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                                                                                MIDDLE EAST, Page 61

The Wet-Clay Protest


As the peace talks progress, a fresh union of Palestinian
rejectionists  hardens its efforts to demolish the negotiations

By LISA BEYER/JERUSALEM - With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai and
Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem


    On a crisp autumn day last year Palestinian negotiators
returned home from the opening of Middle East peace talks in
Madrid to a rousing welcome from their once skeptical
constituents. Thousands of Palestinians lined the streets in the
West Bank city of Jericho, waving olive branches and whooping
with joy. It seemed that finally the Palestinian masses had
embraced the idea of bargaining -- instead of fighting -- for
their future.

    It hasn't worked out quite that way. One year later, and
with a new, more accommodating government installed in Israel,
no one in the occupied territories is cheering the peace team.
But their opponents are making plenty of noise. The so-called
rejectionists are better organized and more determined than ever
to upset the talks. Their resurgence has put the Palestinian
negotiators on edge and complicated their already tricky task of
coming to acceptable terms with the Israelis. "We are a bit
disturbed," allows delegate Ghassan Khatib, "to find the people
falling into the hands of the opposition."

    It was progress, not stalemate, that prompted the
rejectionists to assert themselves. In the sixth round of
bilateral negotiations, which took place in Washington and ended
late last month, the Israelis and Palestinians at last got down
to discussing how to create some degree of autonomy in the
occupied territories. Hard-liners fear that if the Palestinians
agree to limited self-rule, even as a temporary measure, the
world will forget their cause and they will never achieve their
ambition of creating a Palestinian state. "We got the message
-- Watch out, something is going to happen -- so we'd better get
seriously organized to confront it," says Ali Jiddah, a leading
activist within the opposition.

    The result was an unusual meeting in mid-September in
Damascus of 10 Palestinian groups that announced that they had
formed an alliance dedicated to foiling the talks. Predictably,
hard-line outfits signed on. But so did four factions of Yasser
Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, which as a group
endorses the talks and guides the actions of the Palestinian
negotiators. More surprising still was the presence of two
Muslim fundamentalist organizations, Hamas and the Islamic
Jihad. Up to now, these groups and the secular P.L.O. factions
have held one another at a stiff arm's length.

    The immediate ambition of the new front is to bring public
pressure on the Palestinian negotiators and their P.L.O. backers
to quit the talks. As an initial test of strength, the alliance
called for a complete shutdown of businesses in the territories
on Sept. 23. After five years of the intifadeh and countless
strike calls, many Palestinian shopkeepers have begun to ignore
the demands to close up. Fatah, Arafat's faction within the
P.L.O., even instructed Palestinians to conduct business as
usual on Sept. 23. Nonetheless, the entire West Bank and Gaza
Strip shut down on the appointed day, proving that the
hard-liners are able to wield considerable influence over a
frightened population.

    Activists are planning a series of demonstrations,
including protests at the homes of the Palestinian negotiators.
"We will not let them sleep," says Jiddah. He and his supporters
insist that they rule out the use of violence against fellow
Palestinians -- but not against Israelis. The latest round of
peace talks produced a particularly brutal series of stabbings
and slashings of Israelis by Palestinians. "This is not a
spontaneous thing," says Ali Abu Hilal, another opposition
activist. "And I think the future will bring more violence."
Israeli security experts fear that the rejectionists may embark
on a new round of global terror. "Just now their alliance is
more like wet clay than a finished pot," says an Israeli
official.

    For the moment, Israeli authorities calculate that the
naysayers are a bigger problem to Arafat and his appointed
negotiators than to the Israelis. Last month chief Palestinian
negotiator Haidar Abdul-Shafi echoed a rejectionist demand that
his camp "would be happy" to have Palestinians decide in a
plebiscite whether to continue in the talks. Such a poll is
unlikely to take place -- not least of all because the P.L.O.
is not apt to turn such matters over to a public vote. But
Abdul-Shafi's remark reflected uneasiness among the delegates
over their lack of a popular mandate.

    Last week the negotiators met in East Jerusalem and worked
on developing a response to their detractors. It will include,
they say, an intensive effort over the next few weeks to
educate the public about the virtues of remaining a player in
the peace process. Naturally, the most effective lesson would
be a breakthrough in the talks that would accelerate the
establishment of self-government in the territories.

    Such a development, however, would bring its own answer
from the obstructionists. They are already anticipating the
establishment of a Palestinian body to monitor the territories'
autonomy and are thinking of ways to undermine it. If the
naysayers confine themselves to democratic protests, they will
teach the Palestinian supporters of autonomy a tough but
necessary lesson -- how to deal with political opposition. If
they resort to sabotage, they may well ensure that their people
have no chance at experimenting in self-rule for a long time to
come.