Same Beginning, New Ending?

It began, as it had last time and the time before, with a celebratory handshake and soaring rhetoric about a chance for peace in this ravaged land.

Tuesday’s landmark summit, during which the Israelis and the Palestinians announced that they would cease violence, harked back to previous chapters of peacemaking -- all with unhappy endings.

The last time the two sides appeared this hopeful was in 1993, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sealed the Oslo peace accords with a famous handshake on the White House lawn. The accords sputtered for years until the Palestinian uprising broke out in 2000.

In June 2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, then prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, clasped hands at a vaunted summit in Aqaba, Jordan, to announce a renewed peace effort that dissolved three months later into a familiar cycle of suicide bombings and Israeli reprisals.

But this time several key conditions have changed. Both sides see a window of opportunity after Arafat’s death and Abbas’ recent landslide election to the presidency. The Israelis long considered Arafat an obstacle to peace. Abbas has what many consider to be a fresh mandate to negotiate with the Israelis, and he has worked to draw armed Palestinian groups into the political process.

Many analysts saw Palestinians’ enthusiasm about Abbas as a sign that they were growing tired of the conflict and wanted a different approach. Israel, on the other hand, was preparing to unilaterally pull out of the Gaza Strip and undoubtedly saw an opportunity to get Palestinian forces to fill the security vacuum.

The Bush administration’s stated commitment to involve itself more in Middle East diplomacy, after largely steering clear during the last four years, is also raising hopes.

The administration says Abbas’ election provides the best opportunity for peace in years and breathes new life into the “road map” plan for peace. That initiative -- sponsored by the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations -- has been stalled since its debut in Aqaba because neither side has met its initial obligations.

Israel and the Palestinians offered fresh endorsements of the blueprint Tuesday, but it remained unclear how they would meet their obligations under the plan, which envisions creation of an independent Palestinian state by the end of this year.

It remains unclear whether the latest gesture will lead to fulfillment of renewed hope or be remembered as another promising handshake that led nowhere.

Abbas, a moderate with a long background in negotiations with Israel, has disavowed the use of violence in pursuit of a Palestinian state. Abbas lacked a street following when Arafat died in November, but he quickly managed to consolidate backing inside the Palestine Liberation Organization and handily won elections last month to become president of the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas has earned the respect of Israeli and U.S. officials with his efforts to persuade militants to hold their fire while he pursued new talks with the Israelis. His negotiations with militants resulted in a de facto cease-fire weeks before he and Sharon made their declarations Tuesday to halt violence.

Israel seems determined to break the negotiations into small stages. The Jewish state is eager to deal first with security issues and insists that the Palestinians stop all attacks against Israelis. Once quiet is achieved, they say, the two sides can move on to political negotiations.

But Israel knows it will have to make meaningful concessions if Abbas is to last long enough to be a partner for peace. Three months after Abbas joined Sharon in Aqaba in 2003 for a formal launching of the U.S.-backed peace blueprint, he quit amid friction with Arafat. Abbas blamed part of his failure on Sharon for not granting him any substantial achievements, such as the mass release of Palestinian prisoners -- a move that would have earned him public approval.

Israel’s goals have evolved as well. Sharon’s push within his government to withdraw from all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the West Bank has raised the ire of settlers and their right-wing allies, and prompted worry that opponents might resort to violence.

The Gaza pullout was initially conceived as a unilateral pullback from land that Sharon said probably would not end up in Israel’s hands when any eventual peace agreement was reached with the Palestinians. But it has become a symbol of what might be possible through renewed Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

Sharon said Tuesday that he was “absolutely determined” to carry out the withdrawal. He suggested that the pullout would be done in coordination with the Palestinians “if new change does emerge on the Palestinian side.”

The withdrawal would be easier to accomplish with Palestinian help, to prevent attacks by militants seeking to make the pullout appear as though Israel were fleeing.

The withdrawal, Sharon said, “can bring hope and become the new starting point for a coordinated, successful process.”

Armed groups such as Hamas have expressed reservations about the cease-fire announcement, raising the possibility that they might not observe calm for long.

But in another shift from the past, Palestinian officials hope to bring them into the political mainstream, even training some of the fighters as security officers.

Battered by years of fighting and the loss of leaders to Israeli strikes, Hamas has been encouraged by its strong showing in recent municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Mohammed Dahlan, a former Palestinian security chief and close Abbas aide, said Tuesday that he had faith that the militants would observe the cease-fire.

“Hamas will commit to the truce, if Israel is also committed,” he said.

Abbas appears to be playing a middleman role in forging a cease-fire deal: negotiating with Israel on one hand while trying to persuade the militants to drop their weapons on the other, said Shlomo Ben-Ami, who served as Israel’s foreign minister under former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Dennis Ross, the former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, said it would be up to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to review the summit declarations to see how they fit with the road map. But he said both sides fell short of its requirements.

“You have a gap between where they are today and what is required of them in the road map,” Ross said. “There are lots of open questions right now.”

Both sides are required to cease hostilities under the road map’s initial phase.

But the Palestinians have yet to reform their security forces and dismantle armed groups, as called for under the plan. Israel has not met its promise to freeze settlement growth and take down settlement offshoots, known as outposts, built since March 2001.

Disagreements loom over the release of prisoners, a deeply emotional issue for Palestinians. Israel has promised to free 900 of the 8,000 prisoners. The Palestinians want many more than that, including those involved in violence against Israelis.

Israel generally has ruled out freeing those with “blood on their hands,” but now has agreed to form a joint committee with the Palestinians to review additional releases.

Sharon noted Tuesday that the situation was fragile and warned that both sides had to guard against “extremists” intent on sabotaging the reconciliation. But he appeared to suggest that there was now something for both sides to lose.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Washington and researcher Hossam Hamalawy in Cairo contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Next steps in peace effort

Second meeting: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to meet again with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the next few weeks. Sharon invited Abbas to his ranch in southern Israel. Israeli officials say Sharon wants to visit Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.

*

Transfer of towns: Israel is to transfer security control of five Palestinian towns and cities to Palestinian forces. The transfer is expected to be completed within three weeks. Towns considered militant strongholds are to remain in Israeli hands.

*

Security cooperation: Committees of security officials from both sides are to negotiate thorny issues stemming from more than four years of violence. Palestinians want Israel to grant amnesty to fugitives.

*

Prisoners: Israel will immediately release 500 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture, with 400 others to be freed later. Palestinians want a large-scale release of most or all

of the 8,000 prisoners Israel holds,but Israel is hesitant to free militants it says were involved in killings.

*

Reform: Palestinian representatives will go to London on March 1 for an international conference on Palestinian reform. The meeting is to focus on strengthening the Palestinian administration, security forces and financial system. Israel won’t participate.

*

Washington: Sharon and Abbas will travel separately to the White House to meet with President Bush, probably in March, to discuss peace efforts.

*

Withdrawal: Sharon plans to withdraw Israeli settlers and troops from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements this summer. Although it was initially planned as a go-it-alone move, Israel may now coordinate its withdrawal with the Palestinians.

*

Source: Associated Press

*

Voices

Quotes on the pledges made at the summit in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt:

“We agreed that all Palestinians will stop all acts of violence against all Israelis everywhere. At the same time, Israel will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians anywhere.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

,

“We want to replace the language of bullets and bombs with the language of dialogue.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

,

“This is a very fragile opportunity that the extremists will want to exploit. They want to close the window of opportunity for us and allow our two peoples to drown in their blood.”

Ariel Sharon

,

“The talk about what the leader of the Palestinian Authority called a cessation of acts of violence is not binding on the resistance because this is a unilateral stand and was not the result of the outcome of an intra-Palestinian dialogue.”

Osama Hamdan, a representative in Lebanon of the militant group Hamas

,

“There’s one thing that must be made very clear, and this is unequivocal as far as the prime minister is concerned: Israel is willing to go very far, but there will be no flexibility whatsoever, no compromise whatsoever, on fighting terrorism and dismantling the terrorist organization.”

Ranaan Gissin, aide to Sharon

,

“I hope that she was the last victim, that she is looking down on us from heaven today as the last victim.”

Yonatan Abukasis, whose daughter Hela, 17, died Jan. 21 of wounds suffered in a Palestinian rocket attack

Source: Times staff and wire reports

Los Angeles Times