Negotiators Close to Pact on Hebron Withdrawal

After two days of almost round-the-clock negotiations, Israel and the Palestinians appeared within reach of an agreement Monday on an Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank city of Hebron.

All sides reported progress as U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, dispatched to the region by President Clinton, shuttled between Jerusalem, Cairo and the Gaza Strip in a seemingly tireless effort to wrap up a deal in the next few days.

“The negotiators are working very hard, day and night, to reach the agreement,” Nabil abu Rudaineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, said late Monday. “There are still points of difference, but many of the issues have been resolved.”

Israeli and Palestinian officials said the few remaining differences could be settled in a meeting between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The summit was likely to take place today at the Erez crossing point between Israel and the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip.

“There is really very little that remains to be worked out,” said David Bar-Illan, a senior advisor to Netanyahu.

An accord on Hebron, which has proved stubbornly elusive in three months of Israeli-Palestinian discussions, would be the first formal agreement between the Palestinians and the coalition government led by Netanyahu’s Likud Party. And it is considered likely to breathe at least some life into the Middle East peace process, which has faltered since Netanyahu’s right-religious coalition came to power in June.

The agreement also was expected to include letters from the two sides guaranteeing that each will move forward on implementing remaining aspects of the signed accords between them, including a timetable for further Israeli troop pullbacks from rural areas of the West Bank.

The Palestinians, in turn, were being asked to commit to writing a new charter for the Palestine Liberation Organization and to timetables for extraditing Palestinians suspected of carrying out attacks against Israelis, among other things.

Ross, who made a brief visit to Cairo on Monday to consult with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa, also shuttled between Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Arafat at his headquarters in Gaza City. Ross told reporters in Cairo that he expected an agreement “soon.”

“There is still work to be done, but I think there is a new energy in the negotiations,” he said.

U.S. officials have said that a lack of trust between the two sides has been the main holdup in implementing the Hebron agreement. Israel does not trust that Palestinian security forces will preempt terrorist activity in the areas under their control; the Palestinians, in turn, fear that, once a Hebron withdrawal takes place, Israel will not fulfill other signed agreements between them.

In Hebron itself, the Israeli army appeared to be making final preparations for relocating from the city’s military headquarters. Much of the furniture already has been moved out in recent weeks, and camp beds and other equipment were loaded onto a truck Monday, according to media reports.

The city remained tense. Several Palestinians threw stones at Israeli troops, and two people were reportedly arrested.

Under an interim agreement reached with the Palestinians in September 1995, Israel already has withdrawn from six of the West Bank’s seven major cities and from hundreds of villages.

But the issue of withdrawing from Hebron, a volatile city where about 500 Jewish settlers live among the Arab population of about 100,000, has proved the most sensitive. The redeployment was scheduled to take place in March but was delayed, first by a series of deadly suicide bombings inside Israel, then by the election of Netanyahu and his concerns that the Hebron plans did not include enough safeguards for the settlers.

Resolution of the issue was further complicated this fall by bloodshed in Jerusalem that left 75 dead and more than 1,000 injured.

Palestinians have argued that the original accord includes more than adequate security measures for the settlers.