welsh
Junkmaster
Ok, So they had a peace conference in the Middle East.
SO the Jews and the Palestinians shook hands.
SO what if Hamas launched an attack because the Israeli's whacked a kid.
Is it over?
Or it ain't over quite yet?
4 years of bloodshed when both share the same general interest- a hot blond with loose liberal moral values.
Your thoughts-
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SO the Jews and the Palestinians shook hands.
SO what if Hamas launched an attack because the Israeli's whacked a kid.
Is it over?
Or it ain't over quite yet?
4 years of bloodshed when both share the same general interest- a hot blond with loose liberal moral values.
Your thoughts-
The day that peace broke out?
Feb 11th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda
Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas have declared an end to all hostilities after their first summit, in Sharm el-Sheikh. So, after four years of bloodshed, is the Palestinian uprising over? There is cause for optimism, though we have been here before
AP
“THE calm which will prevail in our lands starting from today is the beginning of a new era,” declared Mahmoud Abbas after his first summit as Palestinian leader with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. “For the first time in a long time there exists in our region hope for a better future for us and our grandchildren,” concurred Mr Sharon. Beautiful words but, as Mr Sharon pointed out, given the failure of previous Middle East summits’ grand declarations to put an end to the bloodshed, only “deeds, not words” will achieve two states living side-by-side in peace.
The summit, held on Tuesday February 8th in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, was intended to seize the best opportunity for Middle East peace since the start of the Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation more than four years ago (see our chronology). It achieved an unequivocal pledge by both sides to cease all hostilities immediately—in Mr Abbas’s case, effectively declaring the intifada at an end. It also produced a renewed commitment by Mr Sharon to the internationally backed “road map” peace plan and to its intended outcome of an independent Palestinian state—four months after one of his closest advisers had said that Israel was “freezing” these commitments.
What has provided this opportunity for peace is the death last November of Yasser Arafat. Since then Mr Abbas, a determined advocate of talks rather than armed struggle, has succeeded him as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and, in an election last month, as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). After 40 years steering the course of Palestinian history—for good or ill—Arafat was relegated to a mere footnote to it: at the summit, the man who for so long personified the Palestinian national struggle was barely mentioned.
Besides Arafat, the other important absence from the summit was that of the Palestinian militant groups, who will play a key role in determining whether the summit's grand promises are kept. Mr Abbas and Mr Sharon declared that they had agreed to stop “all acts of violence against all Israelis and Palestinians everywhere”. But while Mr Sharon has control of his generals and thus is well-placed to keep his part of that bargain, Mr Abbas, so far, is not. The militant groups, be they Islamist ones like Hamas or even those attached to Mr Abbas’s own Fatah party, are not under his command, though he hopes to persuade them to accept this, eventually.
After the summit, spokesmen for the militant groups made clear that they had not formally joined the ceasefire. However, they indicated that provided Israel continued to make positive moves, they would continue to observe an undeclared truce that has now been in effect, more or less, for over three weeks. That truce's fragility was demonstrated on Thursday, when Hamas militants launched a barrage of rocket and mortar attacks in Gaza, after a Palestinian man died from Israeli gunfire near a Jewish settlement. A furious Mr Abbas reacted by firing three of his security chiefs for failing to prevent the attacks. On Friday, he headed to Gaza where, according to his aides, he would demand that militant leaders obey him and respect the ceasefire.
Perhaps more worryingly than the ceasefire breach in Gaza, Palestinian officials told Reuters news agency this week that Hizbullah, an Islamist group based in Lebanon and backed by Syria and Iran, was trying to recruit suicide bombers to destroy the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire. One official said the group was offering up to $100,000 for suicide attacks.
Israel has already made some initial moves towards meeting the Palestinians' demands. The halt to military activity that Mr Sharon promised includes an end to the targeted assassinations of militant fighters and leaders. It has also been agreed that the Israeli army will shortly pull out of five towns in the West Bank, handing over responsibility for security to the PA’s forces.
There has also been movement on what ordinary Palestinians are said to regard as the most pressing issue: the release of the more than 7,000 Palestinians held by Israel. The freeing of 159 of these in December, and a recent offer to let out another 900, were met with scorn: most were either close to finishing their sentences anyway or had been held for fairly minor offences. However, in a significant change of policy, after returning from the summit Mr Sharon told Haaretz, an Israeli daily, that he had promised Mr Abbas he would let out even some prisoners with “blood on their hands”, provided the Israeli leader's plan to withdraw all troops and settlers from the Gaza strip, this summer, goes smoothly.
In return for such moves, Israel will expect the Palestinian security forces to crack down on any breaches of the ceasefire. And in due course it expects more: “decommissioning”, says one Israeli spokesman, echoing the terms of the Northern Ireland peace process. “One law, one authority, one weapon,” promises Mr Abbas—his vision of the order he wants to bring to Palestinian affairs. For that he will need to build his, the PA’s and his security forces’ credibility with ordinary Palestinians—and with the militants’ leaders, who are demanding that Mr Abbas clean up the corruption-riddled and deeply inefficient PA bureaucracy.
Both America’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and her French counterpart, Michel Barnier, stayed away from the Sharm el-Sheikh summit despite having visited Israel and the Palestinian territories this week. The world powers that underwrote the road map (America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations) seem to have decided to take a back seat and leave this renewed bout of peacemaking to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and their neighbours—the summit’s hosts—President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan.
During her visit to the region, Ms Rice sounded a bit more even-handed than her boss, President George Bush, has usually been: she urged Mr Sharon to take “hard decisions”; and she also announced that $40m of American aid would be disbursed within 90 days to help the Palestinians create jobs and rebuild infrastructure damaged during the fighting—on top of the $350m of Palestinian aid that Mr Bush announced last week.
Not even half way there
Many big differences remain to be resolved. Besides a wider prisoner release, there is also the question of Palestinian refugees; the status of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians demand as their capital; the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, which continue to expand; and the controversial Israeli barrier, which is carving chunks out of the West Bank. Palestinians will also expect to see the easing of the tight restrictions that Israel imposes on their movements.
Mr Sharon will not agree to any such demands unless and until the current, shaky truce develops into a sustained period of relief from bombings and shootings. He reiterated at the summit that he is determined to push ahead with the Gaza pull-out, despite fierce opposition from Israel’s settler movement and its political backers. Only after this has been completed is any substantial progress likely on the main issues that separate Israelis and Palestinians.
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