JERUSALEM -- The three winners of the Nobel Peace Prize left behind a dark cloud of pessimism as they flew to the festivities surrounding their award in Norway today.
World figures will applaud the presentation of the prestigious gold medals in Oslo to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
But their own people are in a glum and sullen mood. Polls this week show 46 percent of Israeli Jews do not think that their leaders should accept the prize along with Mr. Arafat. A poll among Palestinian Arabs undoubtedly would produce similar advice for Mr. Arafat.
Ironically, the men being lauded in Oslo would likely lose if they stood for election today. They are more popular outside their homelands than inside.
The peace they fashioned that led to the prize is ragged and wanting: Car bombs explode in Tel Aviv, radicals on both sides carry out attacks, Palestinians fight among themselves while more than 1 million others remain under military occupation.
As evidence of their peace plan's shortcomings, Mr. Rabin, Mr. Peres and Mr. Arafat will be ducking in and out of meetings between the Norway ceremonies, negotiating to repair the problems.
It was not supposed to be like this 15 months ago. Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat stood beside a beaming President Clinton to watch the signing of the product of their secret diplomacy. The pact was hailed as the blueprint to end more than four decades of hostilities, and to finally quiet the Middle East wars that have preoccupied the world.
Their plan was supposed to bring to a gradual end the military occupation over 2 million Palestinians, an occupation that had troubled Israel for 26 years. And it was supposed to remove the motive for Palestinian attacks that had plagued Israel and filled its people with fear.
Both sides reaped quick benefits. The Palestinians got control of the tiny town of Jericho and the Gaza Strip, a base of more than 800,000 where Mr. Arafat set up his fledgling self-rule. The Israelis shook off the shackle of Gaza, gained a peace treaty with Jordan and de facto acceptance by much of the rest of the Arab world.
But it seemed to turn sour from there. For Israelis, the violence took a new and more fearsome turn. Attacks on Jews decreased in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but Muslim fundamentalists still sworn to eliminate Israel put fanatic suicide bombers on buses inside Israeli cities. A similarly fanatic Jewish settler massacred 29 Muslims in Hebron in February.
For Palestinians, the autonomy they celebrated wildly in the streets turned on them. Mr. Arafat's one-man rule has so far been largely incompetent and unwilling to accept democracy, a newborn mimic of other Arab autocracies. Fighting between factions threatened stability and left 13 dead last month. The economy, still choked by Israel, has only worsened and fueled the desperation.
Putting on a gloss
The Nobel laureates sought to put a gloss on their achievement this week.
"Not only by wars but by peace can we achieve what we are looking to achieve . . . for our children," Mr. Arafat said in an interview broadcast on Israel Television.
"Without the Oslo agreement, there wouldn't have been a peace treaty with Jordan," Mr. Rabin told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper. "We opened up doors for Israel in the whole world. We got the Palestinian problem off our backs. We brought the beginning of openness toward Israel in the Arab world."
"We brought about a huge revolution," Mr. Peres said in a similar interview. "Rabin and I took the situation out of the refrigerator. . . . Israel's situation has never been better."
But an opinion poll among Israelis last week found 50 percent approved of their government, and 49 percent disapproved. Asked whom they would vote for, 26 percent chose Mr. Rabin's right-wing opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, 24 percent chose the current prime minister and 9 percent selected Mr. Peres.
Threat to peace accord
That pessimism threatens to stop progress on the peace accord. Even Mr. Rabin seemed affected; he suggested the next stage -- withdrawing Israeli troops from West Bank Palestinian towns before Palestinian elections -- should not go forward.
After a week of hand-wringing, the Israeli government grudgingly promised to fulfill the agreement. But opponents wait in the wings for the next stumble in the path toward peace. Jewish critics from Israel and the United States were expected in Oslo today to protest the ceremony, which is to be held under stringent security.
Among Palestinians, too, there are dour expectations about progress.
Mr. Arafat, the revered leader of the Palestinian cause while on the outside, seems inside Gaza to be smaller than his image. There is unprecedented criticism of "the chairman" -- although most of it is done privately, since his lieutenants have been quick to shut down newspapers with which they disagreed.
Gazans have seen little results of the planning for a government that they were told was being done by the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunis before autonomy. Mr. Arafat's cronies are appointed and then shuffled about, while roads, jobs, housing and other public necessities suffer.
More grating to Palestinians are the controls still exercised by Israel. With each new outbreak of violence, Israel has reacted by keeping workers and traders sealed within the isolated Gaza Strip, throttling the economy. Many Palestinians now view the Oslo Agreement as a sellout to Israeli control and oppose further steps down that road.
The disgruntlement feeds the strength of Muslim extremists like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Armed wings of those groups have vowed to continue attacks on Israelis, who in turn are squeezing Mr. Arafat to crack down on them.
An Israeli intelligence chief warned last week the Gaza Strip could dissolve into Lebanon-like fighting. A member of the Palestinian authority, Yasser Abed Rabbo, acknowledged the situation is "susceptible to explosion."
'An open wound'
The three Nobel laureates stayed in the same hotel last night and shared a ceremonial dinner in Oslo. But at home, the relation between Israelis and Palestinians "remains an open wound," one of the chief architects of the peace process, Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, acknowledged recently.
"The suspicions are there. The hatreds are there," he said. "It is the most important challenge."