PLO Foot Soldiers Left in Dust of Self-Rule : Mideast: As Arafat sets up shop in Gaza, men who have dedicated their lives to struggle feel neglected.

Ahmed Abdul Karim Hih still has the look of a brawny mountain fighter, which he is, and his thick muscled arm seemed out of place raising a Coke beside a swimming pool in this drowsy town astride the Mediterranean.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat had just boarded a plane for the Gaza Strip, and Hih was one of the assortment of former fighters, disgruntled bureaucrats and budding opposition leaders left behind this week at what was--but no longer is--PLO headquarters.

Hih hasn’t been paid since March for his work in the PLO political department. If he gets an order to go to Gaza, as he expects, he can’t take his Tunisian wife and two children; he will have no way to provide for them to stay here.

His son, Ziyad, climbed out of the club pool and asked when the family can buy a swim membership so he can play every day. He melted under Hih’s glare. “I know,” the boy said. “When you get your salary. . . . “

His father then observed: “I paid more than a quarter of my life, side by side, with Arafat from Jordan to Lebanon to Syria to Tunis.

“What to say to my children now--that I am going to be a policeman? At this age?” asked Hih, 45. “After 26 years of fighting in the mountains with machine guns, with hand grenades, with rockets, now I am nothing. And when I talk about myself, I am talking about my whole generation. We created this man with our struggle so he is a hero, and we are nothing. Really, I would rather die than see these results.”

These resentful men, left behind in Tunis, are supposed to be carrying on the work of the PLO outside the territories, maintaining contacts with the 70 nations that have recognized the State of Palestine, lobbying for the return of Palestinian refugees and pursuing the peace process with Israel.

But they also represent a potential political time bomb for Arafat, who has cast his lot in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the expense of millions of Palestinians scattered around the Arab world and the rest of the globe who have no stake in what happens in the self-rule areas of Gaza and Jericho.

The three senior department chiefs who will remain in Tunis--foreign minister Farouk Kaddoumi at the political department, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Maazen) in international relations and Abdullah Hourani in charge of refugees--have stood against Arafat to varying degrees in the past year as the PLO chairman has embarked on his “Gaza-Jericho first” peace initiative.

Kaddoumi, who initially opposed the peace accord, has since begun working to implement it but has made no secret that he doesn’t like it and doesn’t have much faith that it will lead to the goal of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Considered the most likely successor to Arafat for the PLO leadership, Kaddoumi has been left to nurture a power base of millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. Already this week he was making strident statements--calling for a continuation of armed struggle against Israel--which do not strictly adhere to the PLO chairman’s line.

“The intifada (the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation) should continue as long as the Israelis are there, because they have postponed all their promises,” Kaddoumi said in an interview this week in his Tunis office. “The deal was that they should withdraw completely from Gaza. They did not withdraw. So they are big liars. I don’t think this will serve the cause of peace. And if they think they can deceive us, in the long run, they are the big losers.”

Asked if he endorsed a recent attack on an Israeli soldier by the fundamentalist Palestinian group, Hamas, Kaddoumi said he supported such moves, as long as they occur outside the Palestinian self-rule areas of Gaza and Jericho.

“Hamas attacks against Israeli soldiers are still legitimate in the West Bank--and it’s not Hamas. Why do you always say Hamas? It is the Palestinian people,” he said.

”. . . We seek peace,” he said. “But the oppressed people should have the right to resist occupation by all means.”

Asked if Arafat agreed with this line, Kaddoumi smiled. “Ask Arafat,” he said.

Despite the troupes of Israelis who have traveled to Tunis in recent months--most recently a delegation headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin to multilateral peace talks--Kaddoumi, even as PLO foreign minister, has refused to meet with any of them.

“I have no confidence in the Israelis. . . . I’m skeptical of their attitude,” he said. “ . . . Israel in two months should move out of the remaining territories of the West Bank. We should see to it also that they withdraw their settlers, and Jerusalem must be the capital of the state of Palestine. Palestinian refugees should be repatriated to their homeland, whether it is to the state of Palestine or in Israel.”

Still, Kaddoumi is inextricably linked to the Gaza-Jericho plan as chairman of the board of governors of the economic and development authority that will finance reconstruction and channel international aid. He has insisted on the right to sign every check, every contract. With each signature, his power inside and outside the territories mounts, even as he has acted as a forceful, effective spokesman to attract international donations for Palestinian self-rule.

It will be one of Arafat’s most difficult tasks in the months ahead to channel the doubts and frustrations left over in Tunis toward concrete progress on Palestinian self-rule. Before departing this week, he emphasized that the PLO hierarchy remains the basis of the Palestinian cause, despite the induction of the new Palestinian Authority for governing the territories.

But PLO troops outside Gaza are flagging. Staffing must be cut at PLO embassies around the world and some offices will be closed, as the bulk of whatever new money comes in is channeled to Gaza and Jericho, Kaddoumi said.

In Tunis, remaining employees still await final lists to determine whether they will be asked to take new jobs--mostly as police--in Gaza and Jericho. Those on the list must go or they won’t be paid. Yet most have no idea where they would live in Gaza or how their families would be provided for. Even those remaining in Tunis face uncertain futures.

There is little of the peace euphoria, so evident still in Gaza’s streets, in the emptying Palestinian villas here with disconnected telephones.

“Our government is pushing us to go outside this place we have been living in for 12 years,” Hih said. “To deport us as men. To leave our families here. For how long? We don’t know. . . .”

He shrugged. “Arafat has gone to Gaza, and I cannot get anyone to give me an answer about my salary and my future.”