Fears of violence rise in wake of Washington talks

THE Palestinian Authority's Information Minister, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, who generally reflects the thinking of his President, Mr Yasser Arafat, characterised the Washington peacesaving summit as "a failure".

Instead of hurrying home to Gaza, a tight lipped Mr Arafat flew to Rabat, Tunis and Paris for consultations.

Palestinians in the territories believe Mr Arafat did his best but agree that his best was not good enough.

All the Palestinians who spoke to The Irish Times complained: "We got nothing on the ground. The situation hasn't changed. The potential for violence remains.

Dr Assad Abdel Rahman, a member of the PLO executive committee, speaking from Amman in Jordan, was more upbeat about the short term impact of the summit than the long term prospects of negotiating peace with the Israeli government of Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.

"First, the summit prevented further deterioration in the volatile situation", Dr Abdei Rahman said. "Second the US is going to be a witness in the coming talks. Third, Netanyahu has been cornered and forced to begin real negotiations. Before, we were meeting but not negotiating."

However, Dr Rahman feared Mr Netanyahu would "try to change agreements already signed. We have always been prepared for minor modifications but this man wants to rewrite agreements under the pretext of making modifications. This is totally unacceptable and will delay progress.

"Ultimately Mr Netanyahu will have to explode his hardline cabinet from within and form a coalition government with Labour if there is going to be a peace process", he said.

Mr Jack Khazmo, editor of the Jerusalem weekly, Al Bayader alSiyasi, said that "Arafat had to attend this vital summit in order to put the Palestinian point of view but Netanyahu won the political battle" in Washington "because he persuaded the Americans to accept his formula of security for peace and peace for security instead of land for peace" the basis of the Madrid peace process.

"Mr Netanyahu managed to shift the focus of Palestinian anger from himself to Arafat for failing to deal with the real problems", Mr Khazmo said.

He expected anger to increase because Mr Arafat promised to exert control over the self rule enclaves.

"Now we can't even demonstrate when they confiscate our land" in case protests escalate into violence, he said.

"We were very tolerant with (Yitzak) Rabin and (Shimon) Peres and we have been tolerant with Netanyahu. I don't know how much more we can tolerate", he said.

Today could be a test of that tolerance because the opposition Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements have called for protests after the weekly communal prayers at noon.