イスラエル／パレスチナ和平

A jittery Mr Abbas called a press conference on June 9th, attempting to appease his hardliners by insisting that he remained committed to the issues of East Jerusalem, the refugees and the release of Palestinian prisoners. But some militants are calling on Mr Abbas and his new government to resign. Even Fatah, Mr Abbas’s own movement, joined in a declaration that rejected the conclusions of the Aqaba summit in favour of “national unity, resistance and the intifada”. The Palestinian Authority’s chairman, Yasser Arafat, who has recently been shunted aside at America’s insistence, seized the opportunity to step back into the limelight, condemning both the Palestinian suicide bombing, which he called a “terrorist attack”, and the Israeli attacks on Hamas leaders. Mr Arafat called for a ceasefire by all Palestinian militants, to avoid letting Israel “drag us into destroying the peace process”.

The understanding at the Aqaba summit had been that Mr Abbas and his team would need some time to organise the Palestinian security forces, and to try to reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas and other groups, before gradually taking back responsibility for security in the Palestinian areas. Mr Abbas, and apparently Mr Bush, felt they had an implicit commitment that Israel would largely desist from offensive operations during this period of grace. However, even if Mr Sharon does remain committed to the peace process, as he insists, he is under enormous pressure to be seen to be tough on terrorism, especially at a time when he is arousing the fury of the settler movement by dismantling some of their outposts.

On June 12th, Hamas warned all foreigners to leave Israel, as it pledged a new round of revenge attacks “in which we will target every Zionist occupying our land”. Mr Sharon, meanwhile, has promised “to pursue terrorist organisations and their leaders until the fight is over”. Thus there would seem little prospect of the Palestinian militants agreeing to Mr Abbas’s and Mr Arafat’s pleas for a ceasefire, nor of the Israelis believing it if one was agreed. But, hopeless as it seems at the moment, the only way forward is for Mr Abbas to continue to seek some sort of agreement with Hamas and for Mr Sharon not to scorn it once it is achieved.