HUSSEIN STEPS BETWEEN PALESTINIANS, ISRAEL.

Byline: Storer H. Rowley Chicago Tribune 

With Israel and the Palestinians poised for a showdown this week over Jerusalem, Jordan's King Hussein intervened Sunday to try to get the hostile partners working again toward breaking the deadlock in a last-ditch effort to avert an explosion of violence.

On a dramatic visit of condolence and quiet persuasion, Hussein helped get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to talk by phone and to jump start some negotiations.

But Hussein failed to persuade Netanyahu to back down from Israel's plan to start building 6,500 new housing units for Jews in disputed East Jerusalem this week, and Israel's security forces braced for a possible backlash from Palestinians when construction starts as soon as today.

Arafat told an international conference in self-ruled Gaza over the weekend that Israel's building plans in Jerusalem and an announced troop pullback in the West Bank, far short of Palestinian expectations, could destroy the peace process.

But Hussein, on a mission to visit the families of seven girls killed last week by a Jordanian soldier, with Netanyahu at his side, also staged his second 11th-hour effort in recent months to try to salvage the stalemated U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace talks.

He managed to spur the parties to accelerate talks on opening a Palestinian airport and a seaport in the self-ruled Gaza Strip, Israeli media reported. They also were trying to move forward on opening safe passage routes for Palestinians traveling between the West Bank and Gaza. These issues were part of a U.S. diplomatic initiative pressed last week to try to extract goodwill gestures from Israel to offset the impact of the new housing project, which senior PLO officials have warned could lead to an explosion of violence. Whether Hussein's efforts will translate into a calmer reaction from Palestinians remained to be seen.

Both Israel and the PLO claim Jerusalem as their capital, and the new housing is planned for a hillside - called Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic and Har Homa in Hebrew - that was part of Arab districts captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War.

``We cannot solve all the problems right now,'' Netanyahu declared at a joint news conference with Hussein on Sunday night at a Jerusalem hotel, revealing that they had contacted Arafat during the day. Last week, Arafat refused to take Netanyahu's calls and said the Israelis as acting unilaterally and trying to dictate peace terms without adequate dialogue.

Specifically, Netanyahu said the sides were discussing the Gaza airport intensively Sunday, hoping they could agree on how to meet Israel's security concerns and ``conclude this agreement at the earliest possible time.''

Later, Netanyahu's office announced that a deal had been reached on opening the airport and that Arafat would be allowed to fly in and out while talks continue on security issues.

Arab-Israeli hostility heightened further Sunday after an Israeli Cabinet minister warned that Arafat could be forced back into exile if he orders a violent reaction to the building of housing for 30,000 Jews on the hillside near Bethlehem. Israeli officials said they intend to start work on the project as soon as today, but Netanyahu said only that it would be this week.

``If there is war, then it will be war to the finish,'' Justice Minister Tsachi Hanegbi told Likud party supporters in much publicized remarks in the central Israel town of Or-Yehuda on Saturday night.