Sharon, Abbas Finally Set a Date for Summit

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will hold a long-delayed one-on-one meeting June 21, the two sides announced Wednesday.

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders have not met since a Feb. 8 summit in Egypt, where they declared a cease-fire that has sharply reduced the level of violence.

That meeting, held under the auspices of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, raised hopes that the Israelis and Palestinians would soon embark on negotiations aimed at achieving a comprehensive peace accord.

Instead, both sides have signaled dissatisfaction with the pace and scope of each other’s conciliatory measures and traded accusations of failure to live up to promises made at the February gathering.

Sharon and his top lieutenants have repeatedly accused Abbas of failing to disarm militant groups such as Hamas. The Palestinians, in turn, have complained about Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements, particularly a plan that appears aimed at linking the West Bank’s largest settlement, Maale Adumim, with Jerusalem. That proposal, in effect, would nearly divide the West Bank in two.

Israel also promised at the February summit to turn over five towns and cities to Palestinian security control. But so far only two of them, Jericho and Tulkarm, have been handed over.

No date has been set by Israel for the turning over of the others: Kalkilya, Ramallah and Bethlehem.

The announcement of the planned Sharon-Abbas meeting came on the eve of Israel’s expected release of 400 Palestinian prisoners, as promised at the Egypt summit. But Palestinians have complained the gesture is insufficient, saying that more of the 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails should be freed.

Since they last met, Sharon and Abbas have traveled separately to the United States for talks with President Bush, each seeking to make the case that the other side is mostly to blame for the lack of swift progress.

After Abbas was elected in January to succeed the late Yasser Arafat, both Israeli and Palestinian officials said repeatedly that a private meeting between the two leaders was imminent. But months dragged by with no date being set.

Neither side appeared to have more than modest ambitions for the upcoming meeting, the location of which has not been announced. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said a principal goal would be to “continue the calm” and secure Israeli pledges to implement the understandings reached at the Egypt summit.

A senior Israeli official, who requested anonymity, said Sharon would reiterate demands that Abbas act decisively against armed factions.

As has happened in the past, any serious outbreak of violence could derail the planned summit. In a stark reminder of that, Israeli security sources disclosed Wednesday the arrests of five members of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. They said the men had planned to carry out a double suicide bombing this week in Jerusalem, targeting a bus and either a cafe or synagogue.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the last suicide bombing in Israel, a Feb. 25 attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub that killed five Israelis.

The June 21 meeting will come less than two months before Israel is to begin withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and four small settlements in the northern West Bank. The Bush administration is becoming impatient with what has thus far been a failure by the two sides to coordinate security and other aspects of the withdrawal.

As the pullout approaches, Palestinians have been voicing concern that Sharon will use Israel’s relinquishing of Gaza as a pretext to annex, in effect, large chunks of the West Bank and to delay indefinitely negotiations aimed at determining the borders of a future Palestinian state.

Having waited so long to meet, both Sharon and Abbas have a considerable stake in at least the appearance of a fruitful encounter. Officials from both sides said the meeting would be preceded by a series of high-level talks meant to shore up the Israeli-Palestinian truce, which has faltered at times in recent weeks, and to begin laying the groundwork for cooperation on the Gaza pullout.