Islamic Prisoners Put Arafat in Bind : Mideast: As PLO chief frees some extremists, Israel says he must do more. Palestinians accuse him of selling out.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin warned Tuesday that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat must continue his efforts to rein in Islamic militants, even as the Palestinian Authority announced that it has begun releasing Islamists arrested in a weeklong crackdown.

“If the authority does not take steps, ultimately it also will become a victim of these extremist elements,” Rabin said at a news conference at an army base he toured near the Gaza Strip. “After recent terror attacks, we are in the testing stage of the Palestinian Authority’s ability to do more and to do it better against the insane murderers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who want to murder Israelis and harm peace.”

Palestinian Prosecutor General Khaled Kidrah announced Tuesday that, because of a lack of evidence against them, 60 to 70 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists had been released in the preceding three days.

Arafat, head of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, is under growing pressure from Palestinian human rights groups and others in Gaza to back away from confronting the militants.

The arrests of about 300 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad occurred after the two groups carried out a pair of suicide bombing attacks near Jewish settlements in Gaza on April 9.

Intermediaries--respected Gazan political activists and Israeli Arabs--are working feverishly to get Hamas to accept Arafat’s demand that the group stop its attacks, at least in Gaza, against Israelis, in return for a promise from Arafat that he will stop arresting activists.

But Islamists and members of the Palestinian Authority say the atmosphere in Gaza remains tense, with scores of Islamic militants in jail and facing trials in newly activated security courts.

Hassan Simri seethed as he spoke of the seven-year sentence for transporting explosives that his son received Monday from the Palestinian Authority.

“We were steadfast on the land all these years,” Simri said. “We fought to defend our land from the Israelis. Now these people come back and punish us for fighting.”

At the heart of Palestinian protests against Arafat’s crackdown are fears that his decision to activate security courts to try Islamists and to demand that they register and even surrender their weapons will spark civil war.

Palestinians such as Simri protest that relatives swept up in mass arrests that Arafat authorized are being unfairly treated. They wonder aloud why Arafat is “doing the work for the Israelis” and clamping down on militants who say their goal is to force Israel to evacuate settlements and give land back to the Palestinians.

On Monday, Simri’s son, Mohammed Simri, 35, a taxi driver and father of four, was convicted in a security court and sentenced for packing a truck with explosives; another Palestinian was driving when Israeli police searched the truck last month in Beersheba, a southern Israeli town.

The elder Simri denied that his son was a member of any Palestinian faction. But the Palestinian Authority said he is a member of Hamas, a militant Islamic group that has vowed to destroy the 1993 peace accord the PLO signed with Israel.

Simri said he knew nothing of his son’s trial until neighbors said they had heard on the radio of his conviction. “They never told me or my son’s lawyer when the trial would be,” he said.

When Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, if a Palestinian was arrested for acts against Israelis, “the Israelis told us the court date and let us watch the procedure,” Simri said. “But now, with the Palestinians . . . they tell us nothing.”

A haggard Kidrah made no apologies for the courts and insisted that they are necessary in the Palestinian judicial system.

Contrary to news reports, he said, the courts are open to the public and trials occur only if the accused has legal counsel.

“It is not our job to invite people to the trials,” he added. “It is our job to see that the trials are carried out legally. That means that we must inform the accused and provide him with a copy of a charge sheet and a chance to defend himself.”

But families of defendants, human rights groups and reporters say they cannot find out trial times or sites.

“The families tell us that they usually hear about sentences from their neighbors, who hear it on the radio,” said Mustafa Amri, a lawyer with Al Haq, a West Bank human rights monitoring group.

He also asserted that some judges presiding in the security courts are military officers, as are some defense lawyers. Human rights groups also complain that the only appeal for the convicted is to petition Arafat.

But Kidrah insisted that the courts are legal and democratic.

He said that the three presiding court judges are civilians and that the forums are not designed to put on trial members of factions but only those accused of committing security offenses--whatever their political affiliation.