Palestinians: No Joy in Algiers

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Even the most fiery hard-liners attending the five-day meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers last week spoke with gloomy resignation. "There is a new reality -- international, regional and Palestinian," said Farouk Kaddoumi, the Palestine Liberation Organization's foreign minister. That reality, most of the delegates agreed, is one in which the Palestinian people can no longer look either to Moscow or to Arab states for strong political and financial support.

Thus, forced to alter their strategy, the conferees reluctantly but overwhelmingly decided to support the Middle East peace conference that is being orchestrated by the Bush Administration. The P.L.O. leadership also accepted the notion of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. But as always, it left a few loopholes for further negotiation.

Nonetheless, the conference results brighten the prospects for an October peace conference. But the Palestinians were not celebrating. A frustrated Yasser Arafat called his job as P.L.O. chief "a catastrophe" and dramatically pleaded to step down. Said Yasser Abd Rabbo of the P.L.O. executive committee: "We are between the options of suicide and suicide."