World Perspective : Mideast : Palestinians Harbor Hope for Gaza Port : Work on the facility, agreed to in Wye pact, is to start next week. Israeli government will maintain overall control.

Along the beach south of here, where donkeys pull carts through thick beige sand and fishermen cast nets into the Mediterranean, Palestinians are staking a major portion of their future.

Within days, at a spot six miles south of Gaza City, construction is due to begin on a $70-million harbor that backers hope will breathe life into a moribund Palestinian economy while also marking another significant step in the voyage to national independence.

“The most important thing is, we will no longer be under the mercy of the Israelis,” said Mahmoud Farra, a construction magnate who returned to Gaza in 1996 after 30 years in Los Angeles and now serves as president of the Palestinian Businessmen’s Assn.

“We will be able to import what we want and export what we produce, and no one will say no.”

Despite miles of coastline, businesspeople in the largely Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip must go through Israel for most of their trade. The Palestinians complain that Israeli middlemen nearly double the costs for imported goods, from automobiles to furniture, while Israeli-imposed delays play havoc with Palestinian exports of fruits and vegetables.

After years of testy negotiations, Palestinians finally have the right to build and operate--under some restrictions--their first seaport. Last year’s U.S.-brokered Wye Plantation accord put the Gaza harbor in writing, and another agreement ratified this month at Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, gave the green light for an Oct. 1 construction start date.

More than the Palestinian airport, which opened in Gaza late last year but has no cargo facilities, the harbor will provide a critical boost for a listless economy overly reliant on foreign aid and expensive imports and hamstrung by corruption among Palestinian officials.

Initially, the harbor project is expected to create at least 5,000 jobs in a territory where nearly one-third of the quarter-million-strong work force is unemployed. Ideally, it will one day have a knock-on effect that stimulates local manufacturing and helps create a real local industry.

With Dutch, French and other European financing, the harbor is to be completed within 18 to 24 months and will have the capacity to dock ships of up to 15,000 tons.

Much of the port’s success depends on how easy it will be to use, and whether Palestinians will be able to transport goods from Gaza to the West Bank. A safe-passage route between the two Palestinian enclaves is supposed to open up in October, also part of the Wye and Sharm el Sheik agreements.

The Israeli government will maintain overall control. Worried that the port could be used to bring in weapons or other illicit cargo, the Israelis will supervise the construction and will check all incoming and outgoing shipments twice--once at sea and again on land, inside the harbor complex.

Palestinian officials complain that the Israelis put up numerous obstacles to construction of the airport, such as blocking the transport of building materials. They hope for better from the new government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

“The decision to build was a political one, and both sides have agreed on the importance of the seaport,” said Sami Tarazi, a former member of the Palestinian Authority’s port committee who supervised planning and design. “Now it will be two years in building, and that should be enough time to work out the security issues.”

Khaled Osman, co-owner of a fruit import-export company, said his business will expand in leaps and bounds once the harbor is up and running. Now he mostly imports apples but is eager to export local produce--something he says he doesn’t dare do because of tedious inspections and delays by the Israelis.

“What can I export under these conditions and with these delays? How can I send tomatoes just to sit and rot?” Osman asked. “When the harbor is working, we will start exporting strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, oranges. . . . It is important for me and for all Palestinian people.”