Israeli-plo Accord Reached in Cairo Pushes Palestinian Self-rule Forward

The long-awaited agreement reached in Cairo late Wednesday night by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat has pushed Palestinian self-rule a crucial step closer to reality.

It has also provided at least some positive response to the key questions long hanging over the peace process: Can the PLO be trusted? And can it deliver?

The document hammered out in Cairo after weeks and months of frustrating, nitpicking negotiations on the security-related aspects of the Gaza-Jericho accord plainly does not yet give a reliable answer to those twin questions.

But it does offer some hope. And that, over and above the specific issues that have at last been agreed upon, is the major significance of the Cairo agreement.

Details of the accord were not announced Wednesday, but Arafat and Peres signed the document late that evening amid loud applause at the palace of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after two days of talks. Then the two leaders shook hands.

Israeli and PLO negotiators had been trying to work out the implementation of the declaration of principles since it was signed by the two sides last September.

Cairo was the venue for the talks on several occasions, as were a string of European cities. Each time, the two sides looked close to agreement, only to pull back at the last moment.

That, in itself, attests to the seriousness on both sides. An agreement too quickly and too casily reached would have raised suspicions that the signatories did not truly intend to honor it.

Israeli negotiators, led in Cairo and in several previous rounds by Peres, privately spoke disparagingly of the PLO side. The Israelis groused over internecine backbiting within the PLO leadership and negotiating team.

The PLO negotiators, for their part, poked fun at Peres for his inability to make decisions without referring back at every twist and turn of the talks to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for instructions.

MORE NEGOTIATIONS TO COME

But beneath the mutual mudslinging, a certain mutual respect has evolved, and will percolate through the two nations.

Hard bargainers ought to make serious and honorable implementers: This is the reasoning to be heard in both camps as the exhausted negotiators head for their beds.

The real test, of course, will be the implementation.

The agreement constitutes the much desired and much delayed breakthrough for the Gaza-Jericho arrangement — the first phase of the interim self-government package that was supposed to have begun last December with an initial Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho.

Much more negotiating remains to be completed — on civilian and administrative aspects of the accord.

But that should be easy sailing compared to the tense and stubborn haggling over the security issues, such as the border crossings to Egypt and Jordan, the roads through Gaza and Jericho feeding the Israeli settlements, the size of the area around Jericho scheduled to receive autonomy and the responsibility for “overall security” in the two autonomous areas.

STILL HOPING TO MEET DEADLINE

Once the whole deal is wrapped up, Israel intends to move expeditiously toward redeploying its troops, hoping still to meet the April 13 deadline set in the declaration of principles.

Then, at last, the PLO under Arafat will be in a position, for the first time ever, to provide the only true and authoritative answer to the double question of its trustworthiness and ability to deliver its promises.

For then its police and civilian officials will take over the actual running of parts, albeit small parts, of the disputed land.

The answer will be molded above all by the state of security in the two regions.

Terror attacks on Israeli settlers or soldiers, or travelers through the Jordan Valley, will quickly give the opposition in Israel the answer it suspects to be true: that the PLO is neither trustworthy nor capable of discharging its undertakings.

Relative calm will immensely strengthen the government’s hand as it embarks on the second phase of negotiations with the PLO — for full self-government throughout the rest of the West Bank.

The Israeli public will also be watching how the Palestinians go about the business of governing themselves, setting up judicial, economic and administrative organs and absorbing the vast amounts of promised international aid.

Jericho and Gaza are tiny specks on the map. But in terms of the Israeli-Arab conflict, they will be a laboratory for testing credibility.