Israeli and Palestinians step closer to peace

Israeli and Palestinian leaders made concessions today to keep the road map to Mid East peace on track.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged to dismantle illegal settlements in Palestinian areas, while the new Palestinian leader renounced all terrorism against Israel.

Both steps were sought by President George Bush as he brought the two sides together in a summit in a Jordanian palace on the shore on the Gulf of Aqaba.

“We will immediately begin to remove unauthorised outposts,” Sharon said. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas declared: “We do not ignore the suffering of the Jews throughout history. It is time to bring all this suffering to an end.”

Sharon accepted the principle of a Palestinian state. Abbas also publicly acknowledged Israel’s right to exist side by side with a Palestinian state.

In a goodwill gesture, Israel had released scores of Palestinian prisoners in advance of the summit.

Joining Abbas and Sharon at a podium, Bush praised the Israeli leader’s willingness to dismantle the settlements and lauded Abbas for promising “his full efforts to end the full intefadeh.”

Israelis set up dozens of unauthorised outposts after the intefadeh began, most of them in the West Bank and most created since Sharon took office a year ago.

Hard-line Israelis say the settlements reinforce their claim to Biblical lands but other Israelis say the illegal outposts get in the way of a deal that could unburden their country of the costly occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Bush promised training and support for a “new, restructured Palestinian security service,” and said he would place diplomat John Wolf at the head of a US mission on the ground to help the parties and monitor progress.

“The journey we’re taking is difficult, but there is no other choice,” Bush said. “No leader of conscience can accept more months and years of humiliation, killing and mourning.”

“I know that peace can finally come,” Bush said.

Abbas promised to “act vigorously” against incitement and hatred against Israel, including using Palestinian security forces.

The three leaders, accompanied by their host, Jordanian King Abdullah, walked toward the cameras across a bridge especially built for the occasion.

Abdullah called the summit a step toward fulfilling “a dream of peace, prosperity, coexistence and reconciliation” for the entire Mideast.

Abbas, calling violence inconsistent with Palestinians’ Islamic faith and the establishment of an independent state they have long sought, also pledged to end “the militarization of the intefadeh.”

“The armed intefadeh must end and we must use and resort to peaceful means in our quest to end the occupation and suffering of Palestinians and Israelis,” he said.

Abbas filled a role played in the past by Yasser Arafat, the long-time Palestine Liberation Organisation leader and symbol of the Palestinian movement. Arafat was not invited his removal from the peace process was a major demand of Bush’s plan, a so-called road map to a two-state Israeli-Palestine settlement.

Sharon said that abandoning incitement, as Abbas pledged, is crucial. “There can be no peace” without it, he said.

Sharon said his government understands “the importance of territorial contiguity” in the West Bank, a key demand of Palestinians.

The summit site was at Abdullah’s summer palace and Bush’s first meeting of the day was with the king.

It was the first time of his presidency that Bush had held a joint meeting between the two leaders. It followed a meeting the day before in Egypt, in which Arab leaders agreed to staunch the flow of money to terror groups.

In a sign of the passions that fuel the conflict, a radical Palestinian group urged Abbas “not to bow to Sharon’s blackmail and to adhere firmly to the need for equal commitments from the two sides.”

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine urged Abbas to reject ”the Israeli and US preconditions that would turn the road map into a mere paper in the drawers of Sharon’s government.”

Abbas’ pledge to stop the intefadeh was a reference to armed militant attacks that have killed more than 750 Israelis in the latest round of violence, including about 350 from suicide bombings. During the same period, more than 2,350 Palestinians have been killed.

Ismail Abu Shanab, spokesman for Hamas, which has taken responsibility for numerous suicide bombings against Israelis, said: “If the Israeli occupation stops, the Palestinians are willing to live in peace and stop all kinds of violence.”

The Palestinians want the Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which were seized in the 1967 Six Day War. Sharon’s government has agreed to dismantle some Israeli settlements built in those territories but wants to retain others.

By the same token, Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist and normalised relations are important elements of Bush’s peace plan, which envisions a Palestinian state by 2005.

From the summit, Bush flew to Qatar to visit US troops in the forward command post from where the Iraq war was managed.