The
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Opeauff
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OF THE NEW
Surprise Support
Of Arafat
Rabin cools Syrian talks while
warming up to beleaguered PLO.
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
AP/NABIL JUDAH
OF
FARMINGTON HILLS
Soldiers inspect the wreckage caused by a suicide bomber in the Gaza Strip.
W
ithout much fanfare,
Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin made two strate-
gic decisions about the
immediate future of the peace
process.
The first, announced some-
what obliquely during a speech
at Tel Aviv University — where
he stated that Israel's relations
with Syria will become clear in
eight to nine months — was to
lower the flame, or at least the
profile, of the negotiation effort
with Syria. In short, to let Syri-
an President Hafez al-Assad stew
slowly for a while.
The second, announced after
Mr. Rabin's meeting with Pales-
tine Liberation Organization
Chairman Yassir Arafat at the
Erez checkpoint, was to step up
the talks on the "interim agree-
ment" between Israel and the
Palestinians, which takes in the
Palestinian elections, the rede-
ployment of Israeli troops on the
West Bank, and the further ex-
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The decision to take a breather
with Mr. Assad seemed under-
standable considering the disap-
pointment in the results of
President Bill Clinton's visit to
Birmingham
Rochester Hills
Damascus and the feeling with-
in official circles that Israel has
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gone about as far it's prepared to
go right now in its concessions to
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the still-surly Syrians. But the
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decision to move ahead on the
Palestinian track just weeks af-
488-0220
ter the kidnapping of Israeli sol-
dier Nachshon Waxman and the
r
traumatic bombing of the bus in
Tel Aviv by Islamic terrorists was
hardly what many Israelis ex-
pected.
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The main reason that Mr. Ra-
J bin produced this carrot, rather
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than choosing again to shake his
stick, was an appreciation of the
deep political crisis faced by Mr.
Arafat and his administration
and the need to help buoy them
up by showing evidence of polit-
ical progress. For weeks the
Palestinian leadership had been
trying to impress upon Mr. Ra-
bin the steady decline of support
for the Palestinian National Au-
thority, and Mr. Arafat person-
ally, among the Palestinian
public.
The chairman's ignominious
flight last week from angry
mourners at the funeral of Is-
lamic Jihad leader Hani Abed
(whom most Gazans believe was
murdered by Israeli agents) was
merely the most blatant sign of a
trend that has been in progress
for a while. The fact is that six
months after the deployment of
the Palestinian police and four
months after Mr. Arafat's arrival
in Gaza to head the PNA, his
regime has little to show for it-
self.
The economy is the main but
not the only source of simmering
Palestinian resentment. Six thou-
sand Palestinian prisoners, for
example, are still being held in
Israeli jails. And in general, com-
plains Nabil Shaath, Palestine's
chief negotiator and planning
minister, 'The Israelis take us for
granted. They're still behaving as
if we were a colony!"
During recent months, the
mood in Gaza has slowly turned
sullen. And in the past weeks,
Palestinian disappointment in
Mr. Arafat has been particularly
potent, spreading even into the
ranks of staunch Fatah loyalists.
The general consensus among
observers is that, especially in the