Israeli, Palestinian Leaders Jointly Vow to Pursue Peace

JERUSALEM -- With very public gestures and rare words of conciliation, the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers promised Tuesday to put aside the hatred of the last many years and push forward a U.S.-backed plan to end their bloody conflict.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, made their first joint appearance here, renewing a commitment to peace and offering parallel statements to their people in a ceremony broadcast live.

They then adjourned for a private meeting to map out their next steps in the so-called road map initiative that has already seen Israeli tanks leave part of the Gaza Strip. Separately, the main Palestinian armed factions have declared a cease-fire.

The biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem was to be handed back to Palestinian control later today.

In a scene perhaps unimaginable in recent years, Abbas and Sharon stood side by side at identical lecterns in a ceremonial garden outside Sharon’s offices in Jerusalem. They shook hands, smiled and chuckled.

To one side sat eight of their ministers -- staggered Israeli, Palestinian, Israeli, Palestinian. Among them were Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Palestinian Authority security chief Mohammed Dahlan, enemies who chatted amiably, leaning in to each other as if to share confidences.

Abbas said Palestinians want to end the war with Israel. Sharon said Israel was willing to pay a “painful price” for peace and that the region faced “a new opportunity” to make it happen.

Sharon spoke in Hebrew, and his words were translated into Arabic. Abbas spoke in Arabic, and his remarks were translated into Hebrew.

There were no flags.

“Our conflict with you is a political conflict, and we will end it through political means,” said Abbas, a relative moderate whose appointment as prime minister allowed the formal sidelining of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. “We do not have hostility with the Israeli people, and we have no interest in continuing the conflict with them.”

Sharon, who refused to deal with Arafat, a man he deemed a terrorist, said he believed that real progress was now possible.

“I have no doubt that the picture seen here today by the people of Israel, by the Palestinian people and by the entire world is one of hope and of optimism,” Sharon said. “We face a new opportunity for a future laden with chances and hope, a future that now seems more within reach than in the past.”

Their words echoed each other’s, but they also parted ways in substance. Sharon told Abbas there can be no peace while terrorism continues.

Israel “will continue to battle terrorism to its utter defeat,” Sharon said. He did not offer any specific guarantees to the Palestinians.

And Abbas said peace must include the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, and an independent Palestinian state. Sharon has asked his security aides to draw up a list of prisoners who might be eligible for freedom and has agreed in principle to releasing a yet-to-be-determined number. Abbas, in the private meeting, gave Sharon a petition he received from prisoners, a senior Palestinian official said.

Commentators praised the air-clearing symbolism of the public event. Politicians noted, however, that large gaps remained. And right-wing Israeli Cabinet minister Benny Elon said the two prime ministers painted a “pathetic” picture.

Far-right demonstrators outside Sharon’s compound waved placards declaring the Israeli leader a traitor, and some held aloft a noose they said was meant for Abbas, according to Itim, an Israeli news service.

Although the prime ministers have met before, most notably at a June 4 summit hosted by President Bush in the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba when the peace plan was formally endorsed, Tuesday’s appearance was the first time they jointly addressed their people in their homeland. Two previous meetings in Jerusalem were held late at night with no public appearances by either participant.

On the battlefield, meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian commanders drafted plans for handing Bethlehem over to Palestinian control. The Palestinians’ much-depleted police force is supposed to assume security responsibilities for the town, and Israeli army patrols will be halted as of today, officials said.

Unlike with Gaza, however, the Israelis are not deep inside Bethlehem but rather surround the city. Residents complained that unless the troops pulled far enough away to open the long-closed roads into and around Bethlehem, the movement would be meaningless.

Also, Israeli forces will continue to surround and guard Rachel’s Tomb, a Jewish shrine in northern Bethlehem, and will continue to build a wall that slices through the property of hundreds of Palestinian residents of the town.

“It’s theatrical,” Salah Tamari, one of Bethlehem’s representatives in the Palestinian parliament, said of the announced troop withdrawal. “As long as they’re at Rachel’s Tomb and until they stop building the wall, we are under siege.”

Despite the declaration over the weekend of cease-fires of at least three months by the leading Palestinian militias, scattered violence persisted. Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian who they said opened fire on a military roadblock in the northern West Bank; on Monday, a Palestinian gunman shot dead a Bulgarian driver working in the West Bank for an Israeli firm.

One of Israel’s top security officials, meanwhile, told an audience that Abbas’ government would have to begin disarming Palestinian militias within two to three weeks or Israel would freeze the hand-over of West Bank towns.

Avi Dichter, head of the General Security Service, or Shin Bet, also said he believed that Arafat’s Fatah movement was capable of taking on and disarming radical Islamic organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Those groups declared cease-fires, but many Israelis don’t trust the moves.

“Hamas has no chance in a direct confrontation with the Fatah, and Hamas knows that better than all of us,” Dichter said, adding that Hamas was an “abscess” with which the Palestinian government cannot survive.

But Abbas and Dahlan have been reluctant to pit Fatah or Palestinian Authority police against the Islamic militant organizations. Rather than disarming the groups, Abbas and Dahlan have said, they prefer to persuade them not to use their weapons, a strategy the Israelis find unacceptable.

“We are concerned about national unity and we must be careful,” Abbas told the Palestinian legislature Tuesday. “We will not accept an internal war.”

For all the lofty words of peace Tuesday, there were other signs of trouble.

In Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab city, bulldozers demolished a mosque being built without permission next to the Church of the Annunciation. The construction had been a sore point between the city’s Christians and Muslims. Demolition of the mosque infuriated Muslim leaders but won the Vatican’s praise.

Nazareth is Jesus’ traditional boyhood home, and Christians believe the church to be the site where the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to the messiah.

Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, were outraged at news that Israeli police have reopened Jerusalem’s most sensitive religious shrine to Israelis and non-Muslim tourists.

It is known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, where the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, but is also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, site of the biblical Jewish temples.

Inside Jerusalem’s walled Old City, it also contains the Al Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third-holiest site, and is under control of an Islamic trust.

Sharon’s visit to the site in September 2000 helped trigger the intifada that he and Abbas now hope to end. Sharon was leader of the opposition at the time and was attempting to assert Israel’s claim of sovereignty. Riots erupted and several Palestinians were killed. The site has been closed to all but Muslim worshipers since.

Israeli police said they were allowing small groups of Israelis and tourists under police escort onto the hilltop compound. Abbas, in his appearance before the legislature, described that as a provocation.

It was not clear whether the Temple Mount matter was raised in the meeting between Abbas and Sharon.

The leaders did agree to reactivate joint committees, suspended after the outbreak of fighting, that will handle specific issues such as finances and incitement, officials said after the meeting.

Abbas made a plea for a quicker pace of Israeli army withdrawals, said Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr, who attended the meeting.

And he asked that Arafat, who has been confined to the West Bank city of Ramallah for a year and a half, be allowed to travel to Gaza.

The prime ministers agreed to meet again. “Every day without an agreement is an opportunity that was lost,” Abbas said in his public remarks. “Every soul that is lost is a personal tragedy. Enough suffering, enough death, enough pain.”