Mideast Summit Hopes High

After more than four years of relentless bloodshed, prospects for a historic breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict probably have never been greater, as the two sides lay final groundwork for their summit next week in Egypt.

Although all high-profile summits risk the fate of fanfare followed by fizzle, the gathering in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik has the great advantage of momentum generated by significant reciprocal gestures.

In the mere four weeks since the election of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel and the Palestinians have made more concessions to each other than they had in the entire course of the current conflict, now in its fifth year. Israel on Thursday announced plans to withdraw its forces from five Palestinian cities, free 900 Palestinian prisoners and consider amnesty terms for wanted fugitives.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will meet for the first time since Abbas took office Jan. 15, under the auspices of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, both of whom have seen their own attempts to halt the fighting crumble.

Although the summit is being warmly welcomed on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians are keenly aware of the inherent artificiality of such an event, so at odds with the visceral reality of Palestinian suicide bombings of buses and cafes and massive Israeli military raids on Palestinian cities and refugee camps.

“I understand why a summit is needed and desired,” commentator Smadar Peri wrote Thursday in the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot. “But when the cameras are turned off, we will have to return to a certain reality.”

In June 2003, a surge of optimism greeted a four-way summit held in Aqaba, Jordan, to formally inaugurate the “road map” peace plan. Placing his prestige on the line, Abdullah played host to President Bush, Sharon and Abbas, who was then the Palestinian Authority prime minister. Less than two months later, the promise of that moment had dissolved in a fierce new round of recriminations and bloodshed.

The key difference now is the absence of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died Nov. 11. Israel accused him of sabotaging the Aqaba summit by systematically undermining Abbas and giving Palestinian militant groups the go-ahead to press on with attacks against Israel.

“The last few years made it clear to most living here, and neighboring countries, that the true obstacle in the way of a reasonable, regulated process that will result in a two-state solution was Arafat, and now the arena has changed,” said Gilad Sher, an Israeli official and a veteran negotiator of past peace accords.

But the Sharon of today is different too. At the Aqaba summit, he had yet to unveil his groundbreaking plan to relinquish the Gaza Strip and thereby battle Jewish settlers and their right-wing supporters, who were once his most loyal partisans.

In the wake of Aqaba, as Palestinian suicide attacks continued, the Israeli leader chipped away steadily at Abbas’ standing by refusing to grant concessions that would have given him much-needed credibility among his people. And Israel sloughed off its early obligations under the road map, including the dismantling of illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank.

This time around, Abbas is likely to be far more guarded in his public dealings with Sharon than during his tenure as prime minister, when he traveled to Jerusalem for a series of increasingly tense one-on-one talks that finally broke down in acrimony.

Analyst Shalom Harari, a brigadier general in the Israeli army reserves, said he believed that the decision to have the leaders’ initial encounter take place in the context of a four-leader summit was aimed at quashing any notion that Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was kowtowing to the Israeli prime minister.

“For the time being, it’s better for him not to even be seen alone with Sharon; if it’s under the umbrella of Mubarak and Abdullah, it’s OK,” Harari said. “They can talk freely on the phone, sure, but Abu Mazen knows that appearing too close to Sharon too soon could be very damaging.”

Still, Abbas surprised Israel with the speed of his moves to quell attacks by militant groups. Within days of taking office, he deployed Palestinian paramilitary forces to halt militant violence and negotiated a tentative truce with such groups as Hamas. In response, Israel dramatically ramped down military activity and made pledges to ease Palestinian freedom of movement and reopen a key commercial checkpoint into the Gaza Strip.

Although little substantive negotiation is expected at the summit, both sides hinted Thursday that its centerpiece might be a declaration of truce, after nearly three weeks of relative calm.

“I hope there will be an official declaration of an armistice, on the cessation of all acts of violence,” Shimon Peres, Israel’s vice premier, told Army Radio on Thursday.

Abbas echoed that, telling reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah: “We hope to God this will happen.”

As the gathering draws closer, the atmosphere has grown almost giddy in some quarters. Commentator Sever Plotzker, writing Thursday in Yediot, went so far as to declare the gathering “the summit of the end of the intifada.”

The enthusiasm has been contagious. Even the moribund Palestinian stock exchange was enjoying a run-up in prices.

But a chorus of voices cautioned against expecting too much.

“All sides are coming to the summit with different agendas and different expectations,” said analyst Yoram Meital of Ben-Gurion University. “The gaps remain wide, so expectations would best be lowered a little.”

Few consider it a coincidence that the hastily convened summit will come on the heels of a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories Sunday and Monday by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which all sides hope will signal the start of a period of intensive American diplomatic engagement.

Palestinian officials were heartened by President Bush’s pledge in his State of the Union address Wednesday of $350 million in aid to the Palestinians for security and economic development and by his assertion that the goal of Palestinian statehood was “within reach.”

But Rice will have to work hard to rehabilitate the Bush administration’s image among Palestinians.

In the months since the Aqaba summit, Palestinians have lost considerable faith in the United States as a fair mediator, seeing Bush as having tilted excessively toward Sharon.

Even Palestinian officials acknowledge, however, that the clear American antipathy toward Arafat played a role in their estrangement from the U.S. administration. Now the Palestinians see an opening to strongly press their case with Rice, banking on Bush’s desire to counter Arab anger over the U.S. military presence in Iraq with a success in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.

“Nobody can afford failure now,” said Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian negotiations minister.

Heading into the summit, Sharon and Abbas are guided by their respective domestic political concerns. In some ways, their roles are reversed from the time of the Aqaba summit, when Sharon enjoyed solid standing within his conservative Likud Party and Abbas was worn down by infighting with Arafat.

Now Sharon is locked in a high-stakes confrontation with settlers and their supporters that could ultimately cost him his job, even though polls have consistently indicated that his Gaza pullout plan has the backing of most Israelis.

On both sides, battle weariness has increased since the unveiling of the road map, although Israelis have been buoyed by a dramatic drop in suicide bombings, which they attribute largely to the construction of a formidable physical barrier in the West Bank.

Palestinians, on the other hand, have seen the fabric of their lives grow ever more frayed by economic strangulation, frequent Israeli military incursions and the difficulties of maneuvering through roadblocks and checkpoints as they make their way to jobs and school.

Although Abbas received a solid electoral mandate, he has also been put on unmistakable notice that the Palestinian public is fed up with the rampant corruption of the Arafat era.

That anger was seen as a driving force behind decisive wins by Hamas in local elections in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The militant group, which spearheaded the armed struggle against Israel and carried out hundreds of suicide bombings targeting civilians, is regarded by many Palestinians as untainted by financial malfeasance and widely admired among Gaza’s poor for its network of hospitals, clinics and schools.

Although not a party to the summit proceedings, Hamas and the other militant groups will be a looming presence. Many wonder, however, whether Abbas’ conciliatory stance toward them puts him on a collision course with Israel, which wants to see Hamas and its ilk disarmed and dismantled.

“Abu Mazen’s entire struggle against Hamas remains on the surface,” said Ehud Yatom, a Likud lawmaker. “It involved patrols and deployment [of Palestinian security forces], but no real foiling of attacks. And when Hamas doesn’t like something, it simply aims and shoots.”

Hamas, apparently not wanting to yield any ground in advance of the summit, kept up its belligerent rhetoric. On Thursday, Gaza-based Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar denounced the planned Israeli prisoner release as insufficient.

He also warned that if Israel made any move to arrest and sentence Hamas activists, “attacks will be resumed very strongly.”

As part of Israel’s package of pre-summit confidence-building measures announced Thursday, it plans to withdraw its forces from the West Bank city of Jericho after next week’s talks, then gradually pull out of Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Kalkilya and Ramallah.

In addition, Sharon’s senior advisors approved the formation of a joint Israeli-Palestinian committee to work out amnesty terms for some fugitives.

Israel has already indicated that it would temporarily halt its hunt for fugitives, though it would still target those it considers “ticking bombs.”

Hanging over the proceedings was the unspoken fear that a major eve-of-the-summit attack by one of the militant groups could destroy the atmosphere of calm and cooperation in an instant.

On Thursday, troops at a checkpoint outside the West Bank town of Nablus caught a 15-year-old Palestinian boy with an explosive belt concealed in a bag, Israel said. The army detonated it by remote control, using a robot developed for that purpose, and took the teen into custody.