Palestinian Authority

Yasser Arafat is running for president, but voters here don't see him kissing babies or munching falafel at the neighborhood diner. He doesn't don a hard hat to shake hands at the factory gate or go jogging with Force 17, his presidential guard. In fact, since the assassination two months ago of Yitzhak Rabin, his Israeli partner in peacemaking, Arafat hardly mixes with the people at all.

The term never appears on the ballot, of course, but when Palestinians go to the polls for the first time today, they will be casting their votes in favor of a Palestinian state. Not only do all 674 candidates running for public office support the goal, but in the very act of electing their own government, Palestinians are taking a first step toward building a sovereign state. The election lacks many of the trimmings of democracy and drama of a Western-style political race.

For the past few weeks, Israelis have been watching the hand-over of successive West Bank cities to the Palestinian Authority with almost as much detachment as they watch the latest television reports on Bosnia. The matter-of-fact reaction even from right wing Israelis is no less stunning than the smooth historical transition occurring on the West Bank itself.

Nearly two months after Israelis and Palestinians agreed to hold urgent talks aimed at reaching a compromise on the disputed West Bank city of Hebron, negotiators for both sides admitted Friday that they are all but deadlocked. "We seem to be at a real stalemate," David Bar-Illan, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said of the discussions on Hebron, the last West Bank city under Israeli occupation. "Whether the gaps can be bridged any time soon is very hard to say."

Defying Israel's hard-line government, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat released 72 Islamic militant detainees after telling his people to hold on to the spirit of resistance against Israel. The 72 prisoners released from Palestinian Authority jails were all activists in the Islamic militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, said Azam Ahmad, Palestinian minister of public works.

Until the last vote is counted, Nidal Karem said Thursday, he will try to hold on to a tiny shred of hope that Benjamin Netanyahu will not become Israel's prime minister. But one day after a national election that appeared to give the rightist Likud Party leader the slimmest of victories over the Labor Party's incumbent, Shimon Peres, Karem sat disconsolately on the hood of his car in this Palestinian town, worrying about the future.

Palestinian police in Gaza City on Friday apprehended three men suspected of planning a bomb attack inside Israel but only after the officers were pelted with stones by enraged Palestinians who tried to prevent the arrests. It was an embarrassing illustration of the difficulties that Palestinian officials are experiencing as they try to keep the peace with the Israelis--and among their own people.

Israel moved Monday against the Palestinian self-governing authority in the West Bank and Jerusalem even as it edged closer to signing a long-delayed agreement to extend Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank. In Jerusalem, police served notice on three offices that Israel says are associated with the Palestinian Authority, warning that they must cease operation in 96 hours or be shut down. Offices of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp.

When Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring showed up at Orient House in East Jerusalem this week, he was greeted by angry Israelis shouting "Shame on you!" and by journalists demanding to know what he was trying to prove. Ignoring aides who urged him not to comment, the Irishman icily told reporters: "You can read into it whatever you like." The source of all this controversy wasn't the fact that Spring met with Palestinians. That was fine with the Israeli government.

A leading human rights group warned Sunday that the failure of the 7-month-old Palestinian Authority to protect human rights in the Gaza Strip seriously threatens the establishment of a Palestinian democracy and prospects for stable peace in the Middle East.