ARAFAT, NETANYAHU HOLD CHILLY MEETING.

Byline: Serge Schmemann The New York Times

After weeks of mounting tensions, pressures and secret negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally met face to face Wednesday with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader he repeatedly reviled during his election campaign.

The meeting consisted mainly of a cheerless handshake across a formal negotiating table and a joint news conference in which both men reiterated their commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace. But the contact had critical ramifications for peace and for the political standing of the two leaders.

For Netanyahu, the handshake guaranteed a bitter struggle with the nationalist right, which backed him in the expectation that he would halt the reconciliation with the Palestinians.

Instead, the meeting at Erez, an Israeli military camp on the northern border of the Gaza Strip, marked the formal reopening of peace negotiations that were frozen and seemed in danger of collapse after Netanyahu was elected. Their handshake represented a formal acceptance of Arafat and his Palestinian Authority by a right-wing government that referred to them as ``terrorists'' and denounced the previous Labor government for dealing with them.

At the news conference, a member of Parliament from the far-right Moledet party, Benny Elon, shouted out: ``Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister, but what's happened to you?''

Later, members of Netanyahu's Likud party publicly assailed him on television, while the main council of Jewish settlers in the West Bank held an emergency meeting late into the night.

Today, Netanyahu is to meet with the central council of Likud and is certain to come into fierce confrontation with hard-liners led by Ariel Sharon and Benny Begin, the two members of the Cabinet who most ardently opposed the meeting with Arafat.

Begin, son of the late Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin, declared that the meeting had ``only one meaning - a terrible defeat.''

Using Netanyahu's nickname Bibi, Begin added: ``The message is that Bibi is trapped in the tunnel of peace, and the next stop is Hebron.''

For Arafat, the meeting was something of a personal triumph after the scorn he endured from the Likud, and it was a source of relief from growing criticism among Palestinians that he had been duped into signing a meaningless peace agreement.

Last week, Arafat assailed Netanyahu's government for effectively ``declaring war against the Palestinian people'' through its policies on Jewish settlement and on Jerusalem.

On Wednesday, attired in his customary military jacket and checkered headdress, he said, ``I believe that we will work with Mr. Netanyahu and his government to push the peace process, the peace of the brave.''

Arafat noted that a Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin, made the first peace with Egypt and that another Likud leader, Yitzhak Shamir, accompanied by Netanyahu as a spokesman, represented Israel at the Madrid peace conference.

``We will work together with the prime minister as we worked with his predecessors,'' Arafat said.

The evening meeting opened when Netanyahu rose and offered his hand across the table to Arafat.

At the news conference an hour later, Netanyahu, with only stern glances at the adjacent podium where Arafat stood, said: ``Both parties reiterate their commitment to the interim agreement and their determination to carry out its agreement.''

The only official announcement that followed was that negotiating committees would start meeting immediately. But officials on both sides confirmed that the handshake had sealed a private agreement determining the issues that would be the initial focus of the negotiations: Israeli withdrawal from Hebron, security, opening a new Palestinian airport in Gaza and allowing more Palestinian workers into Israel. Though no deadlines were set, officials said they were hoping for results by mid-October.

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Photo

Photo: Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and Pales tiniUan leader Yasser Arafat emerge from their meeting.

Associated Press