Filling in the Blanks

By LISA BEYER/JERUSALEM

Like a couple committed to marriage but unsure how to live together, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization last week shrugged off their mutual uncertainties and, fingers crossed, set a date to begin a new future. Though negotiators had still not resolved all the details of Palestinian self-rule despite six months of wrangling, they agreed to worry later about the few outstanding issues and get on with the long-delayed transfer of power, beginning this week. Said Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, after sealing the date with P.L.O. chief Yasser Arafat in Cairo: "It is, I think, the end of a long voyage and the beginning of a new chapter between the Palestinians and ourselves."

If all went as planned, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were to meet this week in Cairo to settle two contentious issues -- one substantive, the size of the self-rule enclave around Jericho; and one symbolic, whether a Palestinian guard will be posted on the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan to the West Bank -- that negotiators set aside for top- level deliberation. The day after the meeting, May 4, they were scheduled to sign an accord laying out the terms by which the P.L.O. will take charge of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank area around Jericho, at long last commencing an experiment in self-government that eventually is to encompass the whole of the West Bank. For the P.L.O., testing time has arrived. By week's end the organization should have begun exercising power, though limited, for the first time ever in the Palestinian homeland.

According to Israeli officials, the breakthrough in the sclerotic talks came two weeks ago, when Arafat and Peres consulted over 48 hours in Bucharest. Rabin had told his Foreign Minister that it was time to trade some of the symbolic measures sought by the P.L.O. for the security concessions Israel deemed more important. Arafat accepted the idea, paving the way for an acceleration of the subsequent talks, which were given a strong push by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and U.S. Secretary of State Warren - Christopher, who came to the region last week to help bring the negotiations to a close.

In keeping with the Bucharest principle, Israel bowed to several P.L.O. demands aimed at giving the autonomy authority at least some of the trappings of statehood. The Gaza Strip will have its own international dialing code, no longer sharing Israel's 972 exchange, and the Palestinian authority will be empowered to issue passports to residents of the two enclaves. In return, the P.L.O. accepted a three-mile limitation on territorial waters off the Gaza Strip and gave Israel air rights over the self-rule zones.

The bargaining teams also resolved the tricky question of jurisdiction over Israelis arrested for wrongdoing in the Palestinian enclaves. Palestinian authorities will deal with Israelis accused of minor offenses, while Israeli courts will take over major crimes. On the sensitive subject of the 8,500 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails, the two sides agreed that 5,000 will be released within two weeks after the signing of the accord.

It has been left for Rabin and Arafat to come to terms on the size of the self-rule district around Jericho. Israel prefers a token zone of 20 sq. mi., whereas the P.L.O. wants twice that area. The two leaders must also decide whether a Palestinian policeman will be stationed midway on the Jordan River bridge. It seems a minor point, but to the P.L.O. such a presence would go far to create an image of Palestinian sovereignty -- which is precisely why the Israelis oppose it.

Visible change should come to the territories within 24 hours of the signing ceremony in Cairo, when 1,000 Palestinian policemen are scheduled to arrive in the Gaza Strip and Jericho as Israeli troops pull out. An additional 8,000 police will gradually be deployed. The P.L.O. is expected to make great fanfare out of the arrival of the first police in order to stir up public enthusiasm for self-rule. Spirits have been soured by the slow-moving negotiations as well as by tight restrictions locking out Palestinians who work in Israel, imposed after 13 Israelis died in suicide bombings by Palestinians seeking revenge for the February massacre of worshippers at a Hebron mosque. Middle-class Palestinians report that their poorer neighbors, deprived of the money they normally earn in Israel, are beginning to beg for basic provisions.

As the Israelis and Palestinians trudge toward accommodation, hope for progress shone on another front as well. Visiting Syria last weekend, Christopher delivered to President Hafez Assad a step-by-step Israeli proposal for withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for normal relations between the two states. Israel, which says the extent of its withdrawal will depend on the depth of peace with Syria, would like to stretch the process out for seven to 10 years.

According to U.S. diplomats, Assad wants to reach an agreement by the end of the year. With that in mind, American and Israeli officials began discussing what security assistance Washington might provide its ally to compensate for loss of the strategic Heights. That was a good sign that a resolution on the Golan, as with the Gaza Strip and West Bank, was moving from the hypothetical to the real.

With reporting by David Aikman with Christopher, Ron Ben-Yishai/Tel Aviv and Dean Fischer/Cairo