NEWS ANALYSIS : Mideast Pact May Presage More Difficulties

The monumental agreement to expand Palestinian rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was so painfully difficult to complete on paper is likely to be even more difficult to implement on the ground.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has said that the goal of his peace negotiations with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is to separate the archenemies, end Israeli rule over Palestinians and allow for peaceful coexistence.

The 460-page accord completed just before the Jewish New Year on Sunday is the second part of the 1993 Rabin-Arafat accord and the first major step back from the concept of a Greater Israel held by many Jews--both here and abroad--since Israeli troops captured the West Bank from Jordan 28 years ago.

The pact commits Israel to withdrawing its troops from a significant portion of the land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War--land that many Israelis believe has guaranteed Jewish survival in an Arab Middle East.

Palestinians will assume control of that territory and will be able to hold elections for the first Palestinian governing council, a step toward forming an independent state one day.

But the accord is a complicated package of compromises that sets the stage for continued contact between Israelis and Palestinians--despite Rabin’s goal of separation--and for further conflict.

The concessions made by Arafat and Rabin are likely to inflame the passions of extremists on both sides, a point driven home by the immediately hostile reactions to the agreement from the Israeli right wing and leftist Palestinians.

Even Rabin, who is betting his political future on the accord, acknowledged the difficulties that will be entailed in implementing it.

“I don’t believe that, by signing diplomatic documents, you can get rid of the backlog of hatred, suspicion and bloodshed between the Arab countries--the Palestinians especially--and us,” Rabin told Israeli media.

“But the diplomatic papers are the door for a new era in which, hopefully by coexistence, we will be able within 10 to 30 years to reduce the effects of the long, bitter conflict between us,” he said.

The accord completed Sunday does not call for removing any of the 120,000 Jewish settlers living in more than 100 West Bank enclaves, as the Palestinians had demanded, and it leaves Israeli soldiers in control of security in about 70% of the territory, including a tangle of new roads connecting the settlements with Israel.

In fact, the agreement leaves the West Bank map looking a lot like Swiss cheese, divided into vast areas controlled by Israeli soldiers, cities controlled by Palestinian police, and villages and connecting roads in which both forces may operate.

“The question of what area is whose responsibility is very unwieldy and complicated to implement,” said Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a former member of the Palestinian negotiating team. “Where do they overlap? Where do they interface? . . . You will need to carry a map to understand whose jurisdiction you are under if you make a move.”

While six of the major West Bank cities will be entirely under Palestinian control, Hebron, where about 400 Jewish settlers live in the heart of a city populated by 120,000 Palestinians, will not.

Hebron was one of the toughest issues during the negotiations and is likely to be the most volatile in the coming months. Israel agreed to give up overall control of the city, but it kept the right to protect Jewish residents.

This compromise angered the settlers, many of whom are armed and warn that they will shoot at armed Palestinian police. It also could ignite the barely contained fury of Hebron’s Palestinians, who wanted the Jews disarmed and removed from the occupied town center.

Another potential flash point there is the Cave of the Patriarchs in downtown Hebron, which will remain under Israeli army control. The site, believed to be the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is venerated by both Muslims and Jews. Palestinians claim that the mosque there makes it Muslim and that it should be in their hands.

Beyond the cities, Israeli soldiers will withdraw from about 450 towns but will maintain the right to enter them in pursuit of terrorists and to set up temporary checkpoints on roads. The Israelis also will control who enters and leaves Palestinian territory from any direction.

This continued Israeli presence could erode Palestinian support for the accord and is fodder for further confrontations between young Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.

“People will test the agreement and see how it affects their daily life, whether they have freedom of movement and economic activity,” said Mikhail-Ashrawi. “They don’t like to see their land fragmented and Israelis putting Palestinians on probation all the time.”

If Palestinians become too frustrated, they are apt to turn against Arafat and the peace process itself. Israeli army closures of the Gaza Strip, which Arafat has ruled for a year, have prompted charges that he is a puppet of the Israelis--an accusation that the Muslim extremist group Hamas, which opposes the peace accord, has taken up.

If Palestinians talk of frustration, Israelis talk of fear and uncertainty at the prospect of Palestinian-controlled cities on their doorstep. Bethlehem is a stone’s throw from Jerusalem’s Jewish suburbs.

Israel’s main concern is security. Under the accord, it will lose the ability to gather intelligence in Palestinian cities and will have to rely on Palestinian police for information.

Since pulling out of the Gaza Strip, Israeli security officials say, they have no capability to gather intelligence there. Average Israelis believe the area has become an open field where terrorists can make bombs and to which they can flee after an attack, and now Israelis fear the Palestinian West Bank will be the same.

If Palestinian officials do not cooperate with Israelis on security, “there is going to be a lot of pressure from the Israeli public and a terrible backlash,” warned Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv.

A backlash for Rabin could mean losing support for the accord or even his mandate to govern. The opposition Likud Party already is asking for a parliamentary vote of no confidence before the accord is signed in Washington on Thursday. And Rabin faces national elections next year.

Yet, despite all the concerns about a violent reaction against the accord from both sides in the coming months, Rabin asserted that it will become irreversible, and that abandoning the old idea of Greater Israel will bring peace with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world.

“As I see it, we have passed the point of no return,” Rabin said. “It means we are on the road to peace.”