Israel, Palestinians Back on Speaking Terms

The phone call lasted just 10 minutes, but it marked a milestone: After an 18-month drought, Israel and the Palestinians were talking again.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday to congratulate him on winning Sunday’s Palestinian Authority presidential election. Abbas thanked him, and the two men agreed to stay in contact, their aides said.

However banal the initial exchange, and however fraught with mistrust and misgivings it might have been, the emerging dialogue between Sharon and Abbas will be a crucial indicator of whether a new era in Israeli-Palestinian relations is at hand.

Abbas is regarded as a relative moderate by Israeli officials because of his public appeals for an end to Palestinians’ armed struggle against Israel. His victory has sparked hopes for renewed diplomacy aimed at halting the current conflict, now more than 4 years old, and paving the way for a long-term agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

No date was set for face-to-face talks, but Sharon told his Cabinet on Tuesday that he expected to meet soon with the newly elected successor to the late Yasser Arafat.

In some ways, Sharon and Abbas will be picking up where they left off. The last substantive contact between Israel and the Palestinians came in a series of meetings the two held about a year and a half ago. Those talks took place during Abbas’ brief and stormy turn as Palestinian Authority prime minister, a tenure that barely spanned the summer of 2003.

That time around, the dialogue went sour. The big difference now is that Arafat isn’t hovering in the wings. A second difference is that Sharon’s grip over his own government is far more shaky.

“A lot has changed since ... the two of them were last talking,” said analyst Shmuel Sandler of Bar-Ilan University. “But also, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed.”

Abbas faces many of the same constraints he did back when his old boss was alive -- most particularly, a restive populace that will expect any talks he holds with the Israelis to translate into tangible improvements in the day-to-day lives of Palestinians.

“We expect a lot from the Israelis,” said Nazmi Jouabi, an analyst at Bir Zeit University. “Israel can’t say now that it has no partner -- there’s a partner, and he’s been elected democratically.”

At the same time, Abbas may have more leeway among his constituents as he negotiates with the Israelis, because he handily won an election generally regarded as a vote for peace.

Sharon is well aware of Abbas’ need to bolster his own street credibility by extracting, or appearing to extract, concessions from Israel.

The Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported Tuesday that Sharon’s government was considering early goodwill gestures, including the hand-over of large swaths of territory to the oversight of Palestinian security forces, authorizing Palestinian police to carry weapons, and removing army roadblocks at the entrances to cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Sharon is in a much weaker position vis-a-vis his domestic constituency than he was in the summer of 2003. What was then his solid core of political support, Jewish settlers and the right wing of his Likud Party, has angrily deserted the Sharon camp over the prime minister’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

The timing of Sharon’s congratulatory call -- a full 24 hours after final results made Abbas’ victory official -- may have reflected the prime minister’s reluctance to inflame the Israeli right wing by enthusiastically welcoming the new Palestinian leader.

But it could also hint at a sensitivity to the dangers of embracing Abbas too warmly, and thus making him appear a puppet of Sharon. Abbas’ approval ratings as prime minister were consistently far higher among Israelis than among his own people, a strong sign that his position was untenable.

Sharon told ministers during a closed-door Cabinet session that the first meeting with Abbas would focus on security issues, Israel Radio reported. Israel wants Abbas to stop Palestinian militants in Gaza from launching rockets at Jewish communities within the coastal strip and into Israel proper.

Abbas has criticized the attacks, saying they hurt Palestinians by provoking Israeli military incursions. Despite Abbas’ appeals, militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets and mortar rounds Tuesday into Jewish communities in Gaza and into the southern Israeli town of Sderot.

The projectiles damaged cars and buildings, including a synagogue and kindergarten, but caused no injuries. The militant group Hamas claimed responsibility.

Although Hamas and another militant group, Islamic Jihad, have said they will work with the new Palestinian government, they have not agreed to halt attacks against Israelis. Palestinian leaders hope to get the various militias to agree to hold their fire.

Palestinian officials want Israel to remove checkpoints and stop the killing of militant leaders, moves they say would make it easier for them to rein in fighters.

They also are hoping for Israel’s release of Palestinian “security” prisoners, whose fate is a preoccupation among Palestinians. Abbas’ last talks with Sharon were marked by arguments over prisoner releases.

In the first sign of a shakeup among top Palestinian officials, Arafat’s national security advisor, Jibril Rajoub, announced he was resigning to allow Abbas to name his own team. Rajoub had clashed with Mohammed Dahlan, a former security chief who is widely expected to be on a short list of contenders for a security-related post under Abbas.

The Israeli Cabinet meeting Tuesday was the first for Sharon’s new governing coalition, which includes the left-leaning Labor Party and a small Orthodox party called United Torah Judaism. Sharon invited those parties to join with his conservative Likud Party as a way to keep his government afloat long enough to carry out the planned withdrawal from Gaza this year.

The prime minister barely won parliamentary approval for the alliance Monday because of defections by 13 Likud members who oppose the pullout. The governing coalition -- and Sharon’s rule -- was saved when lawmakers from leftist and Arab parties that usually oppose Sharon sat out the vote or voted with him.

The outcome created fresh doubts about Sharon’s ability to remain in power. On paper, the coalition gives him up to 66 of parliament’s 120 votes, but without the bloc of Likud dissidents he no longer has a majority.

Some analysts said the clash showed that Israel’s dominant party had fractured.

“It is akin to a married couple that is locked in a bitter divorce struggle but decides to continue to sleep in the same bed -- everything so as not to lose in the battle over the property,” commentator Nahum Barnea wrote in Yediot Aharonot. “That is no way to run a family, let alone a country.”

A new test awaits Sharon over his proposed 2005 budget, scheduled for a preliminary vote today. If members of his party continue to defy him, Sharon may soon have to recruit a second Orthodox party, Shas, to stave off elections.

Holding talks with Abbas could help Sharon woo Shas.

That is because Shas’ spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, has ruled that it is wrong under Jewish law to give up land unilaterally, as Sharon envisions doing in Gaza, but that it is permissible if the withdrawal is in the context of give-and-take negotiation.

Abbas quit the prime minister’s post amid battles with Arafat over the veteran leader’s resistance to internal reforms. But many observers said at the time that Sharon, by refusing any meaningful concessions, had done just as much to drive Abbas from office.

With a fresh start, Abbas may be inclined to move much more cautiously this time in responding to any Israeli overtures.

“His public expects Mahmoud Abbas to be committed to the legacy of Arafat,” said Sandler, the analyst. “So then the question becomes, ‘How brave is he prepared to be?’ ”