Suspicion Pervades Cease-Fire as Initial Steps Begin

A tenuous U.S.-brokered cease-fire agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was greeted Wednesday with no celebration and much suspicion. U.S. officials were waiting to see whether the two sides begin to enact the truce, which aims to end fighting that has claimed nearly 600 lives and to eventually revive peace talks.

Islamic radicals pronounced the deal stillborn, militant Jewish settlers said it was a charade, and officials on both sides were backpedaling from agreements uttered just hours earlier. A Palestinian was killed and two Israelis and at least four Palestinians wounded in several incidents.

At the same time, there were initial steps taken: Israel, which said it considered the bilateral cease-fire to have begun as of 3 p.m. local time Wednesday, ordered its armed forces to begin easing travel restrictions on Palestinian security officers and on the movement of goods. Palestinian officers inspected vehicles for illegal weapons.

President Bush said CIA Director George J. Tenet, who secured the agreement after arduous arm-twisting, was “cautiously optimistic.”

“All the parties must now take additional steps that will place them on the road to a just and lasting peace,” Bush said in Brussels after meeting with North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders. “All the parties must build trust by demonstrating good faith in words, but more importantly, in deeds.

“This process is difficult, but hopefully, it’s now begun.”

The pact requires a series of security measures from both sides. The Palestinians must confiscate illegal weapons and mortars, and both sides agreed to prevent terrorist attacks from their territory and stop incitement by their media. Israel will refrain from raiding Palestinian residential neighborhoods and attacking Palestinian Authority installations.

Tenet brought Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs together Wednesday afternoon for another session to work out details of how to implement the cease-fire plan. A senior U.S. official released a statement pronouncing the meeting “constructive” but acknowledged that no formal agreement was reached.

“This will have to be pushed forward every step of the way,” another U.S. official said.

The U.S. officials said Israel backed off its demand that Palestinian authorities immediately arrest dozens of Islamic militants implicated by the Jewish state in past terrorist attacks, indicating instead that the Palestinians must arrest those who commit violent acts from now on. Israel, meanwhile, must begin easing its blockade on Palestinian towns and villages, the officials said.

Gideon Saar, the secretary of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Cabinet, said no Israeli troops will be pulled back until all shooting stops.

Yasser Abed-Rabbo, information minister for Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, said he expected Israel to move within 48 hours toward lifting its sweeping travel restrictions on Palestinians. Within a week, Israeli troops would have to withdraw to the positions they held before the outbreak of the fighting in September, he said.

He also reiterated Arafat’s objection to an Israeli demand that buffer zones be set up between Israeli and Palestinian forces that would run 550 yards deep into Palestinian areas.

Israelis and Palestinians continued to disagree on the steps and sequence required of them under Tenet’s plan.

Abed-Rabbo, speaking to reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the Palestinians still expect the Tenet cease-fire to be part of a broader package of political recommendations made last month by former Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) and his international commission of inquiry. Until that happens, Abed-Rabbo said, Arafat will not sign the Tenet plan.

The Israeli government maintains that it will not enter into political discussions or more fundamental peace talks until all violence has stopped for six weeks. Washington regards the cease-fire as the first step toward implementing the Mitchell plan, which includes an Israeli freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip--something Sharon is resisting.

Abed-Rabbo acknowledged that Arafat agreed to go along with Tenet’s proposals after “hundreds” of telephone calls from all over the world demanding that he accept.

Highly skeptical Israelis said Wednesday that they believe that Arafat is simply playing for time in a longer quest to wage a war of attrition against Israel. Palestinians, and a few Israelis, suspect Sharon also is agreeing to a cease-fire as a temporary pause before seeking to crush Arafat and his power base.

Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, said in an editorial Wednesday that Sharon was agreeing to a cease-fire he didn’t like because he was confident that Arafat would violate it in short order, allowing the Israeli prime minister to seize the high ground in world opinion.

“However,” the paper said, “there should be no mistake, all this is nothing but preparation of the diplomatic groundwork, successful so far, for the military strike that everyone is tensely waiting for. . . . As every hour and every day pass, Sharon enjoys the best of all worlds, but the clock is ticking and every wounded person, every mortar round brings us closer to the moment of confrontation.”

Nowhere was there much optimism that the truce will last.

“When Arafat sees that he is being dragged to some corner against his will, he also kicks and spills the milk jar, so I am not so sure, and everybody shares this skepticism, that this cease-fire will hold,” said former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, a veteran of many difficult Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

In Gaza City, Palestinian shopkeeper Abu Mohammed had his own doubts.

“This is a joke,” he said of the agreement, which includes returning Israeli troops to positions they held before the clashes erupted. “We always used to talk about going back to 1967 [before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip] and now we are only going back to Sept. 28?”

Earlier Wednesday, a 21-year-old Israeli woman was wounded by shots from a nearby Palestinian village while she stood at a bus stop near the Jewish settlement of Ofra in the West Bank. Near the West Bank town of Tulkarm, an Israeli construction worker was wounded by shots fired from a Palestinian village, the army said.

A Palestinian was killed and at least two companions wounded when their vehicle was fired on by unknown assailants in the West Bank. Two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were shot by Israeli troops, who said the men appeared to be planting explosives.

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Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Brussels contributed to this report.

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