MIDDLE EAST: History was made in Jerusalem yesterday, when an Israeli and a Palestinian prime minister stood publicly side by side in the disputed capital for the first time and promised to bring peace to their bloodied, bitter peoples.
The meeting was only the latest in several over recent months between Israel's Mr Ariel Sharon and the Palestinians' Mr Mahmoud Abbas but, unprecedentedly, it began with a public ceremony outside Mr Sharon's office at which the two men, in a carefully choreographed display of goodwill and mutual confidence, issued conciliatory statements, shook hands warmly, and smiled repeatedly for the cameras.
Significantly, too, they delivered their remarks not in English but in Hebrew (Mr Sharon) and Arabic (Mr Abbas), assuring their own people of their good intentions. In a scene that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago, members of Mr Abbas's cabinet sat chatting alongside Mr Sharon's ministers at a side table. Until recently, Israel's Defence Minister Mr Shaul Mofaz considered his nearest Palestinian equivalent Mr Mohammad Dahlan, the PA's minister of security, to be an enemy worthy of arrest; now Mr Mofaz was admiring Mr Dahlan's tie.
In language not dissimilar to that they had employed at the Aqaba summit last month, Mr Abbas declared that it was time for both sides to "put the past behind us" and work together to end the bloodshed and forge a just and lasting peace, while Mr Sharon told the Palestinian people that Israel had "no desire to rule over you" and that, provided terrorism was "obliterated," he would make painful concessions in the cause of a permanent settlement. The difference is that, since Aqaba, Mr Abbas has reached a 90-day intifada ceasefire agreement with most of the Palestinian factions that have carried out suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis, and Israel has pulled back forces in parts of the Gaza Strip.
Today, furthermore, Israel is set to withdraw the army from the West Bank city of Bethlehem - the first city to be restored to Palestinian Authority control. In their talks yesterday, Mr Abbas urged Mr Sharon to accelerate the army's withdrawal from other Palestinian cities, too, but this seems unlikely. Mr Avi Dichter, the head of the Israeli Shin Bet domestic security service, said yesterday that no further cities would be handed over to the PA unless Mr Abbas and Mr Dahlan moved to disarm and dismantle Hamas and other extremist factions, confiscating weaponry and arresting leading activists. It would be clear within "two or three weeks" whether Mr Abbas was doing so, said Mr Dichter, and that would constitute the true measure of the tentative new optimism. In an isolated incident outside Tulkarm in the West Bank yesterday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian gunman who opened fire on them at a checkpoint.
A key factor in whether the fragile return to high-level bilateral meetings and tentative security co-operation becomes a viable norm, remains the role that the Palestinian Authority President, Yasser Arafat, intends to play.
Publicly indicating his support for moves forward, Mr Arafat emerged from his Israeli-besieged Ramallah headquarters yesterday to announce that the men who killed a Bulgarian labourer in the West Bank on Monday, breaching the truce, had been arrested. However, Palestinian security sources promptly denied the claim. Responsibility for the killing was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Mr Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO which has rejected the truce and which claims loyalty to Mr Arafat.
Mr Arafat also used the opportunity to castigate Israel for quietly allowing non-Muslims to enter the Temple Mount compound for the first time since the intifada erupted in late September 2000 following a visit to the holy site by Mr Sharon. Israel claims sovereignty at the site, but has barred it to non-Muslims for fear of sparking further unrest, and it seems plain that the decision to open it, to limited groups, was deliberately taken at this rare moment of relative tranquillity, in the hope that Muslim opposition might be muted.