NETANYAHU, ARAFAT SIGN HEBRON DEAL : LEADERS COMPROMISE ON PULLOUT.

Byline: Serge Schmemann The New York Times

Meeting in the middle of the night at a military base between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today finally sealed the long-delayed deal on a partial Israeli withdrawal from Hebron.

The end of 3-1/2 months of all-night negotiations, recriminations and crises was announced at 2:45 a.m. today in a brief statement by Dennis Ross, the American mediator who shaped the compromises in countless meetings with both sides, and marshaled the talks to the end.

With Netanyahu at his right and Arafat at his left, Ross announced that the two leaders had reached agreement on Hebron and on an accompanying document describing further steps to be taken by both sides to continue the process toward peace laid out in the agreements signed by the previous Israeli government in 1993 and 1995, collectively known as the Oslo accords.

The Hebron agreement, Ross said, ``is indeed a fair and balanced approach to dealing with the concerns each side had.'' The accompanying ``Note for the Record,'' which formally represents a statement by the United States, ``really lays out a road map for the future,'' he added.

``Taken together, these two documents represent a very important building block in terms of developing relations between the two sides and in terms of laying out a pathway of greater hope and the possibility of peace in the Middle East as a whole,'' Ross said.

Officials said that in addition to the Note for the Record, the United States had provided confidential letters of assurances to each side detailing what each expected the other to do. Among other things, these letters were said to stipulate that Israel would undertake three further withdrawals in the West Bank by mid-1998.

These withdrawals had posed the last major obstacle to agreement, which was cleared Sunday when King Hussein of Jordan flew to the Gaza Strip and then to Israel to offer the final compromise. Other stipulations in the letters were said to have been the subject of the last negotiations between Netanyahu and Arafat early this morning.

Ross, however, made no mention of the letters.

Ross said President Clinton had telephoned both men, and they also had talked to King Hussein and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, all of whom had played various roles in the difficult process.

After that, Netanyahu and Arafat stiffly shook hands for the cameras and quickly departed. Left behind, Ross and the negotiators from both sides embraced and shook hands, obviously elated that the long and bitter process had come to an end.

Shortly after the agreement was announced, Clinton said, ``It brings us another step closer to a lasting peace in the Middle East.''

``Once again, the forces of peace have prevailed over a history of divisions,'' the president said at a White House news conference.

Clinton praised Netanyahu and Arafat, and he pointedly mentioned King Hussein, declaring that he deserved ``special recognition and gratitude for his work for peace.''

But the president tempered his elation with acknowledgment of the problems that remain in working out final details of the accord and in reaching a lasting peace in the region. ``In short, this is not a time to relax,'' Clinton said.

The fact that the two leaders made no comments and showed little exhilaration, as well as the fact that they met in the middle of the night, reflected the complexity and sensitivity of the agreement to each and the bitterness involved in producing the documents.

For the Israelis, Netanyahu's agreement to the documents effectively signaled the consent of a Likud-led coalition of religious and nationalist conservatives to the political process of swapping land for peace with the Palestinians that the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat launched with their historic handshake in September 1993.

To religious nationalists, who view the West Bank as an integral part of the biblical ``Land of Israel,'' the process was anathema, and Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 by a religious student who declared the prime minister a mortal threat to the Jewish people.

Netanyahu still had to bring the agreement to his government for approval, and seven of the 18 ministers have declared they will oppose it. A meeting of the Cabinet was scheduled for noon.

WHAT'S NEXT

Here are the next steps in the peace timetable after today's signing of the Hebron-West Bank accord:

After approvals, Israeli army immediately will begin pullout from four-fifths of Hebron; although agreement gives Israel 10 days from signing to complete the pullout, officials agree it could take as little as a few hours.

Within six weeks of signing, Israel will turn over to full Palestinian autonomy another part of the West Bank, probably the Hebron area village of Halhoul, presently under joint control; this is the first of three stages of withdrawal from rural areas.

Eight months later, Israel will carry out second stage of the West Bank withdrawal.

In August 1998, Israel will carry out the third-stage pullout, leaving the Palestinian authority in charge of all of the West Bank except Israeli settlements and whatever Israel considers ``military areas.''

Concurrent to the three-stage pullout expanding the Palestinian autonomy, the sides will hold talks on a final peace agreement that will tackle Palestinian sovereignty, final borders, Palestinian refugees and the future of Jerusalem and of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza; the agreement is to be reached by May 1999.

SOURCE: Associated Press

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: (Color) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, center, and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat shake hands after today's agreement.

Associated Press

Box: WHAT'S NEXT (See text)