Arafat, Rabin Vow to Expand PLO Autonomy

Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, pleased with progress in establishing Palestinian self-government in the Gaza Strip, agreed Wednesday to expand the autonomy, step by step, throughout the West Bank and end the Israeli occupation there.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat decided in talks here to transfer responsibility for a range of government services, including education, health and welfare, to the new Palestinian Authority. But they acknowledged that difficult issues will have to be resolved.

“A fresh impulse was given to peace by Israelis and Palestinians,” Arafat told reporters after the two leaders met for the first time since May. “The meeting was positive, fruitful. . . . We agreed on some major issues, and some other issues will require more discussions.”

The issues include some of the most difficult the two sides will face in reaching a full Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement: their borders; the long-term presence of Israeli forces and settlements on the West Bank; and the future of Jerusalem, claimed by both as their capital.

Rabin urged commitment and caution. “We are entering one of the more decisive stages on the way to reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said. “This is the stage where we end our dreaming. The time has come now to roll up our sleeves.”

Arafat, who heads the new Palestinian Authority, promised to hold “free, honest and democratic elections as quickly as possible” in expanding Palestinian self-government. But he did not confirm mid-October as the target date for the vote, which will be the Palestinians’ first national election.

Wednesday’s discussions between Israeli and Palestinian officials were described by both as broad and strategic, an effort to set the agenda for the next phase in the peace effort and to fix a timetable for the new measures.

But the two sides also dealt with very specific, very sensitive issues, including: the release, requested by Arafat, of the imprisoned leader of the militant Islamic group Hamas; freedom for more than 5,000 other Palestinian prisoners still held by Israel; and enlargement of the Jericho district in the West Bank as part of the autonomous area.

Arafat and Rabin, speaking separately after an initial two hours of talks, said they had created three committees to discuss unresolved issues on autonomy for Gaza and Jericho, the transfer of civilian administration to the Palestinians in the rest of the West Bank, and convening a conference with Egypt and Jordan on Palestinian refugees from the 1967 Middle East War.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister, said that even expansion of the Palestinian Authority’s powers was complicated because it raised the question of who would enforce its decisions in areas still under Israeli military occupation.

Yet both sides appeared encouraged by the successful transfer of the Gaza Strip and the Jericho district to the Palestinians and Arafat’s establishment this week of the first Palestinian government.

“A creative spirit has nourished and inspired this process, and it has led to opening the door of genuine peace to one of the most complex conflicts of this century,” Arafat said, speaking at a U.N. ceremony honoring him, Rabin and Peres with the UNESCO peace prize for their breakthrough agreement last year.

Henry A. Kissinger, former U.S. secretary of state and head of the UNESCO prize jury, handed out awards worth almost $50,000 for each winner. Kissinger, who avoided talks with Arafat during his Middle East diplomacy in the 1970s, shook the PLO leader’s hands as the crowd cheered.

Arafat again appealed for economic assistance to the new Palestinian Authority. Wealthy nations should “assume their moral, political and material responsibilities,” or “the peace process, however noble and important it may be, will be liable to collapse,” he said.

French President Francois Mitterrand, who met with Arafat and Rabin, said later that it would be tragic if financial problems thwart the peace process. He said he would press, at this weekend’s summit of leaders of the seven leading industrialized nations, for the release of more of the $2.4 billion that has been promised for Palestinian autonomy.

Rabin, speaking in Hebrew with Israelis as his primary audience, recounted the deaths of three of four sons of a prominent Israeli family, followed by their parents’ deaths. Replying to right-wing critics at home, he addressed the surviving son--and through him all families who have suffered through the long Arab-Israeli conflict--declaring: “For you, for our children and their children, we are moving toward peace. . . . That is our vow to you.”