BRIEFING BOOK : The Path to Peace : A year after Israel and the PLO signed their landmark pact, both sides report progress and disappointments. Despite setbacks, most say process is irreversible.

That handshake--Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat uneasily reaching out to one another last September--summed up not only the hopes and achievements but also the tragedies and fears of their peoples.

Encapsulated in that dramatic moment were the past and the future of the Middle East, and standing on the South Lawn of the White House, Rabin quoted the admonition of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

After more than 100 years of conflict between Arabs and Jews, Rabin said, “the time for peace has come.”

PROMISES: In months of secret negotiations, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization had reached a historic accord recognizing the legitimacy of both Jewish and Palestinian aspirations for national homelands and, consequently, the need to divide the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River over which they had fought for so long.

Under the agreement, the Palestinians would begin a five-year period of self-rule, establishing their own government in the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho and extending it later through the West Bank.

Israel would begin withdrawing its forces from Palestinian territories, ending 27 years of military occupation.

This was only the first step--the hardest questions, including establishment of a Palestinian state, its borders, rival claims over Jerusalem, the future of Jewish settlements and the return of Palestinian refugees, were deferred for two years.

However tentative, the agreement signed last Sept. 13 freed strong forces for peace. The fate of the Palestinians had been at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the accord with the PLO opened opportunities for Israel to sign peace treaties with neighboring Arab states and break out of its regional isolation.

Yet both Rabin and Arafat have faced bitter opposition because of the accord.

Arafat was accused of selling out the Palestinians, of accepting “the criminal Zionist entity,” of failing the hundreds of thousands of refugees scattered through the Arab world, of “abandoning the revolution . . . for personal power in a postage stamp of a place.”

Rabin was denounced as “a dangerous megalomaniac,” “the traitor who signed the death warrant for the State of Israel”; in cruel caricatures posted throughout Israel, he is often portrayed as an Arab terrorist.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Implementation of the basic agreement on self-government required months of arduous, often bitter negotiations; resurgent violence repeatedly threatened to upset the process. But after a year, there are major gains:

* The Gaza Strip, for so long a hellhole for both the Palestinians and their Israeli occupiers, is tranquil despite dire predictions of murderous conflict. The PLO quickly established its authority as its security forces deployed to an enthusiastic welcome.

* The Palestinians established their first government. It is taking shape in a day-by-day struggle that, nonetheless, gives people in the Gaza Strip a sense of control over their lives. Under an expansion of the Palestinian Authority’s powers, Palestinians are taking over management of education, health care, welfare services, tourism and taxation in the West Bank.

* Most Israelis are happy to be out of the Gaza Strip, recent opinion surveys say, and are looking forward to ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. They are angered by continuing attacks on their soldiers and settlers by Palestinian radicals opposed to the peace process but largely agree with the government that the deal was a good one.

* Once Arafat had returned to the Gaza Strip and West Bank and the Palestinian Authority had had been established, King Hussein of Jordan felt free to press his own negotiations with Israel, signing a declaration with Rabin ending the state of war between their countries. King Hassan II of Morocco followed by agreeing to open low-level diplomatic relations with Israel.

PROSPECTS: For many Palestinians, progress comes too slowly.

In the Gaza Strip, unemployment remains acute--at least 50%, probably much more. More than 80% of families live hand-to-mouth, largely subsisting on meager welfare rations. Development aid promised by the West has only trickled in as donors have delayed help until the Palestinian Authority established priorities and accounting procedures.

Rivals of Arafat’s Fatah group are restless, demanding elections that will let them compete for a larger role in the new authority but making Fatah nervous.

Problems remain from the year of negotiations. Israel continues to hold about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners, many on politically related charges. The passage between Gaza and Jericho has not been opened. Palestinians want to enlarge the Jericho enclave and to have a presence at the border crossings from Jordan and Egypt.

The Palestinian elections, part of the original accord, will be a watershed. They will constitute a referendum on the deal Arafat struck with Rabin. They will install the Palestinians’ first popularly chosen national government.

And, under the accord, Israeli troops will pull back from Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. Israel so far has not agreed to the scope and timing of the Palestinian vote, planned for Dec. 15.

Also ahead are tough talks on what both sides call the “final settlement” issues. But some, notably the status of Jerusalem and the future of the Jewish enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, crop up almost daily. Arafat is now seeking to expedite those negotiations, but Rabin has refused.

Although tied to the Palestinians and dependent on their success in self-government, Israel is looking to other tasks--breaking the stalemate with Syria, the key to a regional peace; ending the Arab economic boycott; establishing relations with Tunisia and perhaps some Arab countries of the Persian Gulf.

Despite the problems, the peace momentum continues. Israeli and Palestinian leaders alike assert that it has become irreversible, that the question now is how well--or badly--the accord will be carried out.