SICK TO DEATH OF PEACE

By LISA BEYER/GAZA CITY

No one believed a handshake on the White House lawn would turn Israel and the occupied territories into Eden. No one expected signatures on a document to satisfy extremists. No one thought a peace agreement would end all fear. But it was hoped that a peace agreement would bring something like peace. It has not, and as a result, Israelis and Palestinians alike are near despair over their famous accord signed in Washington less than two years ago.

A deep malaise has set in. Neither side has received what it bargained for in the agreement, which provided for a measure of Palestinian self-rule in preparation for talks beginning next year on the final status of the occupied territories. The Israelis expected relief from Palestinian fury but today find that violence is worse than before. The Palestinians wanted real control over their own lives but today find them as dominated by Israel as ever. Pollsters of both sides in recent weeks report that an increasing majority no longer support the peace accord.

The pace of terror has picked up considerably. During the nearly six years of the uprising, or intifadeh, that preceded the agreement, Palestinians killed 161 Israelis; in the 20 months since the agreement was signed, the toll is 123 dead. Most were victims of suicide bombings carried out by Muslim extremists. "You get the feeling we're collectively going over a cliff," says student Sarah Halevi. "I completely don't trust anything the Palestinians say." Seeing the killers celebrated in the streets of Gaza, and how gingerly Yasser Arafat's governing Palestinian Authority has treated them (at least until very recently), most Israelis wonder whether it is possible ever to make peace. Even among Israeli peace activists, says Clinton Bailey, a history professor at Tel Aviv University, "people are asking whether making the deal with Arafat was the right thing to do."

It is hard to find anyone who believes strongly that the limited self-rule now in effect in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho will soon be expanded to the include entire West Bank. Many people question whether that ought to happen at all. Israelis are worried about creating new safe havens for bombers. As Uri Dromi, the director of Israel's Government Press Office, says, "People see what's happening in Gaza, and they say, 'You mean to tell me you want to bring this closer to our homes?' "

A poll conducted in late April found that only 45% of Israelis still favored the peace accord. At the time it was signed, 61% favored it. Other recent polls show Israelis consistently preferring Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud Party, over Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Netanyahu is harshly critical of the peace agreement and has said he considers it a dead letter because of Palestinian violations. Most Palestinians -- 69% by one survey -- approved of the agreement when it was made. Now only 40% report satisfaction with it, according to a poll released last week by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center. Forty percent said the agreement was insufficient, and an additional 16% said it offered the Palestinians nothing whatsoever. "In the Gaza Strip there is no debate at all that things are worse under autonomy," says the center's director, Ghassan Khatib.

While residents generally give Arafat's administration low marks for efficiency, the leading Gazan complaint is economic. Responding to the suicide bombings, Israel has limited the number of Palestinian laborers working in Israel to 29,000, down from the normal 100,000 or so at this time of year. The Gaza Strip has been especially hard hit, as it has little local industry. Trade with Israel has also been sharply curtailed. Because of the new strictures, the unemployment rate is at 58% in Gaza, and merchants are starving for business. True, self-rule there has brought some degree of pride. "It's good to see the Israelis gone and the Palestinian policemen in the streets," says jeweler Nael Haddad. "Still," he adds, "that doesn't buy you a loaf of bread."

The economic restrictions are among the measures that remind Palestinians every day of the extent to which Israel still controls their lives. They feel humiliated, for instance, by the way members of the Palestinian Authority are checked and sometimes harassed by Israeli officials at border crossings. "Even the people of the Authority are treated by the Israelis like garbage," laments insurance agent Fathi Sirhan. The feeling is widespread that in the negotiations over expanding self-rule, Israel basically dictates the terms. "Every time Arafat meets with the Israelis, it's like he gets his instructions and that's it," says linguist Lily Feidy.

One indication of disillusion was the reaction in March to reports that the West Bank city of Jenin would soon be turned over to the Palestinian Authority. The residents of Jenin themselves petitioned Arafat to stop any such move. "They didn't want to see their city turned into another prison, opened and closed according to Israel's wish," says Khatib. As long as the West Bank's future is still under negotiation, its residents remain subject to the indignities of the occupation: checkpoints, curfews, the presence of an alien army. What's more, the Israelis continue to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank, making Palestinians doubt that the Israelis will ever relinquish meaningful control over the area.

Freih Abu Middain, the Palestinian Justice Minister, sums up today's situation by saying, "Israel is still our enemy. We have no peace, only procedures for making peace. It may lead to peace; it may lead to war." In the heat of a recent controversy over Israeli land confiscations in the Arab part of Jerusalem, Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini suggested it might be time to renew the intifadeh.

Lily Feidy doesn't think so. "Who will restart the intifadeh?" she asks. "People are exhausted." Speaking for the Israelis, author Meir Shalev agrees. "This is not a peace of the brave, nor the peace of friends, nor the peace of the wise," he wrote in the daily Yediot Ahronot. "It is the peace of the tired." Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians, it may be, have the spirit to return to out-and-out confrontation. But if progress toward a final agreement requires enthusiastic and broad support, it is difficult to see right now where it will come from.

--WITH REPORTING BY JAMIL HAMAD/ GAZA CITY AND ERIC SILVER/JERUSALEM

With reporting by JAMIL HAMAD/GAZA CITY AND ERIC SILVER/JERUSALEM