Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 25, 1995 TAG: 9509250059
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
With only two and a half hours left before Israel shut down for the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, finally initialed the 400-page document.
The major obstacle they had ovecome was the security arrangement for Hebron, where Jewish settlers live surrounded by Arab residents.
Peres and Arafat approved the agreement in a brief ceremony in Taba, Egypt, a Red Sea resort where the final negotiations took place.
The initialing cleared the way for the agreement to be approved by the Israeli Cabinet on Wednesday and formally signed in a much-postponed ceremony at the White House Thursday.
The accord spells out, step by step and town by town, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from much of the territory they have occupied since the 1967 war, and the transfer of extensive governing authority to an elected Palestinian Council until a final separation is negotiated by the turn of the century.
Peres, his voice breaking at moments, said: ``Ladies and gentlemen, let's face it, what we are doing today is not a normal political or economic enterprise; it is history in the real meaning of the word.
``On our side, there are many mothers and fathers and children who suffered tremendously, and on the Palestinian side, too, there are many people who paid with their lives, their fortunes, their freedom, and I really feel the Lord has offered us a real opportunity to change the course of hopelessness and desperation and bloodshed into something more promising, more noble, more humane.''
Arafat was somewhat less conciliatory, saying: ``On this occasion and from this place, I would like to speak to our prisoners, to those who were injured, with greetings, and I assure them that the dawn of freedom is coming. I also greet the families of our martyrs.''
His comments were certain to raise the hackles of the Israeli right, since the people the Palestinians call ``martyrs'' the Israelis call ``terrorists.''
But the PLO leader, whose name and trademark head covering were synonymous with terrorism only a scant two years ago, also wished the Israelis a happy New Year in Hebrew, ``Shanah Tovah,'' and expressed the hope that the coming year would be a time of real peace between ``people of the area.''
The agreement came under almost immediate attack from opposition forces on both sides.
Militant Israeli settlers in Hebron vowed to block the agreement from being put into effect.
Inside Israel, the two-day observance of the High Holy Days precluded mass protests. But after that, warned a longtime political commentator, ``fasten your seat belt.''
Peres and Arafat, however, were obviously elated at the 20-minute televised ceremony. They had put in about 80 hours of direct negotiations and spent almost every night of the past week working together in an atmosphere of crisis and suspense.
Hours before the initialing, Arafat stormed out, shouting, ``We are not slaves!'' It was the second time he erupted and walked out, and once again he was enticed back to the bargaining table by telephoned appeals from President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the chief U.S. mediator, Dennis B. Ross.
The accord is the second stage of the process that began when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn Sept. 13, 1993. The ``Declaration of Principles'' they issued then set a timetable for a permanent disengagement of Arabs and Israelis in the Palestinian lands by the end of the century.
by CNB