New Accord Expands Israeli Pullout, Palestinian Self-Rule : West Bank: Troops will leave hundreds of cities and towns, paving way for elections. Pact is second phase of process that began with Arab responsibility for Gaza Strip and Jericho.

Despite a dramatic, last-minute walkout from peace negotiations by Yasser Arafat, Israel and the Palestinians initialed a historic accord Sunday that will pull Israel’s troops out of cities, towns and villages in the West Bank and expand Palestinian self-rule there.

“The era of sadness and occupation will end,” Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said as he sat beside the Palestinian leader and witnessed the initialing by their aides in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Taba.

The agreement, produced after more than a year of hard-fought negotiating, “is history in the real meaning of the word,” Peres said. “It is a tremendous attempt to bring people that were born in the same cradle, who were fighting on the same fronts, to agree on a new future.”

The pact covers the second phase of Palestinian self-rule, which applies to parts of the West Bank still under Israeli occupation. An agreement on the first phase, covering the Gaza Strip and the West bank town of Jericho, was signed in Cairo in May, 1994.

Shortly after the agreement was initialed Sunday, President Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat to the White House for a formal signing ceremony Thursday. Jordan’s King Hussein, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Peres also are expected to attend.

An enthusiastic Clinton, speaking to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, called the pact a triumph over “the enemies of peace.” Later in the day, after he arrived in Scranton, Pa., for a family baptism, he described the agreement as “a big step forward toward ending a long, long state of siege in the Middle East.”

In a statement, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, noting that both Peres and Arafat had phoned him with the news, said, “I want to publicly salute them and their teams for this achievement.”

But not everyone welcomed the accord, which includes agreements on security, water rights, some holy sites and Palestinian elections. Radical and even some moderate Palestinians and right-wing Israelis condemned it, with each side blaming its own negotiators for selling out the interests of their people.

Under the agreement’s terms, Israeli troops will start pulling out of West Bank cities, towns and villages that they have occupied for 28 years--10 days after Thursday’s signing in Washington.

In some West Bank towns, Palestinians demonstrated against the accord, and one Palestinian teen-ager was reportedly shot to death by Israeli soldiers during a clash in Nablus.

“This is a bad agreement which doesn’t meet the residents’ expectations,” said Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natsheh. Natsheh and other Hebronites had unsuccessfully pushed Arafat to insist that the approximately 400 Jewish settlers living in the heart of ancient Hebron be evacuated as part of the accord.

The Hebron settlers, who live among 120,000 Palestinians, warned that they will not obey Palestinian police who are scheduled to deploy in large sections of the town over the next six months.

“This is a sad day, but it’s not the end of Greater Israel,” said Zvi Katzover, mayor of the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, which lies on the edge of Hebron. “It sounds like a nightmare that we will have to listen to the Palestinian police, but the people are behind us and the government has no majority.”

Rabin, however, said that the accord will spell the end of the century-old Revisionist Zionist dream of building a Jewish state that would extend from the Mediterranean Sea to beyond the Jordan River into what is now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

“We know where we are going: We are going toward a state of Israel as a Jewish state,” Rabin said at a news conference after the initialing. “And beside us, a Palestinian entity, not under our rule, which peacefully coexists with us.”

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the accord pushes Israel back “to the 1967 borders” that existed before Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from Arab states during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

“The Palestinian will to destroy Israel will return once the 1967 achievements are eliminated,” Netanyahu said.

Ariel Sharon, a rival of Netanyahu’s in the right-wing Likud Party and a former minister of defense, told settlers the night before the agreement was signed that Likud, if it returns to power, will take back any areas of the West Bank it feels would endanger Israeli security by remaining in Palestinian hands.

The initialing was delayed for several hours Sunday while U.S. Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross telephoned both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in their hotel rooms in Taba, coaxing them over final hurdles that threatened to delay the oft-delayed agreement yet again.

Ross intervened after final negotiations between Arafat and Peres reportedly degenerated into a shouting match early Sunday morning that climaxed with Arafat screaming “We are not slaves!” and storming back to his room.

Peres and Arafat spent more than 80 hours haggling over the terms of the agreement during a week of grueling negotiations before finally wrapping up the accord. Arafat’s blowup reportedly was over restrictions that Israel insists on placing on the movement of Palestinian police in areas Israel will continue to control after its troops redeploy.

But when they witnessed the initialing just hours before the Jewish New Year holiday began, the two men--haggard but calm--mustered smiles and praised each other’s efforts. The accord was signed by Economic Planning Minister Ahmed Korei for the Palestinians and by Uri Savir, director general of the Foreign Ministry, for the Israelis.

Arafat, bundled in a khaki jacket and wearing his trademark black-and-white-checked headdress and cravat, wished Israelis a happy New Year in Hebrew.

“We will work so that this new year will be a real year of peace,” Arafat said. “This agreement will open the door for a better future . . . to create a new Middle East of security and peace.”

Seizing a copy of the 460-page agreement, Arafat smiled and told reporters that “for this we have spent all these nights and days. Look how many pages.”

Under the pact, Israeli troops are expected to first begin moving out of the northern West Bank, where there are few Jewish settlements.

But this will be a redeployment, not a withdrawal. Israel will retain overall responsibility for West Bank security until another phase of negotiations, due to begin between Israel and the Palestinians by May, determines the disputed land’s final status. Rabin said that the initial pullout from Palestinian population centers will still leave Israel in full control of about 70% of the West Bank’s territory.

Thousands of Israeli troops will continue to guard more than 100 Jewish settlements scattered across the territory. They will maintain several military bases and guard roads the settlers will travel, and they have reserved the right to pursue suspected terrorists into the 450 Palestinian villages they will leave.

In addition, Israeli troops will remain in Hebron, although their number will be reduced and they will patrol only about 6% of the total area of the city--mostly the area of the casbah, or market, where Jews have reclaimed property that belonged to Hebron’s ancient Jewish community, driven out by a Palestinian massacre in 1929.

It is the fact that Israeli troops will still be around that so grates on the nerves of many Palestinians.

“The settlers will explode whenever they see fit, particularly as the Israeli elections approach,” said Jamal Shobaky, a senior official in Hebron of Fatah, the largest Palestine Liberation Organization faction.

Rabin said that it could take Israeli troops up to six months to complete their redeployment from all cities, towns and villages, because it will probably take that long to build a bypass road to allow Jewish settlers to travel on an Israeli-controlled road from the Kiryat Arba settlement, built on Hebron’s outskirts, to the Jewish enclave in the heart of the city.

The agreement says that Palestinian elections will be held 22 days after Israel completes its initial redeployment. Rabin said that means elections could be held no earlier than the last half of March.

Israel and the Palestinians agreed that the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem will be divided into 16 electoral districts, and that any Palestinian resident 18 or older who lives in one of those districts will be eligible to vote. Each district will elect a different number of members to an 82-member self-governing council, which the Palestinians regard as a parliament-in-the-making for the state they hope eventually to negotiate into existence with Israel.

At the same time, Palestinians will elect a head of their self-governing authority. The council’s executive authority will then conduct negotiations with Israel on the final status of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem Palestinians will participate in the elections by casting their votes in East Jerusalem post offices. But they will remain governed by Israel, not by the elected authority. Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its united capital. The Palestinians hope to make East Jerusalem the capital of their future state.

In a pre-holiday interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, Rabin indicated that he may, at some stage, be willing to entertain the notion of establishing a Palestinian ministate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Now I am opposed,” Rabin said. “I stress the word now. In the future we will seek all sorts of solutions.”

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler in Washington contributed to this report.

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West Bank Settlement

The interim accord between Israel and the Palestinians is a 460-page document with six annexes and maps dealing with security, elections, the transfer of powers, legal issues and economic relations. Some of the major agreements:

REDEPLOYMENT: Israel’s army will withdraw from the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tukarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Bethlehem, and from 450 towns and villages. Israeli forces will remain to guard Jewish settlers in Hebron.

ELECTIONS: Palestinians will elect an 82-member self-rule council with executive and legislative powers, and a head of the executive authority, or president. Elections will be held 22 days after Israel finishes withdrawing from West Bank cities and towns.

AUTHORITY: Palestinians will have full control over the major towns, about 30% of the West Bank’s 2,270 square miles. In other Palestinian towns and villages, which cover about 70% percent of the West Bank, Israel has final say over maintaining public order and combatting terrorism.

POLICE: Israel-PLO joint patrols will share responsibility for escorting Israelis through Palestinian areas and for maintaining security. Palestinians will not have the power to arrest Israelis.

WATER: Israel will increase the amount of water allocated to the Palestinians and a joint committee will manage resources and enforce policy.

PRISONERS: Israel, which holds 5,000 Palestinian prisoners, will make releases in three phases after pact is signed.

HOLY SITES: Holy sites will be controlled by the Palestinians except for the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, with special arrangements for Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus.

WHAT’S NEXT: The Palestinian and Israeli Cabinets must approve the interim accord, to be signed in Washington on Thursday. Talks on final issues, such as Jerusalem, borders, refugees and Jewish settlements, are to start in May.