Arafat Goes to Jordan in Effort to Repair Ties : Mideast: PLO chairman, King Hussein seek to overcome old enmity. Palestinian leader’s relations with Israel are at low point.

Facing a fresh crisis in his peacemaking efforts with Israel, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat traveled east from his troubled domain Wednesday to try to repair another set of crucial ties, those with Jordan’s King Hussein.

Arafat arrived in the Jordanian capital of Amman as relations between his Palestinian Authority and Israel hit a new low.

A committee of the Israeli Cabinet voted Wednesday to build 1,080 new homes in one satellite Jewish settlement of Jerusalem and up to 800 more in another. In addition, it decided to sell 1,150 existing new apartments. The decision is likely to infuriate Palestinians, who have demanded that all construction in settlements be halted.

The decision was the latest step by the government in the wake of a suicide bombing by Islamic extremists Sunday that created a backlash of public sentiment against handing over control of more territory to the Palestinians.

Since Sunday, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has suspended “confidence-building” measures with the Palestinians.

He canceled plans to free Palestinian prisoners before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts next month. He suspended an agreement the two sides reached instituting “safe passages” that were supposed to link the two areas under Palestinian control, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. Rabin also banned tens of thousands of Palestinians from traveling to their jobs in Israel for an indefinite period.

More ominously for Arafat, Rabin formed a new committee and charged it with finding ways to completely separate Israelis and Palestinians. Among the proposals under consideration is the permanent banning of Palestinians from working in Israel.

“Thirty to 35 percent of our work force works in Israel,” said Samir Abdullah, a senior economist with the Palestinian Authority. “To cut this off would not be just separation, it would be collective punishment.”

As the bad news piled up, Arafat flew to Amman for the first time since he arrived in Gaza in May to head the Palestinian Authority.

Both Palestinian and Jordanian negotiators said they hope that the two days of talks between Hussein and Arafat will get the two men past their personal enmity and lay the basis for Jordanian-Palestinian economic and political cooperation.

Although they have a 30-year history of distrust, the recent tension between Arafat and Hussein dates back to Arafat’s secret pursuit of a separate deal with Israel in 1993.

Hussein felt betrayed by Israel and the Palestinians when the two sides announced that they had agreed on a framework for instituting Palestinian self-rule.

Since then, Hussein and Arafat have clashed publicly over the question of who should control the Muslim holy sites of Jerusalem.

Hussein finances the Islamic trust that administers the sites now, but Arafat says that the Palestinian Authority should be in charge.

Arafat has also complained about export-import agreements Jordan reached with Israel, and he has threatened to replace the Jordanian dinar with a Palestinian currency in the West Bank. Negotiations on economic and political issues between the Palestinians and Jordan have dragged on for months. But aides to both leaders said Wednesday that they now are prepared to sign a general cooperation pact that includes six agreements covering relations in the fields of finance and banking, economics, education, transport, telecommunications, information and administrative affairs.

Some Palestinian and Israeli analysts expressed skepticism that the pacts will be implemented, even if they are signed.

“Because of the kind of relationship that the two men have had over the years, I fear that the mutual suspicions, the mutual fears and anxieties will keep them from working together,” said Ziad abu Amr, a political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

He said Arafat and Hussein were pushed to meet not out of strategic considerations, but out of an immediate need to defuse criticisms from their internal opposition.

One-half to two-thirds of Jordan’s population is believed to be Palestinian, and most West Bank Palestinians hold Jordanian passports. Hussein’s grandfather annexed the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem to Jordan, but Hussein eventually renounced claims to the West Bank in the face of Palestinian nationalism.