As Israeli and Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders meet trying to break the deadlock, it is vital to recognize the PA's real, serious efforts to find a secure and lasting compromise solution to the conflict.

Recently, Israeli groups opposed to this peace process have scoured Palestinian newspapers, television programs and radio broadcasts seeking ammunition to claim the PA is extremist, antisemitic, and not ready to make a lasting peace with Israel. That any such material exists is a cause for protest, yet it is also misleading when presented as typical of the PA's policy or behavior, or the Palestinian debate. Collecting the most extreme statements while ignoring more numerous moderate ones is a propaganda technique, not honest research.

Actually, the list of PA efforts to comply with its commitments in agreements with Israel in word and deed is extremely long, and has been unjustly ignored in the domestic Israel debate of recent months.

Yasir Arafat and other PA officials repeatedly condemned Palestinian terrorist acts against Israelis. This response has become so routine that Israel takes this for granted, rather than recognizing its significance.

The PA has interned hundreds of activists from Hamas and other violent groups for months to stop them--and intimidate others--from extremist deeds. While Israel never asked for these prisoners to be tortured or held without trial for long periods of time, the PA security forces' toughness certainly shows their seriousness.

Dozens of Palestinians responsible for attacking or planning to attack Israelis have been arrested, tried, and imprisoned. The PA has refused extradition to Israel and has even released a few convicts who promised to quit Hamas and support Arafat. Yet this does negate the large-scale effort made.

The PA has repeatedly tried to persuade Hamas--or at least some of the group's leaders--to make a deal to cease attacking Israel in exchange for a share of power. In October 1995, when the PA perhaps came closest to success, top Arafat aide al-Tayyib Abd-al-Rahim told these oppositionists that they did not have to agree with Arafat's policy or accept the Oslo agreements but could only oppose "these commitments through peaceful and democratic methods."

While Fatah was for many decades the main group launching attacks on Israel, Fatah members have hardly carried out a single one since 1993. Whereas virtually every speech made by Arafat and other Fatah leaders before 1993 called for eliminating Israel, the entire tone and pattern of their rhetoric has changed. They speak of struggle, but it is a struggle to make a Palestinian state on the territories Israel captured in 1967.

Far from being arrogant aggressors, determined to destroy Israel, most Palestinians are very much aware of their weakness compared to Israel, including the lack of meaningful international Arab or Islamic support. In fact, a generally held view is that Israel's power makes it unwilling to compromise. This is not a movement plotting broad conquests but one desperately trying to gain control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We are painfully aware that about 250 people in Israel have been killed as a result of Palestinian attacks since 1993, but almost the same number of Palestinians have been killed by Israelis. The cases are not strictly equivalent. Some of the slain Palestinians were involved in attacks; more were throwing stones; Still, many were passers'-by. The Palestinians have also paid a high cost in the last five years.

Palestinian public opinion has tended to move toward growing support of the peace agreements and increasing opposition to violence. Of course, these attitudes are affected by events. Progress has brought more moderation, deadlock has brought out more radical stances. But Palestinians in general are not fanatics blinded by hatred and ideology but people who assess their own interests and prospects.

As Arafat acknowledged, "We should know that in any negotiations, you cannot get everything. Likewise, the other party cannot get everything from you." During the pre-1996 era, despite complaints about Israeli policies, Arafat acknowledged, "On the whole, matters are moving forward....We knew from the beginning that...the process in which we are engaged was very difficult and involved major challenges." After Netanyahu's election, Arafat reiterated his "commitment to peace" partly because he understood, "We have no choice." Opening parliament's section earlier this year, Arafat repeated support for the agreements to obtain "the mutual recognition of the legitimate and political rights of both sides" in a process to achieve both peoples' interests, including Palestinian national rights, "on the basis of equality, compatibility and mutual respect."

Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazin), the number-two Palestinian leader and Arafat's most likely successor, told his people: "Israel has been in existence since 1948, whether we like it or not. We have entered into numerous Palestinian and Arab wars with Israel, and at the end it was inevitable that we should stop and ask ourselves, `How do we deal with reality?' Whatever methods the two warring parties use against each other, at the end of the day it is necessary for the two sides to sit down together at the negotiations table....The peace process has begun, and no one, not the Arab Islamists nor the Jewish extremists, can turn back the hand of time."