Israel, Palestinians Declare End to Violence

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt: Israeli and Palestinian leaders proclaimed a formal end to more than four years of bloodshed at a summit in Egypt on Tuesday. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stop all violence. Sharon declared an end to military action at the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, which was seen as a step back towards peace talks. "We have agreed with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to cease all acts of violence against Israelis and Palestinians wherever they are," said Abbas at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

"The calm which will prevail in our lands starting from today is the beginning of a new era."

Sharon said: "For the first time in a long time there is hope in our region for a better future for us and our grandchildren."

It was the highest-level meeting between the sides since a Palestinian uprising blew up in 2000 after peace talks collapsed.

The two sides did not sign a formal ceasefire agreement and Israel emphasised it was dealing only with Abbas's Palestinian Authority and not the militants behind attacks.

The host, President Hosni Mubarak, and Jordan's King Abdullah added their weight to a summit that could prepare the ground for the revival of a US-backed "road map" towards a Palestinian state beside a secure Israel.

The United States has emphasised its new commitment to pursuing peace after the death of iconic leader Yasser Arafat, who was seen by Washington and Israel as an obstacle.

Hope in Washington

"Optimism is certainly justified at the moment as far as the Middle East is concerned," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Italian state television after a brief visit to the region on which she met Abbas and Sharon.

"...I saw that these leaders have understood that it is time to move ahead," she said.

However, militant factions have so far agreed only to a conditional ceasefire, while neither side shows signs of budging on key obstacles like borders, and whether Palestinian refugees get a "right to return" to land in what is now Israel.

Israeli and Palestinian flags flew side by side in the sunshine at the Red Sea resort. Hundreds of Egyptian police, some with sniffer dogs, were deployed to ensure security.

Violence broke out in September 2000 after the collapse of talks for a Palestinian state on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war. Some 3,350 Palestinians and 970 Israelis have been killed.

Doubt over Militants

But despite Tuesday's announcements, doubt remains over the vital agreement of militant groups behind suicide bombings, rocket and shooting attacks, though they have gone along with a de facto truce.

"There is no sense now in talking about a truce," Hassan Youssef of Hamas told Al Jazeera television. "We have not seen any serious pressures on the Israeli side to take measures on the ground to prove its seriousness."

The factions have said Israel's promise to free 900 out of 8,000 Palestinian prisoners, to pull back troops and end assassinations are not enough.

Although Abbas wants to co-opt the militants, rather than use force to rein them in, Israeli officials said they wanted the groups dismantled and suggested that even continued rocket building by the groups would be a ceasefire violation.

Abbas, then Arafat's prime minister, met Sharon in 2003 at the summit that gave birth to the road map. But the peace plan soon foundered amid violence.

Israel says it is ready to coordinate with Abbas on its plan to withdraw settlers from occupied Gaza and part of the West Bank this year if violence stops and Palestinians rein in militants, as they are meant to under the road map.

Palestinians fear Israel aims to cement its hold on the West Bank, and demand the Jewish state abide by a road map commitment to freeze settlement growth and also stop building a barrier inside the West Bank. Israel says it stops suicide bombings.

More potential pitfalls for peacemaking lie ahead.

Abbas holds strongly to the Palestinian line that a state must include all the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and that refugees and their millions of descendants should have the right to return to lands in what is now Israel.

Those demands remain deal-breakers for Israel, which wants to keep major West Bank settlement blocs, sees East Jerusalem as part of its own "indivisible capital" and categorically rules out the possibility of refugees returning to the Jewish state.