Arafat Attempts to Tighten Reins on Islamic Militants : Mideast: Suspending efforts to involve radicals in the peace process, PLO chief orders arrests, weapons searches.

After months of hesitation that have cost him dearly in his negotiations with Israel, Yasser Arafat apparently has decided that he can no longer coexist with militant Islamic organizations bent on destroying the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, security sources say.

“Until lately, the PLO in Gaza tried to convince Hamas and other militants to join the process,” said Mordechai Gur, Israel’s deputy defense minister. “Lately, (Palestinian officials) realized that it did not work. So they have started to take some real measures.”

Israel has said it will fulfill its commitment to pull troops out of West Bank towns and villages, allowing Arafat to extend his authority throughout the territory, only if the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman demonstrates an ability to prevent the militants’ attacks on Israelis.

The last major incident was on Jan. 22, when a pair of Islamic Jihad suicide bombers killed 21 Israelis at a bus stop in northern Israel.

Since then, Israel has kept a chokehold on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, allowing only a trickle of workers and products to enter Israel. As for negotiations with Arafat on such things as the release of Palestinian prisoners, Israel has slowed the pace to a crawl.

Arafat has responded by delivering increasingly angry speeches against the militants, accusing them of keeping the Palestinians from obtaining their goal of establishing a state in Gaza and the West Bank.

He has allowed his police force to arrest leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and he has suspended attempts by a group of Israeli Arabs and prominent Gazans to fashion a broad political accord that would make it possible for the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic groups to coexist.

Palestinian security forces also are more aggressively searching for weapons and explosives. Security officers say they have foiled as many as 10 attacks planned against Israel.

On Sunday, two leaders of the military wing of Hamas were among six people killed when an explosion ripped through a Gaza City apartment building in which the Islamic militants reportedly had set up a “bomb factory.”

Maj. Gen. Nasser Yusuf, chief of the Palestinian police force, confirmed that many militants have been arrested. But he said the number in detention is still “not sufficient.”

“We feel that we should do more,” he said.

The Palestinian Authority must at least license, if not confiscate, all weapons in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho, the two areas it controls, said Yusuf, who for months has urged Arafat to crack down on the Islamic extremists.

Israeli security heads have long regarded Yusuf as a frustrated ally, a military man who is itching to crush opponents of the Palestinian Authority but who has been prevented from doing so by Arafat’s fear of the political repercussions within the Palestinian community.

At the tattered and grimy Gaza offices of Al Istiklal, the Islamic Jihad’s newspaper, one of the founders of the movement said he senses a change in the authority’s approach and worries that a showdown may be approaching.

“There is a change in the sulta ‘s (Palestinian Authority’s) attitude toward us,” Sheik Nafez Azzam said. “We have felt a change in the way the sulta deals with Islamic movements specifically and with opposition groups in general in the past two months.”

Palestinian police are “continuously” arresting Islamic Jihad members, said Azzam, who estimated that about 30 members are now in jail in Gaza, including the movement’s spokesman, Abdullah Shami.

Azzam said he believes that the authority would never go so far as to disarm Islamic Jihad and Hamas activists for fear that such a move would provoke an armed confrontation between the militants and the Palestinian government.

“As long as there are Israeli settlements, and as long as there are Israeli threats to take Palestinian land, it will be hard for the sulta to sell disarming the opposition to the people,” he said.

Azzam insisted that attacks on Israelis will continue.

“We will continue with our duty toward Islam, toward Palestine and toward the Palestinian people,” he said.

Within the Israeli security community, a debate is under way about the extent of Arafat’s change of attitude toward Islamic militants, one senior security source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Some tend to see these changes as merely cosmetic, others argue that it is a bit better than that,” the source said. “Everyone agrees that there is more activity on the part of the security forces, but there is no agreement on how substantial those activities are.”

The Palestinian Authority is still acting “responsively”--rounding up the usual suspects after an attack--rather than taking the initiative by infiltrating militant groups and stopping them before they carry out actions, the security source said. After an attack, and after Israeli protests, dozens of militants are arrested. But they are not brought to trial or sentenced, the source said.

Israel is still waiting for Arafat to activate the special courts he promised two months ago to create. The courts are supposed to quickly try and sentence anyone accused of security offenses.

After meeting with U.S. Vice President Al Gore in Jericho on March 24, Arafat reiterated his vow to get the courts up and running.

Gur, the Israeli deputy defense minister, said there are signs the Palestinians are trying harder to prevent attacks.

“But they are still very, very far from what I believe their obligation is under the Oslo agreement,” he said, referring to the framework for Palestinian self-rule that Israel and the PLO signed in Washington on Sept. 13, 1993.

“No doubt, this issue of security has become the major obstacle for the proper continuation of the peace negotiations,” Gur said.

Since his arrival in Gaza in July, Arafat has gingerly handled Hamas, the largest Islamic group, and the Islamic Jihad, seeking to avoid direct confrontations.

Hamas, in particular, poses a dilemma for Arafat because it has become institutionalized in Gaza. Hamas runs medical clinics and mosques and supports widows and orphans. Its non-military operations help thousands of Gazans and have earned the organization the respect and gratitude of many residents.

Palestinians say Arafat is still determined to avoid armed street battles with militants, which might alienate his own supporters in Gaza.

He tells aides that, at all costs, he must avoid creating a situation like that in Algeria, where a death struggle between the military regime and Islamic extremists has cost tens of thousands of lives.

So Arafat is still attempting to walk a tightrope between the demands of the Israelis and the pressures coming from militants.

In his negotiations with Israel on Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza, Arafat is still trying to find a formula that would allow Hamas-affiliated candidates to run for office, even as he authorizes more arrests of militants.

And whenever Arafat publicly calls on Israel to release the several thousand Palestinians still in Israeli jails, he never fails to mention Sheik Ahmed Ismael Yassin, the handicapped cleric who founded Hamas and who is languishing in an Israeli prison.

Arafat’s police force directly confronted Hamas only once, on Nov. 18, when police surrounded a Gaza City mosque and opened fire after Hamas followers allegedly taunted them and threw stones. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured as fighting spilled into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Palestinians refer to that incident as “Bloody Friday” and say it is the closest they have come to civil war since Israel handed control over most of Gaza to the PLO in May.

Israeli Arabs and others intervened after Bloody Friday and managed to secure a cease-fire between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that temporarily eased tensions. But their efforts to broaden that cease-fire into a general political accord have been stymied.

Azzam, the Islamic Jihad leader, warned that it is in Arafat’s interest not to let relations between Islamic groups and his self-governing authority deteriorate further.

“For tensions to rise will not be good for the sulta ,” the bearded former medical student said. “The sulta will be the first one hurt in such a situation.”