Middle East Show of Unity

Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, demonstrated once more that he still has the ability to outlast if not outwit his enemies. Ever since Israel drove the bulk of the P.L.O. from Lebanon in 1982, such radical Palestinian leaders as George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh have sided with Syrian President Hafez Assad in opposing Arafat's leadership. But last week, when the Palestine National Council, the P.L.O.'s so-called parliament in exile, met in Algiers for its first session in 2 1/2 years, friends and rivals alike cheered when Arafat shouted, "This Palestinian land shall remain Arab! Arab! Arab!"

To mark the occasion, Arafat's followers in southern Lebanon launched a series of rocket attacks and a small guerrilla operation against northern Israel. In response, Israeli planes staged strikes against P.L.O. positions in Lebanon. The Israelis were also engaged in a heated debate last week, with Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a Labor Party leader, calling for a territorial compromise over the occupied West Bank and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir repeating the Likud bloc's position that Israel will never make territorial concessions for peace.

In Algiers, Arafat welcomed back into the fold Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hawatmeh's Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In return, he promised the two Damascus-based radicals that he would renounce the two-year-old Amman Accord, under which he and Jordan's King Hussein had launched a joint peace initiative. In fact, the accord had long since broken down anyway.

Arafat resisted a demand by the radicals that he sever ties with Egypt. ; But he accepted their view that if an international peace conference ever held, the P.L.O. should have its own representatives and not simply be part of another Arab delegation. That decision reduced to an absolute zero whatever slight chance existed of progress toward peace in the immediate future.

At the Algiers conference, Western observers were dismayed to see Abul Abbas, one of the 15 members of the P.L.O.'s executive committee, who is wanted by the U.S. and Italy for his role in the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. At week's end after Abbas had resigned from the policymaking body to mollify moderates, he was re-elected to another term.