Israel, PLO to Resume Autonomy Talks

JERUSALEM — After a week of Egyptian mediation, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed Sunday to resume their negotiations on Palestinian autonomy, focusing on the troublesome but key issue of future security for Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa said in Cairo that reduced teams of Israeli and PLO negotiators will meet there today to discuss the question of how many troops Israel will keep in areas under Palestinian self-government to protect the Israeli settlers who remain there.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat said after a meeting with Moussa and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that he hopes for a quick resolution of the dispute, and he predicted that full talks will resume “faster than you can imagine” on implementing Palestinian autonomy in January.

In Jerusalem, however, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was notably more cautious, telling his Cabinet at its regular Sunday morning meeting that the differences between Israel and the PLO on the security issue are deep and complex and pose serious problems in implementing the accord signed Sept. 13.

“Israel will not back down on its commitments on security for the settlements, on security for Israelis traveling in these territories and on security on the borders,” Rabin told the Cabinet, according to an aide.

The Israeli resolve on this issue deepened, the aide said, when the Cabinet was told of the killing of one Israeli and the wounding of another in an attack by Palestinian gunmen near the West Bank city of Hebron earlier Sunday.

Rabin, speaking later to West Bank settlers in the Gush Etzion region south of Jerusalem, attributed the recent series of attacks in which 11 Israelis have died since the agreement with the PLO to efforts by hard-line Palestinian opponents to undermine the accord.

The PLO and Fatah, its principal faction, were honoring the agreement and have not carried out any of the attacks, Rabin said. Israel too would honor it, he said, for to do otherwise “would give victory to the terrorists.”

Talks with the PLO broke down last week, however, after Israel presented its plans for ensuring the security of the small Gaza settlements, which have fewer than 5,000 residents but are grouped in three blocs in the north, center and south of the region.

Nabil Shaath, the chief Palestinian negotiator, rejected the Israeli proposal, calling it a plan for the redeployment of Israeli forces in Gaza rather than for their withdrawal, and on Arafat’s orders he left the talks.