The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said on Monday that he expected Hamas and other armed factions to announce a full ceasefire in the conflict with Israel at a meeting beginning in Cairo on Tuesday.
Abbas said that if the ceasefire is agreed, he wants Israel to begin full negotiations over the creation of a Palestinian state.
But the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said there would be no talks before Hamas and its allies had been completely disarmed. ”Without genuine action by the Palestinians against terrorism, it will be unable to move anything forward,” he said.
The Palestinian president told Israeli television that the three-day meeting in Cairo would formalise a truce that has been in place since his summit with Sharon in Sharm el-Sheikh five weeks ago and significantly reduced violence.
”God willing, we will go there to declare a ceasefire, for all the Palestinian factions to declare this ceasefire, for the sake of giving the peace process a chance to begin and to return to its normal path,” he said.
Abbas said the ceasefire would continue ”as long as the situation moves in a positive direction”. But the Palestinian leadership warned that Israel’s failure to deliver on commitments made by Sharon at last month’s summit to withdraw troops from West Bank towns and lift roadblocks was straining efforts to keep violence under control.
Sharon further angered the Palestinians on Monday by approving the final route of the West Bank barrier around Jerusalem to include a sprawling Jewish settlement, Maale Adumim, on the Israeli side.
The concrete and steel barrier will now run about halfway across the West Bank in the Jerusalem region, and take in part of Bethlehem so that religious Jews have access to a shrine, Rachel’s tomb.
Israel’s deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, confirmed Palestinian fears that the government plans to unilaterally annex the major settlement blocs that are home to about 400 000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
”Does anyone have even the slightest doubt that Maale Adumim is an integral part of Israel?” he told Israel radio.
Olmert said he expected no opposition from Washington to the move because President Bush has already said that a final agreement would have to recognise the demographic realities created by Jewish settlements.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia, warned a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists that unilateral moves by Sharon undermined Abbas. ”The hope of our people is fading away because of the Israeli policies,” he said.
”The only agreement that can be guaranteed and protected by both peoples is an agreement that comes through negotiations. I’m afraid that with unilateralism, there will be no possibilities for peace on both sides.”
The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, on a visit to Ramallah on Monday, announced that the UN is establishing a register of damage to Palestinian property caused by the barrier’s construction.
The Cairo talks are expected to focus on the future political role of Hamas and the other 12 groups attending. The armed factions have demanded an end to all Israeli military operations, the release of about 8 000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian towns.
Abbas repeated an earlier warning that Hamas cannot be both an armed group and a political party. ”That is why we said to everyone in the beginning that there can be only one authority, one decision maker,” he said.
Israeli officials have said that Hamas’s announcement that it will compete in July’s elections for the Palestinian Parliament could be an obstacle to resuming talks.
Opinion polls suggest that Hamas will pick up at least one quarter of the seats.
Abbas is also expected to tell the Palestinian factions that they need to look on the question of the right of return for refugees ”realistically” by recognising that Israel will never permit them to settle in the Jewish state, and that a final agreement should permit them to move to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza strip or remain abroad and receive compensation. – Guardian Unlimited Â