Can They Pass the Test?

Monday, Sep. 13, 1993 By BRUCE W. NELAN

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After word of the secret agreement between Israel and the P.L.O. reached the sun-seared slums of the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians streamed out of the teeming Shati refugee camp. They hung their red, black, white and green national flag on an impromptu stage and danced to the music of a small folk band. Suddenly a column of 200 toughs from the hard-line Islamic organization Hamas waded into the celebration, swinging chains and clubs. The melee wrecked the stage, the chairs, even the Palestinian flag, and injured at least 15 people.

In Jerusalem, as the Israeli Cabinet voted its approval of the peace plan that had been secretly worked out with P.L.O. negotiators in Oslo, thousands of right-wing Israelis blocked the streets around government buildings and shouted their opposition to any compromise with terrorists. When demonstrators turned violent, police quelled them with water cannons, then bodily hauled away troublemakers.

The sound of blows and the public clash of ideologies provided a vivid preview of the opposition to come -- and almost certain to grow worse -- on both sides. The Israeli-Palestinian deal is a first step toward a new political arrangement no one can yet fully describe. It is a momentous beginning, offering a glimpse of the chance to end 45 years of hatred and bloodshed in the Holy Land -- but it is still only a start.

That is enough to fuel the hopes of the mainstream moderates in Israeli and Palestinian society. But uncertainty about what has been wrought is so angst- laden that it forces many of those in Israel who fear for their safety to shout, "Too much!" Many Palestinians -- some still more interested in destroying Israel than in building a state of their own -- retort, "Not nearly enough!" Angry and frightened extremists on both sides have plenty of guns and are accustomed to using them. Even the majorities that embrace the agreement are hesitant and fearful as they enter uncharted waters.

This is the supreme test, for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Israelis will have to show they can deal fairly with the P.L.O. they have demonized so long and remain generous of spirit even as fellow Jews accuse them of betrayal. The Palestinians must prove they can govern themselves, maintain order and keep their violent agitators under control, if they hope to receive a payoff in the form of more land and sovereignty in the occupied territories. If they do not, and Islamic and Palestinian rejectionists attack Israel, triggering counterattacks from rightist Israelis only too eager to respond, the experiment will be canceled, never to be repeated in this generation.

For those who support the Oslo agreement, even if halfheartedly, the new Declaration of Principles provides the only ladder available to climb out of a status quo both sides have been finding more and more intolerable. The plan comes in two parts: first, a framework for interim Palestinian self-rule on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; and second, the agreement, still being negotiated, on mutual recognition and an end to the warfare between Israel and the P.L.O.