National Agenda : Israeli Arab Leaders Walk a Tightrope as Mediators, Politicians : Peacemaking efforts, first welcomed, arouse suspicions among both Palestinians and Israelis. Two vow to persevere.

A month ago, a bloody showdown between Palestinian police and Islamic militants threatened to plunge the Gaza Strip into civil war. Now the soothing slap of brushes painting over factional graffiti has replaced the crack of gunfire in the streets.

The whitewashed slogans are the first tangible results of an intense, ongoing mediation effort launched by Israeli Arabs just hours after the Nov. 18 clash erupted outside a Gaza mosque.

Led by an unlikely pair--a secular gynecologist from Jerusalem and a leader of the Islamic movement inside Israel--Israeli Arabs stepped to the fore as mediators between Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and his most powerful opposition, the militant Islamic movement Hamas.

Initially, each side welcomed their intervention, Israeli Arabs claimed, because they were not members of any faction represented in the West Bank and Gaza but had familial and political ties there that only Palestinians could have. “It was only natural,” said Dr. Ahmed Tibi, the Jerusalem gynecologist who serves as spokesman for the mediation efforts.

Tibi and other mediators say their efforts helped defuse an explosive situation in Gaza--at least 14 people were killed and 129 injured during the Nov. 18 confrontation--and laid the groundwork for reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

But now they find that both Palestinians and Israelis view their efforts with suspicion. Israeli officials have publicly questioned the loyalties of Israeli Arabs. Palestinians in the territories are accusing them of taking sides in the political tug-of-war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, the nascent government established to administer the Jericho and Gaza areas after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed their historic peace accord in September, 1993.

“In general, the connection between Arab citizens of Israel should be welcomed, when it is in relation to economic development of the territories and of Israel,” said Shimon Shetreet, Israel’s minister of economics and planning. “But when it is in the political area, when Israeli Arabs get involved in the conflicts between the Palestinian groups, it is not welcomed by the Israeli government.”

There are 900,000 Israeli Arabs, many of whom prefer to call themselves Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. They live inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, and vote in its elections. But their status has always been ambiguous. They are exempted from the mandatory army duty required of all other Israelis. Their connections with other Palestinians have been regarded as a potential security risk by successive Israeli governments.

Now Israeli Arabs say they are finding that the Palestinian factions they are dealing with in Gaza are uneasy with the mediators’ Israeli citizenship and skeptical of their neutrality in intra-Palestinian conflicts.

“It is difficult because, even if one side presents a solution that you feel is logical, the other side will point a finger and accuse you of being partial,” said Taleb a-Sanaa, an Israeli Arab who is a member of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament. “It is very easy to be dragged into factional politics.”

Successful mediation efforts in Gaza may pay off for Israeli Arab leaders with their constituents in the next elections, but the intervention is exacting an immediate price.

“Israel always wanted us to be a bridge for peace, a bridge to the other Palestinians and the other Arabs,” said Hashem Mahmeed, a Knesset member with the pro-Communist Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. “Now that we are trying to be that bridge, they say that we shouldn’t. Well, we are not asking for anyone’s permission.”

At a recent Israeli Cabinet meeting, security officials warned that the mediation efforts by Israeli Arabs in Gaza could pose a security risk for Israel. Leaks of the warning infuriated Israeli Arabs.

“It was an irresponsible and shallow thing to say,” Mahmeed said.

“It is not so much the mediation effort per se that worries people,” explained a senior Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is the much, much larger picture of what is happening to Israeli Arabs, now that the sulta (Palestinian Authority) is operating.”

If their mediating efforts manage to serve as a unifying force among the always-fractious Israeli Arab politicians, the security official said, they could decide to form a single party and run on one ticket for the next parliamentary elections. If all of Israel’s Arabs voted for one Arab party, it could capture as many as 14 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. That would be a big enough bloc to affect coalition building and decide crucial votes.

Currently, there are only seven Israeli Arab Knesset members. Two ran on Jewish Zionist party lists. No Israeli prime minister has ever included an Arab party in his or her governing coalition.

But some Israeli Arabs say openly that they believe a larger Arab presence in the Knesset will help the Palestinian entity now being born in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Arafat is interested in having a large Arab representation in the Knesset that would have an effect in the Palestinian arena as well,” said Ibrahim Sarsour, a member of the local council in Kfar Kassem, an Israeli Arab village. Sarsour is a member of the Islamic movement inside Israel.

“Just as the Jews are interested in having as large a number of Jews as possible in both houses of (the U.S.) Congress, we are interested in having a large number of Arabs in the Knesset,” Sarsour said. The Islamic movement is a growing force within the Israeli Arab political arena. Islamists decided to run for municipal councils and are now influential in several key Arab cities. But the movement has yet to sanction the participation of Islamic candidates in national elections.

Tibi, the physician-mediator, is openly toying with the notion of joining forces with Sheik Abdallah Nimr Darwish, a cleric with contacts to Hamas leaders, and running in the next parliamentary elections. He seems to enjoy the controversy stirred inside Israel by both his mediating efforts and his potential candidacy.

“We are not the usual Israeli citizens,” said Tibi, brushing off criticism from those Israelis who say he and the other mediators too closely identify with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. “We are different. I do not use the term ‘Israeli Arab.’ I am a Palestinian who holds Israeli citizenship. Before any other label, I am a Palestinian.”

Fluent in Hebrew as well as Arabic and English, he served as a go-between for Arafat with Israeli officials and as a public spokesman for Arafat inside Israel years before Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

On Nov. 18, the day of the Gaza shootings, Arafat called on Tibi to act as a mediator shortly after rioting erupted outside Gaza’s main mosque. There were running gun battles between Arafat’s police and Islamic militants in the streets of Gaza. Casualties were mounting, and Hamas leaders were warning that the Palestinian Authority was flirting with civil war.

“Everything could have blown up in our faces,” Tibi recalled. “The tension was increasing, and it was a very dangerous situation.” Tibi asked Darwish to come with him to Gaza and negotiate an immediate cease-fire. Darwish agreed.

“We called for an emergency meeting in President Arafat’s office,” Darwish recalled in a telephone interview. “We sat until 3:30 a.m.” The meeting produced a temporary cease-fire and an agreement that funerals would proceed peacefully on Saturday, the day after the clash. It became known as the Darwish-Tibi agreement and served as the basis for ongoing negotiations between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Their joint intervention earned Tibi and Darwish the mocking title of “the yuppie and the priest” from Israeli Arab politicians alarmed by the clout a potential political partnership between the two could have with Israeli Arab voters in the next elections. A recent survey by an Israeli polling organization said, if the two were to form a political party, it could garner as many as four Knesset seats in the next election. The only current all-Arab party, the Arab Democracy Party, now holds two seats.

The next big test for Tibi and Darwish will be whether they can expand the temporary cease-fire between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority into a broader political agreement.

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar recently complained that the mediation efforts have flagged and that little of substance has been achieved. Their continuation appeared shaky. The fundamental differences between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas remain, and it is hard to see how Tibi and Darwish will bridge them.

Hamas remains violently opposed to the accords that led to the peace agreement and established the Palestinian self-governing authority. The militants are committed to torpedoing the agreement by whatever means are necessary.

But Tibi said he is still optimistic about the negotiations. Talks will resume before the end of the month, he said.

“We will organize an agenda to discuss all the disagreements, to discuss how to run this entity, even when there are disagreements,” Tibi said. “Ultimately, Hamas can participate in the system functionally. It is only natural.”