman, Likud Party Born Oct. 21, 1949 ... educated Massachusetts Institute of Technology

David Levy, Former Israeli foreign minister

Ariel Sharon, Former Israeli defense minister