E-Mail This Article to a Friend Reason for hope in 2004 Signs of progress in the Middle East

AS 2003 COMES to a close, despite all the bad news we’ve absorbed this year, hopeful signs have begun to emerge from the Middle East for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Last week, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon announced that if the Palestinian Authority did not begin adhering to the Bush administration’s "road map" for peace, Israel would unilaterally redraw borders between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. While we don’t endorse a number of aspects of Sharon’s plan, beneath the welter of headlines covering that move, signs of progress can be found.

Despite the bloody violence that erupted after the 2000 Camp David negotiations — and continues to this day — public-opinion polls show that a majority of Israelis accept the notion that a Palestinian state will eventually exist, and most Israeli political leaders accept this premise as well. Meanwhile, there are growing signs that, at long last, the Palestinian public might finally be ready to accept the idea of Israel’s right to exist. A poll of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip shows that a majority is willing to make concessions, including on the right to return to Israel, in exchange for peace.

Perhaps the most significant indication of this shift is that Hamas-sponsored terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens have dropped off dramatically since the fall. An analysis of such attacks by the Military Intelligence Division of the Israel Defense Forces, as reported by the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, finds that leaders of Hamas, who are sensitive to Palestinian public opinion, are backing off from attacks on civilians (while attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers continue). "MI’s research department, headed by Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, views this as a significant change in the attack strategy of the Islamic group, which until recently viewed all Israelis, wherever they may be, as legitimate targets [of terrorism]," wrote Ha’aretz.

In the wake of Sharon’s speech, Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher traveled to Israel to meet with the prime minister. It was the first trip to Israel by a high-level Egyptian official in two years. (Just last year, Maher was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as calling Sharon’s government a "gang of assassins" for its policy of targeting terrorist leaders for assassination.) Maher has signaled that his talks with Israeli leaders could lead to a summit between Sharon and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Indeed, the Associated Press quoted a "senior source" in Sharon’s office as saying, "We will respond to quiet with quiet," referring to Israel’s response to violence with violence by Palestinian extremists. On Monday, Maher was attacked by radical Muslims while visiting the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. The attack was condemned by the Palestinian Authority, which issued a strong statement saying that it supported Maher’s trip to Israel. Next week, Maher and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman are scheduled to meet with Palestinian leaders to renew cease-fire talks.

There can be little doubt that Sharon’s speech last week, which has bitterly divided the ruling conservative Likud Party by proposing to remove some Israeli settlements, was forged partly in response to pressure from some military elites to end Israeli policy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. At least 13 members of the lead commando unit charged with implementing the Sharon government’s policy of targeted killings have publicly refused to carry out Israeli military policy in the territories. Meanwhile, some former members of Shin Bet, the Israeli security service and counterintelligence agency, have spoken out against ongoing efforts by Israel to build a wall separating Israel from the territories. Sharon is clearly responding to public pressure. In order for these latest developments to amount to anything, Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat must do the same. He must allow the cease-fire process to unfold without working to thwart it, as he has in the past. And he must allow his new prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, to negotiate for peace.

That there is movement on cease-fire talks and that Egypt is now involved give reason to hope.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com