Palestinians Still Hoping for Cease-Fire

Palestinian officials said Monday they were not giving up on efforts to win support from militant factions for a cease-fire with Israel, despite a deadlock that analysts said probably weakened the standing of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei as he prepares for talks with his Israeli counterpart.

By traveling to Cairo to attend the gathering of 13 Palestinian factions over the weekend, Korei sent a strong signal that he expected endorsement of a proposed comprehensive cease-fire, providing him a concrete offering to take to his still-unscheduled meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

But the failure to win support for a broad cease-fire, or hudna, among the militant factions -- including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the groups primarily responsible for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis in recent years -- probably diminished Korei’s credibility by revealing the limits of his authority while underscoring the clout held by hard-line groups, analysts said Monday.

One top Israeli official went so far as to suggest that Korei’s days as prime minister may be numbered following the collapse of the talks, which were brokered by Egypt.

“He’s the biggest loser. Everybody expected that a cease-fire was going to be achieved,” said Yohanan Tzoref, an expert on Palestinian issues at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya.

But observers and Palestinian officials predicted renewed efforts to get the factions to agree to refrain from attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians, a cease-fire that would be part of a broader effort to achieve peace with Israel under a U.S.-backed diplomatic initiative known as the “road map.”

“We never closed the door, for the Israelis or our factions,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh, a senior advisor to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

The Cairo talks ended in disagreement, with the hard-line groups refusing to accept a comprehensive cease-fire that also would apply to attacks on Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hamas said during the talks that it was willing to spare civilians inside Israel as part of a limited cease-fire, as long as Israeli forces brought no harm to noncombatants in the West Bank and Gaza. A campaign of Israeli strikes against suspected militants and leaders has killed dozens of bystanders.

On Monday, a top Hamas official reiterated the group’s policy of targeting soldiers and settlers in order to end Israel’s occupation of territories claimed by the Palestinians.

“But we are ready -- in order to defend our children, our women and old men -- to stop operations which target the so-called Zionist civilians,” said Abdulaziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas political leader in Gaza who survived an Israeli strike earlier this year.

The discussion of a formal cease-fire comes during a period of relative calm that Israeli officials have attributed in part to a halt in bombing attacks by Hamas in recent months. It has been more than two months since a suicide bomber claimed Israeli civilian lives. The last time was Oct. 4, when an attack by Islamic Jihad killed the bomber and 21 other people in the port city of Haifa.

But Israeli security officials say they have managed to stop planned attacks by other groups, including an alleged plot by Islamic Jihad to bomb a school in northern Israel last week.

Yossi Alpher, who was an advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and now is co-editor of a Web site promoting dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, said a tacit “partial cease-fire” was already in place.

Informal pledges may be the best that Korei and Sharon can hope to gain from each other when they meet, Alpher said, but those breaks in the violence are bound to be temporary unless both sides take the early steps toward peace demanded by the road map. A cease-fire earlier this year proved short-lived.

Mark Heller, an analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said the fissures that hobbled the Cairo talks were about more than a cease-fire. The collapse also revealed Korei’s failed effort to win endorsement among all the factions for his government’s authority to negotiate with Israel. The stalemate reflected a broader struggle between Arafat’s Fatah faction and the more militant opposition, he said.

“This is kind of the latest expression of a long-standing power struggle,” Heller said. He said the collapse of the weekend talks reinforced skepticism about Korei by highlighting the limited reach of his authority.

“It confirms a lot of unpleasant truths that a lot of people were willing to overlook,” Heller said.

But Palestinian officials said Sharon also has plenty at stake in any talks between the two leaders. The Israeli prime minister’s hard-line policies have come under fire from a variety of quarters in recent weeks, and his aides have dropped hints that he might take unilateral steps to break the impasse with the Palestinians by evacuating some isolated settlements and drawing his own boundaries.

It remains to be seen how ordinary Palestinians in the occupied territories will react to news that the cease-fire was rebuffed by Islamic groups with strong ties to countries in the region such as Syria and Iran. Some Palestinian leaders believe agreement will only come as a result of pressure from neighboring states.

But hudna supporters held out hope for gains in future talks.