GAZA CITY -- Israel reopened Palestinian border crossings Thursday after four former PLO guerrillas involved in deadly attacks on Israelis left the Gaza Strip.


Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat protested the expulsion as an infringement on Palestinian dignity and called on Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to honor the peace agreement.


"I address these words to Mr. Rabin. I tell him the peace of the brave is the peace of the free and the peace of dignity," said Arafat. "No party has the right to violate this agreement, to tamper with it or to discredit it."


Israel closed Palestine's border crossing with Egypt to Palestinian officials Wednesday and charged Arafat with deception after he allowed the four men to enter Gaza as part of his delegation.


Rabin has described the incident as a "grave violation" and said it would teach the Palestinians that "it is preferable not to get up to wiseguy stuff like this."


The incident underscored Arafat's limits of authority under the May 4 self-rule accord for Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho and could hurt the credibility of the Palestinian government.


Israel said that two of the four men expelled were involved in the planning of the 1974 takeover of a high school in northern Israeli town of Maalot in which 21 Israeli teenagers, an Israeli soldier and three guerrillas were killed.


Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur told Israel radio Thursday that the incident would make Israel "more suspicious and ask for more guarantees to insure what is agreed on will be done."


But Arafat's advisor, Ahmed Tibi, called for turning "a new page" to a more positive relationship. Tibi said that if the former guerrillas had wanted to sneak into the autonomous area they would not have handed their passports to border control officials.