JERUSALEM -- Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed yesterday to speed up negotiations on expanding Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Israel will ease its closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The reported progress comes one week after a summit between Mr. Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat produced nothing more than mutual recriminations about the deadlock in their negotiations.
After last week's session, Israeli and Palestinian commentators were declaring the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord dead and predicting the collapse of Mr. Rabin's government.
"Nothing has died," declared Foreign Minister Shimon Peres after yesterday's session. "There are difficulties, but we can overcome them."
After a two-hour session with Mr. Arafat yesterday, Mr. Rabin said that he will allow 10,000 workers from Gaza and 5,000 from the West Bank to enter Israel next week.
"All of them are workers whom we know" and who are older than 30, Mr. Rabin said.
About three times as many workers were entering Israel legally before Israel imposed the closure Jan. 22 after two Palestinian suicide bombers killed 21 Israelis at a bus stop.
Israel started importing more workers from abroad after the PTC bombing and Mr. Rabin adopted a policy that seeks to end Israel's dependence on Palestinian workers in construction, agriculture and other fields.
But Mr. Arafat and other Palestinian officials have warned that the closure is strangling the Palestinian economy, particularly in Gaza where there are few jobs. Support for Mr. Arafat's self-governing authority has been sinking, and Palestinians are expressing growing support for "military actions" against Israeli targets.
Mr. Rabin's gesture seemed to acknowledge both Mr. Arafat's growing political problems and the effort that his police and security forces have made recently to foil attacks on Israel and arrest suspected militants.
"The authority foiled six terrorist attacks against us," said Mr. Peres, who attended yesterday's negotiating session with Mr. Rabin. Mr. Peres said Israel is asking Mr. Arafat to take even more measures to prevent attacks on Israelis.
Yesterday, Palestinian police arrested eight members of Islamic Jihad, the group that claimed responsibility for the Jan. 22 bombing. Palestinian police have arrested dozens of members of Islamic Jihad and Hamas, another militant Islamic group, since the bombing.
Mr. Rabin said he and Mr. Arafat "agreed on holding intense negotiations so as to overcome our differences on security issues, elections, redeployment, empowerment." He said that he and Mr. Arafat will meet again in a month, that Mr. Peres and Mr. Arafat will meet in three weeks and that negotiators from both sides will continue to meet regularly, starting with a session Tuesday in Cairo.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said yesterday that he believes Israel and the Palestinians are close to agreeing on Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza, and that the vote could be held in May or June.
"There will continue to be difficulties and setbacks, but we are moving forward again," he said.
Even as Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat searched for ways to move peace talks forward, some 300 Jewish settlers gathered in Kiryat Arba, a settlement near the Arab town of Hebron on the West Bank, to mark the anniversary of Baruch Goldstein's death. A doctor who emigrated from the United States and lived in Kiryat Arba, Goldstein fired on Muslim worshipers as they prayed in the Hebron mosque, killing 29 before he was beaten to death.