Plo

Israel's decriminalization of private contact with the PLO is a boost for the Middle East peace process that has been delayed by the American election. As the Palestinian delegation with which Israel negotiates takes direction from the PLO, the law was a sham that made relations a charade. Now Israeli peaceniks such as Abie Nathan and television can help Yasser Arafat to make a direct overture to the Israeli public, and the Palestinian delegation can function openly as it has clandestinely.

I disagree with Ariel Ilan Roth's op-ed "U.S. is Wrong on Palestine" (Sept. 21). I will make a purely legal argument why the U.S. should veto Palestine's unilateral attempt for statehood in the United Nations. The following information is from the European Coalition for Israel's research document titled "Foundations of the International Legal Rights of the Jewish People and the State of Israel" and video documentary, which includes commentary from Dore Gold, Howard Grief, and Jacques Gauthier.

The embryonic Middle East peace calls for the PLO, after a generation of insurrection from exile, to become a force for stability, law and order. To make it work, Israel must see that Palestinians' lives become better from the start, with economic development and infrastructure. The PLO must see that Israelis, whether in Israel or in settlements on occupied land, are protected from harm.To deliver its promise to the Palestinians, the PLO must show that it is responsible and efficient in such mundane matters as sewage and public health.

JERUSALEM - Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti has decided to run for the post of Palestinian Authority president in the Jan. 9 elections, according to his associates yesterday. His bid could pose a major challenge to the traditional Palestinian leadership. Barghouti has decided to seek the top Palestinian post, said Saad Nimr, who heads a campaign seeking Barghouti's release from an Israeli prison, where he is serving multiple life sentences. Nimr said yesterday that Barghouti would issue a formal statement today.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, poses no strategic threat to Israel but every menace to the Palestine Liberation Organization and embryonic Palestine. Yet it is Israel that has rightly gone to battle against Hamas, and against the PLO that coexists in a tacit truce with Hamas in Gaza, being too insecure to confront its mortal enemy.The first duty of the government of Israel, since the founding of the state, has been to protect Israeli citizens. After the Hamas kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier and the suicide bombing of a crowded bus in Tel Aviv killing 21, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin took every measure possible to reassure his citizens.

Philadelphia. When Kuwait disappeared into the Iraqi maw last August 2, the Palestine Liberation Organization found itself bereft of its second-largest source of funds. To make matters worse, Yasser Arafat's enthusiastic endorsement of Saddam Hussein's aggression caused the Saudi government, his largest donor, to cut off financial support. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt followed suit.The alienation of so many contributors has serious consequences. In November, Mr. Arafat estimated the financial loss to his organization at $10 billion.

Yasser Arafat, the personification of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has assumed a new and uncharacteristic role as a peacemaker. His historic agreement with Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to create autonomous Palestinian enclaves in Jericho and on the Gaza Strip has confounded both his friends and his adversaries, the latter including not only Israelis but radical Arabs and fundamentalist Muslims who don't know what to make of Mr. Arafat's apparent...

BEIT LAHIA, Israeli-Occupied Gaza Strip -- Beneath a poster of a bloody dagger, Mohammed Mahmoud Tantawi said yesterday that the violence against Israel will not end. If a new Palestinian government intervenes, he said, smiling, "We welcome a fight with them, too."The biggest threat to the autonomy plan reached between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization is violence from men like Mr. Tantawi, one of about 1,000 who chanted against Israel and the PLO at a rally yesterday by the Islamic Jihad opposition group.

HAMAS, the militant Palestinian organization dedicated to destroying peace with Israel, has two strong reasons to end terrorism and seek a democratic path to power in Palestine. Together they amount to an offer it cannot refuse.The main reason is that the legitimacy and popularity of Yasser Arafat and the PLO are going up in the West Bank and Gaza, especially as Israeli soldiers hand over Jenin in the West Bank to Palestinian forces. The Palestine bus is leaving the station. Hamas couldn't stop it and had better be on it. Mr. Arafat is delivering the self-government and self-respect to Palestinians that all past terrorism could not produce.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will reopen U.S. contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization, but is hesitant to lay out a White House welcome mat for Chairman Yasser Arafat, despite his dramatic renunciation of violence and terror, officials said yesterday.Mr. Clinton, watching a breakthrough toward Middle East peace, plans to play host to a signing ceremony Monday morning on the south lawn of the White House as representatives of Israel and the PLO meet to formalize arrangements for limited Palestinian autonomy in Israeli-occupied Gaza and Jericho.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The new chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas, met here last night with militant leaders as he began trying to solve the intricate political puzzle that Yasser Arafat left at his death. The meeting came at a moment of high tension among and within Palestinian factions. Politicians, security chiefs and militants are vying to preserve or increase their power after the death last week of Arafat, by far the most popular and influential Palestinian figure.

Many Arab and Muslim commentators hope that President Bush's second term will usher in a fresh start of positive relations between the United States and Muslim countries, and they see the death of Yasser Arafat and the potential it offers for a renewed Mideast peace ef fort as an important early test of that goal. They have a shared yardstick by which to judge Bush's per formance. Will the president exert more effort and invest more political capital to bring about a Palestinian-Israeli peace settle ment?

WASHINGTON - Having come to despise Yasser Arafat toward the end of his life, the Bush administration was not about to praise him in death. In a statement last night, President Bush said, "The death of Yasser Arafat is a significant moment in Palestinian history," omitting any judgment on the Palestinian leader. "We express our condolences to the Palestinian people." "During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace."

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian officials trying to prepare for a smooth transfer of power before Yasser Arafat dies are having to make sense of a tangle of institutions created by and for Arafat and that may be unmanageable without him. Arafat officially is president of the Palestinian Authority, the quasi-Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He is also chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the one-time revolutionary body that has evolved into a large bureaucracy, and head of the PLO's dominant faction, Fatah, which functions as a political party often indistinguishable from the government.

JERUSALEM - A prospective Palestinian government was fast taking form yesterday, as Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his ruling Fatah faction approved a tentative list of 23 new Cabinet members reportedly peppered with Arafat allies. The proposed Cabinet, which must be finalized by the Palestine Liberation Organization before going before a Palestinian Parliament vote this week, marks a sharp departure from the internationally orchestrated - and short-lived - term of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

IN THE END, all it took to kill international terrorist Abu Nidal was a bullet in the mouth. And he apparently died by his own hand. Even in death, he confounds. Notorious for a series of spectacular and stunning hijackings and attacks he masterminded in the 1970s and 1980s, feared for his ruthless allegiance to the cause of a free Palestine, Abu Nidal eluded capture throughout his infamous career. Born Sabri al-Banna in British-mandate Palestine, he chose the nom de guerre "father of the struggle" as a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

JERUSALEM -- The Israeli Army announced that members of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Fatah group killed a Jewish settler last month, further burdening the government's efforts to push forward the peace process.Israeli opponents here immediately seized on the news as proof of their claim that the Israel-PLO accord is flawed, and put the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the defensive.Mr. Rabin, on an official trip to Washington, acknowledged the news suggested a "dangerous violation" of commitments by the PLO. In Jerusalem, supporters of the accord scrambled for political cover while opponents demanded the prime minister's resignation.

GAZA CITY, Israeli-Occupied Gaza Strip -- A leading Palestinian politician and a longtime friend of Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat was assassinated yesterday in a sharp escalation of political violence in advance of self-rule here.Asad Saftawi, 58, the headmaster of a local school, was shot in the head and neck by two masked gunmen as he picked up his son from class just before noon, according to witnesses. The assailants first shot Mr. Saftawi from several yards away and then came closer, smashing his car window, to fire again.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed proposals yesterday that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat step down and name a replacement until elections are held next year, saying there is a growing sense in parts of the Arab world that such a change is necessary. "We think it would be an excellent idea," Powell said in an interview with a small group of reporters. "We think it would be very useful to have a prime minister or a minister of transformation, somebody we can work with."

JERUSALEM - After releasing Yasser Arafat before dawn from a monthlong siege, the Israeli government declared late last night that other Palestinian leaders under Israeli interrogation had implicated him in financing terrorist attacks. While the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon released a three-page statement outlining its charges, it did not describe a link between Arafat and any particular attack or produce additional documents to back up its accusations. But it said the interrogations supported its previous assertions that Arafat had approved money for operatives "with the knowledge that it would be used to finance terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians."