Cult of Violence Rises in Territories as Hopes for Peace Grow Dim : Mideast: A cycle of bloodletting grips areas targeted for Palestinian self-rule. As talks drag on, support for accord wanes.

Ala Juabeh stood Friday beside the mound of dirt where he buried the bloodied clothes of his elder brother, pointing with pride as he described the phenomenon now known throughout the Israeli-occupied territories as the “miracle of Hebron.”

“It is here that the glow comes every night,” said the 18-year-old Palestinian, as neighbors gathered in the back-yard grape arbor where Ala buried his brother’s remains the night he was killed last month. “We are told by the holy ones that this light is the essence of the martyr. And herds of people have come to see it every night since Farid’s martyrdom--many from towns far away.

“Even now, we are under curfew today, under the siege of the Israelis, and even tonight people will come to this place, just to stand in my brother’s glow.”

Such are the symbols that are fueling a cult of violence in these lands where there are few signs of a promised peace.

It was, in fact, Farid Juabeh’s death at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces along with the deaths of three other fundamentalist Palestinian guerrillas--all of them shot, rocketed or burned to death in a fiery 12-hour siege Jan. 14--that triggered another surge of violence this week in the West Bank. Three Israeli settlers and a Palestinian were seriously wounded in revenge attacks that left the city of Hebron under the continuing army curfew.

The cycle of bloodletting is mirrored in the Gaza Strip, where in the past three days Israeli soldiers have shot and seriously injured an 11-year-old Palestinian girl and a 13-year-old boy who were pelting them with stones, and an undercover police squad dressed as Arab women shot and killed an armed supporter of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and his peace-seeking Fatah faction.

Those are but a handful of the casualties here in the months when Arafat and Israeli negotiators have been struggling at bargaining tables far away to reach a final agreement on terms of a promised Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho.

In the five months since Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn, enshrining a deal to introduce Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories, 59 Palestinians and 20 Israelis have been stabbed or shot to death in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Ala Juabeh’s back-yard memorial to his dead brother symbolizes more than the violence behind that mounting toll.

It also illustrates how support for Arafat, his Fatah wing and the peace agreement with Israel is fast eroding in the places the agreement affects most. Leaders of Arafat’s own armed PLO unit on Friday were publicly vowing to defy their leader’s cease-fire order, announcing “a decision of the street” to continue their armed attacks on Israeli forces after the death of their comrade, underground fighter Salim Muwafi, on Thursday.

And as advisers to Rabin and Arafat issued conflicting signals on the next wrangling session--tentatively scheduled in Cairo next week--the “miracle of Hebron” also testified to the ultimate beneficiary of what Arafat’s own representatives concede is their waning influence in the territories: the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas.

On Friday afternoon, while Rabin conferred with his top generals on their concerns for the security of Jewish settlers after the troop withdrawal, and Arafat consulted with his advisers in Tunis, Tunisia, Ala Juabeh and his neighbors spent their Muslim Sabbath singing praises to Allah and to Hamas.

“Are you Fatah or Hamas?” Rafi Qudsi, Juabeh’s next-door neighbor, asked his 4-year-old son Fahdi as the entire neighborhood broke curfew to gather by Farid Juabeh’s shrine.

“I like Hamas,” the small boy replied without a moment’s hesitation.

Qudsi, a dry-goods merchant in this city of 90,000, smiled. “You see, almost no one supports Arafat here anymore,” he told two American journalists who had come to see the shrine. “How can we support someone who can talk about peace with a group that is killing our brothers with rockets?”

Ala Juabeh and his neighbors then described in detail how the Israeli military killed Farid and the others, escaped prisoners who had been active fighters with Hamas’ armed underground faction, the Izzadine al Qassim Brigade.

In an account confirmed by the Israel Defense Forces, they graphically described how the army fired barrage after barrage of antitank missiles, grenades and machine-gun rounds into a nearby house where Juabeh and the others had holed up after attacking an Israeli patrol.

Later, after a bit of reflection, Qudsi added, “It’s not that we have anything against Fatah. Our only problem with them is they are giving all these concessions without coming back to ask the people.” Besides, he said, so far there has been only the talk of peace; the entire neighborhood agreed.

This sentiment, Palestinian analysts said, goes far beyond Hebron, a hotbed of Palestinian resistance that was never a bastion of support for Arafat’s moderate faction.

In a recent, random survey of 1,622 Arabs, the independent Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, in cooperation with two American television networks, found that support for last September’s peace plan in general--and Arafat, in particular--has slipped throughout the territories.

Just 45% said they supported the peace accord, down from 68% at the time it was signed. About 40% expressed support for Arafat’s Fatah wing, although Hamas, which gained only slightly in support, was a distant second with 14%. But a full 44% said they felt Arafat was doing a poor job of negotiating with the Israelis.

Even the most loyal of Arafat’s local leaders confirmed the findings to a large degree.

“There is a drop in the support of Palestinian people for the peace process,” said Zakaria Agha, the most senior Fatah official in Gaza. “If the conditions continue like this, and the frustration increases, you will hardly be controlling the people.”

In an effort to blunt the frustration, Arafat and Rabin both have expressed strong, though vague, optimism that they will agree to a final withdrawal plan in the coming weeks.

But Rabin predicted only this week that it would take “a miracle” to bring a final withdrawal agreement in the immediate future. It is the other “miracles,” such as the light in Juabeh’s back yard, and the bloodshed they represent that are filling the vacuum of peace.

Already, the people of Hebron have informally renamed the street that runs past Juabeh’s home to “Street of the Martyr Farid Juabeh.”

And the neighbors offered a free color postcard memorializing the four slain men, a collage that they said now adorns most Hebron homes.

It bears the photographs of all four and the Koranic words: “Of the believers, there were men who were truthful to the oath they gave to God. Some have passed away, and others still wait. But they never budge from their oath.”