EDITORIAL : PLAYING THE BLAME GAME ARAFAT IS MORE OF AN OBSTACLE TO PEACE THAN NETANYAHU.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu caught a lot of flak last week over the decision by his cabinet to go ahead with plans to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank. President Clinton called the settlements an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians, and even hinted that the United States might withhold aid payments to Israel.

A case can be made that the action taken by Israel goes against the grain of the Oslo accords, which provided the foundation for the peace process.

But it's useful to remember that Netanyahu is the elected leader of a democratic nation put in office by voters who are suspicious of the peace process and distrust many of the Palestinian leaders, including Yasser Arafat. Netanyahu, a member of the Likud bloc, is responsible to Israeli voters, not members of the Clinton administration who openly supported former Prime Minister Shimon Peres' Labor Party in the last election.

Besides, why is it so wrong for Israel to construct a few settlements for a few hundred Jews amid all the thousands of Palestinians who live in areas that, under the accords, will be granted a certain degree of self-rule?

There are no moves afoot for the wholesale removal of Palestinians from Israel proper. So what's the rational basis, especially in the name of a peace process, for all this hostility toward a few Jewish settlements in the West Bank?

The answer to that question is that there is no rational basis for so much hostility, especially if the goal is peace.

Peace should mean more than simply an absence of war. It should mean a willingness to live together, work together and even engage in political dialogues. That, rather than a sterile partition, should be the objective of the peace process.

In our opinion, Arafat remains more an enemy of the peace process than Netanyahu. He was up to his old tricks Friday, charging that U.S. envoy Dennis Ross was biased in favor of the Israelis. (That apparently was in response to a sensible observation by outgoing Secretary of State Warren Christopher that it was time for the Palestinians to make some concessions.)

Arafat has inflamed the situation by trying to represent the settlements as evidence of the Israeli's evil designs. That kind of rhetoric probably plays well among Palestinian extremists. But it certainly won't appeal to Netanyahu's supporters who believe that Jews should have at least some rights in lands that cost so much Israeli blood in wars against Arab aggressors.