World Notes MIDDLE EAST

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir proposed limited elections in the Palestinian territories as a step toward Middle East peace. That is not how the Palestinians there regard it. Last week more than 80 leaders from the West Bank and Gaza issued a statement rejecting the proposal as "a maneuver for the media" designed to sidestep the Palestine Liberation Organization and "ignore our political legitimacy as well as our legitimate aspirations."

Elections would be acceptable, they said, only as part of a defined process leading toward Palestinian independence. The statement was also intended to remind exiled P.L.O. leaders, who had avoided an outright rejection of the Shamir plan in their dialogue with the U.S., not to squelch the uprising without exacting major concessions from Israel.

The U.S. downplayed the diplomatic damage by maintaining that the Shamir proposal remained "very much alive." But some hard-liners in Israel have rejected the election plan. Administration sources say the negative positions taken by the Palestinians and some Israelis are just part of a bargaining process that could yet make elections possible as part of a comprehensive solution.