Palestinian Autonomy

WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration debates a proposal to create a provisional Palestinian state, signs are mounting that the idea could face a rocky domestic reception. While some experts on the region - such as former President Bill Clinton and his chief Middle East negotiator, Dennis Ross - praised the notion, other initial reactions indicate it could face a cross-fire of resistance from Republicans and Democrats. Even before Bush finalizes his proposal, conservatives are charging that the president would be rewarding terrorism if he endorses a provisional Palestinian state after of the latest attacks on Israelis.

Davos, Switzerland -- The announcement of Israeli-Palestinian peace was meant to be the political set-piece of the World Economic Forum, held in this mountain resort a week ago. It failed to come off.Insofar as the two sides can, at this point, deliver peace, they already have done so by entering into negotiations and accepting a Norwegian-brokered agreement on Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho.The obstacles lie now in the details, which unfortunately are very weighty, concerning security for both Palestinians and Israeli settlers, the latter essential to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho.

JERUSALEM -- The grim hypothetical question goes like this: A Palestinian terrorist sprays a bus load of Israelis with a machine gun, then bolts south, vanishing into a refugee camp on the Gaza Strip. In the new age of peace and Palestinian autonomy, who will go after him?Will it be a police force of his peers, some of whom might once have been his comrades-in-arms? Or do you send in the Israeli Defense Force, whose presence in the camp would signal to embittered Palestinians that there was really nothing new about autonomy after all?

JERUSALEM -- Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will try again today to break a deadlock that has frozen the start of a plan to begin Arab autonomy in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.Both sides predict that a solution will be found, but so far it has been unexpectedly elusive.The deadlock, which delayed the envisaged start of Israeli troop withdrawals last week, is the result of a collision of differing expectations and hardening strategies by both sides.Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization are both pressed by extremists who feel their side's negotiators already have given too much.

JERUSALEM -- Assassins poisoned his food. Jet fighters pummeled his hide-outs. Israeli sharpshooters hunted him in Beirut, his own men revolted, and his airplane crashed in the desert.Yasser Arafat has survived all that and more. And now the success or failure of the proposed agreement with Israel for Palestinian autonomy will determine the political fate of the old guerrilla leader.If it works, he could return to Palestine for the first time in 26 years as a hero, the man who nurtured Palestinian dreams and was midwife to some semblance of self-governance.

As PLO police enter and Israeli troops leave Gaza and Jericho, Palestinians will see that the long-delayed implementation of the Israel-PLO agreement is real. What so many have waited for so long has begun.This ought to raise Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat's standing with Palestinians and the Arab world. It was sinking so long as his people thought he had made concessions about Israel's legitimacy without ridding Palestinians of Israeli rule. It should rise as the Israeli presence begins to recede.

Today in history: May 4In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on present-day Manhattan Island.In 1776, Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.In 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an eight-hour workday turned into a riot when a bomb exploded.In 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.In 1932, mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

JERUSALEM -- While his government approves new settlement construction in the West Bank, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has renewed his harsh attacks on settlers, denouncing them as "a burden" on the Israeli army and its fight against radical Palestinian terrorists."

Hopes of the world greet the ceremonial opening of the Middle East peace conference today at the Royal Palace in Madrid. That is an awesome load for the delegates to bear. The last such conference convened under United Nations auspices in Geneva in 1973, with Egypt, Jordan and Israel present. It lasted one day and never reconvened. This conference has a stately schedule of speeches and rebuttals over three days. The world's hope must be that this rhetorical phase does not paralyze the subsequent talks, as statements of position by Middle Eastern disputants so often do.Both the Palestinian delegation and Israeli government ministers have talked in refreshingly similar language about the possibility of negotiating Palestinian autonomy on the West Bank and Gaza, while maintaining Israeli security control, before addressing the issue of permanent status.