Fragile peace may be enough

Ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, weary of warfare, may be the essential force behind a new cease-fire.

JERUSALEM - Three major Palestinian groups declared a temporary cease-fire Sunday, and Israel pulled out of part of the Gaza Strip - breakthroughs in the U.S.-backed bid for peace.

With that, Israelis and Palestinians may have found a face-saving formula that gives all parties a way out of 33 exhausting months of violence. Militant groups declare a truce, Israel agrees to return some land, and the Palestinian Authority promises to hold up its end by trying to prevent attacks against Israel.

With rigorous U.S. chaperoning, restraint by all sides, and a healthy dose of luck, Sunday's steps forward might disentangle the warring parties. In the best case, the fighting ends for good and a Palestinian state emerges by 2005, as the internationally backed "road map" peace plan sets out to do.

But terror attacks by renegades or Israeli military strikes could rekindle the violence in a flash.

Israel wants more than a truce: It wants the militants disarmed and arrested so they cannot resume violence in the future, a demand the Palestinian Authority hasn't agreed to and the militants bitterly reject.

Still, an elegant way out of the deadlock may be found in the end, because the players have a serious stake in the cease-fire's success.

For Israelis and their prime minister, Ariel Sharon, the road map offers a way out of a nightmare which saw their public places targeted almost at will by suicide bombers and gunmen.

An end to violence would move the Palestinians toward the state they have longed for. Without this, it is unlikely the politically feeble Mahmoud Abbas can survive as Palestinian prime minister, which would be embarrassing for the Bush administration, at whose prodding Abbas was appointed to the new post several months ago.

U.S. diplomatic credibility is also on the line in a broader sense after President Bush personally launched the road map at a June 4 Mideast summit. He has since dispatched his secretary of state and national security adviser to the region in a high-profile, high-stakes effort to hammer it home.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice was in town for the cease-fire announcement and for the conclusion of a deal on transferring parts of Gaza back to Palestinian security control. The deal could be expanded within days to the West Bank town of Bethlehem.

The high-level supervision underscored how for Bush, peace - or at least calm - is a key element in his vision for a changed Middle East, alongside the victories in Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on the al-Qaida terrorist organization. With Israeli-Palestinian trust at rock bottom, his continued vigilance will likely be required.

More than 1,000 days of conflict have taken a terrible toll. More than 2,400 Palestinians and 800 Israelis have died. The Palestinians' nascent economy and government infrastructure, born of the 1990s autonomy accords, lie in ruins. And in Israel more than a tenth of the workforce is jobless, poverty is spreading to the middle class and a once-promising tourism industry has been devastated.

But as in all conflicts where there is no clear winner, all sides can claim a measure of victory.

Israelis showed resolve and are offering less than in September 2000 when the fighting erupted. Palestinians can say they have made Israelis understand that their presence in the West Bank and Gaza is a losing proposition. Under the road map, Israel would gradually withdraw from Palestinian autonomous zones occupied during the fighting. A Palestinian state with temporary borders, probably on somewhat more land than the autonomy controls, is to come as early as the start of next year. And a final settlement by 2005 would deal with final borders and the thorny issues of sharing Jerusalem and resolving the refugee issue.

Before any of that, of course, the enterprise could easily collapse.

Renegade militants in the West Bank, where Palestinian control is minimal, could continue attacks. Israeli security officials acknowledge that even if the Palestinians could clamp down in Gaza, the West Bank is in chaos, and catching militants can be a matter of chance. Harsh Israeli reactions would mean nothing has changed.

The disagreement over whether and how to disarm the militant groups might not be resolved.

And even if calm prevails for a time, skeptics see the truce as a bid by the militants to regroup at a time when U.S. and Israeli pressure on them is approaching irresistible.

But optimists see a ray of light: ordinary people are so tired of the carnage that public opinion might force everyone to hesitate before endangering the truce.

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