Arafat-Peres Talks Bear Fruit

With U.S. pressure and sporadic gunfire as their backdrop, a grim-faced Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and an equally somber Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed Wednesday on steps aimed at ending the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian fighting in decades.

The men, in a two-hour meeting that had been postponed numerous times, agreed to renew full security cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, including the arrest by Palestinian authorities of terrorism suspects and the exertion of “maximum efforts” to solidify a shaky cease-fire. Israel agreed to remove some troops from Palestinian areas and ease the draconian closures of Palestinian towns.

It was the first full high-level meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in months and took place almost wholly at U.S. urging. The Bush administration regards a raging Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obstacle to forging a global anti-terrorism coalition that Washington hopes will include Arab and Muslim states.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had blocked Peres from meeting with Arafat, the Palestinian Authority president, several times, despite pleas from President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Sharon had been insisting on 48 hours of absolute calm first. He eventually relented and allowed Wednesday’s meeting.

Yet even as Peres and Arafat came together at Gaza International Airport in the Gaza Strip, continued violence underscored the fragility of the truce.

Several hours before the meeting began, Palestinians set off a large bomb in a hidden tunnel underneath an Israeli army outpost, wounding three soldiers.

The explosion nearly toppled the army post in Rafah, a volatile town on Gaza’s border with Egypt and about three miles north of where Arafat and Peres would meet. After the blast, Palestinian teenagers threw stones at Israeli soldiers. Troops responded with tear gas and live fire. A 16-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and nine others wounded, according to hospital officials.

The shooting could be heard as Peres and Arafat met and as journalists milled about the airport waiting for an expected news conference. Arafat reportedly received notification of the teenager’s death during his session with Peres, adding to the tension. The leaders called off their news conference and instead sent Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to read the brief agreement.

In addition to renewing security cooperation, the two sides on Friday will resume regular meetings of their senior security officials, under CIA supervision, to air grievances and defuse flare-ups.

Israelis and Palestinians treated the agreement with abundant caution. Radical Islamic groups that have been responsible for most of the devastating suicide bombing attacks in Israel immediately rejected the cease-fire plan and said they would continue their campaign.

“The test is on the ground,” Erekat told reporters. “We will have to see if they implement what they agreed to.”

“To have results, you need political will and a strategic decision,” said one of Sharon’s top policy advisors, Daniel Ayalon. “Arafat needs to do much more. He’s had the meeting, so now he won’t have any excuses. We’ll see what happens now.”

The White House welcomed Wednesday’s developments with as much relief as enthusiasm.

“Today’s meeting and agreement constitute an important first step forward to restoring the trust and confidence and changing the situation on the ground that would benefit both the Palestinians and the Israelis,” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said.

“The United States calls on both sides to seize the moment and exercise maximum efforts to follow up these positive developments with immediate concrete actions,” he said.

The Palestinian uprising will be a year old Friday, and polls show Israelis and Palestinians have become more radicalized, full of despair and bereft of hope that fresh talks will lead anywhere.

Outside Nablus, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers Wednesday held up Palestinian cars and trucks for miles at a checkpoint, forcing travelers to wait for hours.

“Do I think the [Arafat-Peres] meeting will change things?” said Zakariya Najjar, who had bought fresh vegetables in Nablus and was attempting to return to the nearby village of Yatma. “No. The Israelis said things in the past about lifting the roadblocks, but it didn’t happen. If it happens, it will make our lives easier, but I don’t believe it will happen.”

In Jerusalem, where Jews were beginning observance of Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays, some members of Sharon’s government protested the meeting vehemently. Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, speaking earlier in the day, said he felt ashamed and betrayed by Peres. A far-right faction in the coalition government announced that it will work to throw Peres out of office.

Sharon and many on the right contend that Arafat is nothing short of an untrustworthy terrorist who should be shunned.

Sharon infuriated Peres and irritated the Bush administration by repeatedly refusing to allow the foreign minister to meet with Arafat. The Palestinian leader had declared a cease-fire early last week, and Sharon in response pledged to halt offensive military operations. But shootings continued, with two Israeli women and three Palestinians killed in various incidents.

Finally able to hold their face-to-face talks, Peres and Arafat seemed uncomfortable and exhausted. The men, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize and have had warm relations in the past, barely looked at each other and forced smiles during a photo opportunity held before the closed-door meeting.

In their final communique--terms of which had been worked out earlier in numerous rounds of lower-level negotiations--Arafat and Peres reiterated their commitment to recommendations made this year by an international commission on how to end the fighting and resume peace talks. The men agreed to follow a series of “confidence-building measures” outlined by the panel, which was headed by former Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine).

In theory, the Palestinian Authority is to confiscate illegal weapons and arrest suspected terrorists or gunmen attacking Israelis. In response, Israel is to move its troops out of homes and land seized since the uprising began and lift the sieges placed upon many Palestinian towns as a way to stop potential attackers from entering Israel.

Throughout the next week, the longer that violence is checked, Israeli officials said, the more their government will ease restrictions.