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January 14, 2005/Tevet 4 5765, Vol. 57, No. 20
Jewish state ready to talk peace if Abbas moves against terror
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - After Mahmoud Abbas' victory this week in the election for Palestinian Authority president and the establishment of a new moderate government in Israel, both Israel and Palestine seem to have pragmatic leaders capable of making peace.
There is quiet optimism on either side, with both leaders intimating they will be prepared to make concessions if the other side reciprocates with bona-fide peace moves.
The immediate difficulty is over what must be done to stop the violence. The two sides have very different approaches, and that could make for failure at the very first hurdle.
Unless Israel and the Palestinians find a way to settle or circumvent differences over what constitutes a genuine end to violence, the international community may soon find itself having to judge which side is in the right.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's internal political standing was strengthened Jan. 10 with the establishment of a new national unity government. Sharon will have new flexibility to pursue his Gaza disengagement plan with the unity coalition, which brings the Labor Party and United Torah Judaism together with his own Likud Party. In addition, the leading opposition in the Knesset, which voted 58-56 to approve the government, has made clear that it, too, will back his plan.
On Jan. 11, Sharon called Abbas to congratulate him on his victory in the Jan. 9 election. According to Israel Radio, Sharon and Abbas agreed to stay in contact and to meet in the coming weeks.
Sharon has made clear that Abbas must disarm terrorist militias before substantive peace talks can begin. But Abbas says he hopes to achieve a cease-fire without confronting the militias.
Sharon aides retort that Israel will not re-engage in peace talks based on the internationally approved "road map" unless the Palestinians take steps to ensure that violence does not flare up again.
A senior Israeli official told JTA that Sharon sees a cease-fire that does not entail disarming of the militias as a dangerous trap, because then, if the Palestinians don't get what they want at the negotiating table, they simply can revert to terror.
"Israel wants to take terror out of the negotiating equation," he said. "Unless the terrorist militias are disarmed, it's like negotiating with a pistol on the table."
The official said the road map incorporated proposals made by two former American mediators, George Tenet, who tried to negotiate security arrangements between the two sides in 2001 when he was the director of the CIA, and Anthony Zinni, who served as a U.S. peace envoy in 2002.
The proposals, which outline specific steps to crack down on terrorists, stipulate how many weapons have to be collected every day.
The official also emphasized the importance of Palestinian governmental reforms, arguing that they are essential to enable the Palestinians to control terror.
Although Abbas, like his predecessor Yasser Arafat, shows little willingness to tackle the militias head on, there is no denying there is a new mood on the Palestinian side that could lead to progress.
In his victory speech, Abbas spoke about the "struggle ahead," but it was not in confronting Israel, or, in Arafat-like vein, in sending "a million martyrs to Jerusalem."
Rather, Abbas said, the big task would be to build a Palestinian state in which people could live in security. The mission, he said, means giving "our prisoners freedom, our fugitives a life in dignity, to reach our goal of an independent state."
The key to future progress could lie in how he goes about drumming up this pressure. He could simply aim for a cease-fire and avoid any further reform. But, Israeli pundits note, there is a lot of talk on the Palestinian side about state-building, reform and putting an end to the prevalent chaos.
One of the ways to do that would be to cut the number of armed Palestinian organizations from 14 to three, and place them under a single command, as the road map demands.
Abbas would not necessarily disarm the militiamen, but rather persuade them to join one of the three new legitimate forces with their weapons.
If he succeeds, it will be extremely difficult for Israel to go on claiming he hasn't carried out his part of the road map reforms.
For their part, the Palestinians are demanding that Israel lift roadblocks, release prisoners and freeze building on Jewish settlements. They say they need these gestures to persuade the Palestinian people that their new peace-oriented policy is getting them somewhere.
Abbas has said he is afraid Sharon may "let him down" again, the way he did when Abbas was prime minister in 2003, by failing to meet Palestinian expectations for wholesale prisoner releases.
Israeli leaders are signaling that they don't intend to make the same mistake again. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz says he is ready to hand over West Bank cities to Palestinian security control as soon as Abbas says he is ready.
For now, even if the Palestinians don't stop the terror altogether, Israel is likely to try to coordinate its planned unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank with them.
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