Leaders Will Quicken Negotiations On Expanding Palestinian Self-Rule Progress Comes One Week After Summit Had Produced Nothing But Recriminations

Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed Thursday to speed up negotiations on expanding Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Israel will start easing its closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The reported progress comes one week after a summit between Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat produced nothing more than mutual recriminations about the deadlock in their negotiations.

After last week’s session, Israeli and Palestinian commentators were declaring the IsraeliPalestinian peace accord dead and predicting the collapse of Rabin’s government.

“Nothing has died,” declared Foreign Minister Shimon Peres after Thursday’s session. “There are difficulties, but we can overcome them.”

After a two-hour session with Arafat on Thursday afternoon, Rabin said that he will allow 10,000 workers from Gaza and 5,000 from the West Bank to enter Israel next week. “All of them are workers whom we know” and who are older than 30, Rabin said.

About three times as many workers were entering Israel legally before Israel imposed the closure Jan. 22 - after two Palestinian suicide bombers killed 21 Israelis at a bus stop.

Israel started importing more workers from abroad after the bombing and Rabin adopted a policy that seeks to end Israel’s dependence on Palestinian workers in construction, agriculture and other fields.

But Arafat and other Palestinian officials have warned that the closure is strangling the Palestinian economy, particularly in Gaza where there are few jobs. Support for Arafat’s self-governing authority has been sinking in opinion polls and more and more Palestinians are expressing support for “military actions” against Israeli targets.

Rabin’s gesture Thursday seemed to acknowledge both Arafat’s growing political problems and the effort that his police and security forces have made recently to foil attacks on Israel and arrest suspected militants.

Rabin said he and Arafat “agreed on holding intense negotiations so as to overcome our differences on security issues, elections, redeployment, empowerment.” He said he and Arafat will meet again in a month, that Peres and Arafat will meet in three weeks and that negotiators from both sides will continue to meet regularly, starting with a session Tuesday in Cairo.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Thursday that he believes Israel and the Palestinians are close to agreeing on Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza. Sounding upbeat, Erekat said he believes there may be elections in May or June.”There will continue to be difficulties and setbacks, but we are moving forward again,” he said.

Even as Rabin and Arafat searched for ways to move their peace talks forward, some 300 Jewish settlers gathered in Kiryat Arba, a settlement near the Arab town of Hebron on the West Bank, to mark the anniversary of Baruch Goldstein’s death. A doctor who immigrated from the United States and lived at Kiryat Arba, Goldstein fired on Muslim worshippers as they prayed in the Ibrahim mosque, killing 29 before he was beaten to death.