Smiling Sharon and Abbas shake hands on truce deal
With their flags whipping in the wind, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas met face-to-face today to announce an end to four years of violence and offer goodwill gestures they hope will start a new era of peace talks.
Sharon and Abbas smiled broadly as they leaned across a long white table to shake hands as they met for the first time since Abbas succeeded Yasser Arafat after his November death.
An invitation to both sides to meet separately President George Bush at the White House this spring added another round of momentum on the summit’s eve.
“Israel is willing to go very far and we’re going to introduce today a package of confidence-building measures, incentives, to the Palestinians so that they could start this long journey on the road to peace,” said Raanan Gissin, a top Sharon adviser.
“But there’s one thing that must be made very clear … there will be no flexibility whatsoever, no compromise whatsoever on fighting terrorism.”
Gissin said that as part of Israel’s halting of military operations, it would stop its controversial targeted killing operations against wanted Palestinians, as long as the Palestinians kept militants under control.
He noted Israeli flags, flying outside the summit convention centre in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik alongside the flags of Arab countries, calling it a sign of more hopeful times.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the summit a ”beginning” and said talks might continue in Israel as soon as tomorrow.
“We’re determined to exert every possible effort to maintain this,” Erekat said.
The ceasefire agreement to be announced later today will not be a formal written document, but instead a verbal declaration by each side to halt violence, said Gideon Meir, a senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Abbas will declare an end to violence against Israelis, and Sharon will declare an end to Israeli military operations, Meir said.
In addition, Meir said that Israel will accept that in the short term the Palestinian Authority will not actively crack down on militant groups. However, in the long term, that must be done because otherwise “the Palestinian terrorist organisations will have the ability to derail the peace process, hijack the peace process,” Meir said.
Another senior Israeli government official made clear, however, that the halt to Israeli military operations still depended on a halt to Palestinian violence.
Possible prisoner releases also were on the agenda, but any negotiations toward a final peace deal must wait until later, Erekat said.
And a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip struck a cautionary note, saying the radical Islamic group, which has been responsible for hundreds of attacks against Israelis over the past four years, would evaluate the summit before committing itself to halting its campaign of violence.
“We agreed before with Mahmoud Abbas that if he succeeds to achieve our national goals, he should come back to the Palestinian factions to discuss the issue, and after that we will decide our stand,” Mahmoud Zahar said.
Still, the verbal agreement was the clearest indication yet of momentum following Arafat’s death, the election of a new Palestinian leader and a signal from the White House that it plans a renewed push for peace.
In the hours before the summit began, the Israeli military said Palestinians opened fire on an Israeli military vehicle moving along the security fence surrounding the Gush Katif bloc of Jewish settlements in southern Gaza. No injuries or damage were reported.
Israeli troops also arrested two Hamas members near the West Bank town of Jenin, the army said.
Israelis also briefly sealed off the West Bank town of Nablus, preventing Palestinians from leaving.
Sharon’s visit angered some Egyptians, and university students led by Islamic student groups demonstrated peacefully on their campuses today. At Cairo University, about 350 students burned Israeli and American flags and shouted against Sharon. One banner read: ”Receiving Sharon is a shame on Egypt.”
Erekat said the agreement also included the establishment of joint committees - one to determine criteria for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, and the other to oversee the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities on the West Bank.
A senior Israeli official said that after Sharon’s declaration of an end to military operations, the two sides would go back to operating as they did before the 2000 outbreak of fighting: In Palestinian-controlled areas, including most of Gaza and eventually most West Bank towns, the Israelis would coordinate with Palestinian security forces if they wanted to arrest someone.
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