In Israel, Blast Victims’ Burial Supplants Peace : Mideast: Bus attack erodes public support for pact with Palestinians. But negotiators insist talks will resume.

Tuesday was supposed to be the day that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators gathered ceremoniously on the White House lawn and signed another peace accord.

Instead, Israelis spent the day burying all five victims of the latest terrorist attack to occur in their nation. None of the dead was younger than 60, and the eldest was an 80-year-old man who was on his way to the beach when a bomb exploded on the bus in which he was riding.

As Israelis mourned, Palestinians wondered how much Monday’s bombing of the Tel Aviv-area bus would set back the oft-delayed extension of Palestinian self-rule.

“At least this time the Israelis did not blame us,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh, spokesman for Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. “At least this time they were fair about it.”

In fact, Rabin and Police Minister Moshe Shahal praised the Palestinian self-governing authority Monday for its efforts to crack down on Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip.

But if Israel’s government did not blame the Palestinian Authority for the bombing, Israeli opposition politicians and many Israelis felt differently. A majority of Israelis polled Tuesday said the government should respond to Monday’s bombing by abandoning peace talks with the Palestinians.

Rabin vowed, however, that talks will continue until the two sides reach agreement on a planned redeployment of Israeli troops and the holding of Palestinian elections in Gaza and the West Bank.

Rabin did cancel Tuesday’s negotiations, saying it would be inappropriate for talks to continue until the dead were buried. And he canceled a planned live television broadcast with Jordan’s King Hussein and President Clinton. The three leaders once were supposed to have marked the one-year anniversary of the accord that Israel and Jordan signed on the White House lawn, an agreement that served as the basis of the peace treaty they signed in October.

Palestinian and Israeli officials spent much of the day privately haggling over the venue and date for resuming their talks. Israel would like to move the talks to Europe, but Arafat wants them in Cairo. Both sides said they expect to resume their work by Thursday at the latest.

“We are in a hurry, because it is more than one year that our elections and their redeployment have been delayed,” Rudaineh said.

Israeli Health Minister Ephraim Sneh, who was meeting in Gaza with Arafat when the bus bombing occurred, agreed.

“We are now in a stage where we have already traveled a long distance in this bumpy and steep road to agreement,” he said. “We can’t stop the car--we have to continue.”

Breaking the pattern that emerged shortly after Islamic militants started targeting Israeli buses last year in an effort to derail Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Rabin promised within hours of Monday’s bombing that talks would quickly resume. His pledge to keep negotiating outraged opposition politicians. But analysts said he has no choice but to conclude an agreement with the Palestinians that will extend Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank and allow Israeli troops to pull out of most of the towns and villages there.

“The talks are very far along, and the sides are very close to agreement,” said Prof. Zeev Maoz, director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. “If an agreement is not reached very soon, all hell is going to break loose in the West Bank. The whole future of Rabin’s government is staked on the continuation of the process.”

In a poll published Tuesday in the newspaper Maariv, 52% of 509 Israelis surveyed said they believed the government should not continue talks with the Palestinians in the wake of Monday’s bus bombing; 37% said they believed that the talks should continue.

For his part, President Ezer Weizman recommended that the government skip its negotiations over “interim arrangements” with the Palestinians and begin immediately negotiating the final status of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Under the September, 1993, accord the Palestinians and Israel signed, final status talks are to begin next May.

Members of several right-wing parties appealed to Weizman to support their call for a referendum to be held once the government concludes a deal with the Palestinians on redeployment in the West Bank and elections. Rabin already has promised a referendum if he achieves a peace agreement with Syria, but he is almost certain to resist any pressure to hold such a vote concerning the West Bank.

“We had a referendum,” Sneh said. “It was the elections of 1992, when the people elected Rabin and Labor. We have a mandate to reach interim accords with the Palestinians on the West Bank.”