Truce announcement expected at Mid East summit
Israeli and Palestinian leaders are gathering at a Middle East summit today to make an expected ceasefire announcement aimed at ending four years of violence and beginning a new era of peace talks.
An invitation to both sides to meet separately with US president George Bush at the White House this spring added another round of momentum yesterday.
“I hope it will be positive. I hope it will open the road for bilateral negotiations,” said Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
But 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 during 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.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders announced last night that they would declare the formal end to more than four years of fighting, during the summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik. It was the clearest indication yet of momentum following Yasser 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.
“The most important thing at the summit will be a mutual declaration of cessation of violence against each other,” said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator.
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.
An Israeli government official confirmed the ceasefire agreement and said it would also include an end to Palestinian incitement to violence, such as official Palestinian TV and radio broadcasts that glorify suicide bombers and other attackers.
Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon will attend the summit in the Red Sea resort, along with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and the host, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. It will be the first meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, succeeded Yasser Arafat after his death on November 11 last year.
In Washington, Bush said the background for peace talks had improved with Abbas’ election in January. The American president – who had refused to meet Arafat – said he was impressed by Abbas’ commitment to fighting terrorism.
“What you’re watching is a process unfolding where people are becoming more trustworthy,” Bush said.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, ending two days of pre-summit talks in Israel and the West Bank, called it “a time of hope, a time we can hope for a better day for the Palestinian and Israeli people both”.
Abbas said he hoped the summit would open the way for further Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at implementing the internationally backed “road map” to peace.
“Two weeks ago, we announced a ceasefire. Since then, we have been in extensive talks with the Israeli side over many issues,” Abbas said after meeting French foreign minister Michel Barnier in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Significant steps have been taken since Arafat’s death to reconcile Israel’s primary concern of security with Arabs’ main objective of getting the “road map” on the fast track.
Abbas has deployed police to keep the peace in Gaza, ordered arrests of some operatives and appears to have won pledges from militants to halt attacks on Israel.
On the Israeli side, the government is pledging to free 900 of the about 8,000 Palestinian prisoners it has in custody and gradually pull out of five Palestinian towns on the West Bank.
And in a humanitarian gesture ahead of the summit, Israel reopened a key Gaza cargo crossing yesterday that had been closed after a January 13 attack killed six Israeli civilians.
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