Abbas, Sharon Hope to Avoid Repeating Past

JERUSALEM —  They shared stuffed chicken and salads at private dinners. In public, they shook hands and smiled for the cameras. They occasionally offered words about the need to end the many months of bloodshed.

But a brief series of talks two years ago between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, then the Palestinian Authority prime minister, ended in failure. A few months after the meetings began, violence was raging anew, a U.S-backed peace blueprint was foundering and Abbas had quit his post, feeling thwarted by his boss, Yasser Arafat, and Sharon.

As Sharon and Abbas prepare to meet next week in Egypt in another high-stakes summit -- this time with Abbas as Palestinian Authority president -- both are mindful of the brief but unhappy experience of 2003, and eager not to repeat the past.

The two leaders met five times between May and July that year, mostly in private, and would emerge each time without much progress to report.

Abbas said Sharon, who once referred to him as “a chick whose feathers haven’t grown in yet,” undermined him by not agreeing to concessions such as a large-scale release of Palestinian prisoners, a criticism widely repeated by Israeli commentators.

“They didn’t help me,” Abbas told Newsweek in November. “I concluded a cease-fire for 52 days. They didn’t give me anything -- lift any roadblocks, release any prisoners, nothing at all.”

Israel said the sessions were doomed because the Palestinians wouldn’t act against armed groups because of Arafat’s obstructionism. A large-scale prisoner release would have been “an empty measure,” said Dore Gold, an advisor to Sharon. Gold had described the 2003 talks as “very realistic and open.”

“Israel would have released prisoners. Arafat would have encouraged terrorism,” he said. “Where would we have been after that?”

Some of the same arguments have emerged before next week’s summit at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik, giving the latest dialogue a deja vu quality. Palestinian officials Friday called an Israeli offer to free 900 prisoners stingy. Sharon said the Palestinians would have to end attacks and dismantle militant groups before reconciliation could begin.

The circumstances this time have changed in important ways. Arafat died in November. Sharon is planning to evacuate Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. And the Bush administration is showing signs of being more engaged in the process.

The summit Tuesday, which will include Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, is freighted with hopes for a breakthrough in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, now in its fifth year.

Similar aspirations surrounded a June 2003 summit in Aqaba, Jordan, with Abdullah as host. It was attended by Sharon, Abbas and President Bush, who used the event to launch the “road map” peace plan. Sharon and Abbas pledged to meet their obligations under the plan, which calls for the creation of an independent Palestinian state by the end of this year.

In the weeks before the Aqaba summit, Abbas and Sharon met twice in private. Arafat had just named Abbas Palestinian prime minister, creating the position under international pressure to curb his powers.

The early talks took place under tense conditions. Not long before Abbas arrived for the first meeting, a bomb in the West Bank city of Hebron killed a Jewish settler and his wife. Hours after the meeting, a suicide bomber blew up a Jerusalem bus, killing seven passengers.

In their next meeting, Sharon suggested a gradual pullback of Israeli troops from a part of the northern Gaza Strip and some West Bank cities. He promised a limited prisoner release, but reiterated his demand that the Palestinians begin to dismantle armed groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The two premiers met twice after the summit. Prospects looked bright three weeks after the Aqaba talks when Abbas persuaded militant groups to declare a cease-fire. Israel responded by withdrawing soldiers from northern Gaza. Subsequent talks between Sharon and Abbas yielded little progress, though the two offered rare conciliatory remarks in one session.

Palestinian officials dismissed as inadequate Israel’s release of 339 prisoners that August. The cease-fire collapsed later in the month amid Israeli strikes against militant leaders and renewed bombings by Palestinians.

Abbas, fatigued by a power struggle with Arafat and feeling rebuffed by Sharon, resigned in September and dropped out of the political scene for more than a year, until Arafat became ill. After Abbas resigned, Sharon unveiled his plan to abandon certain settlements, including all 21 in Gaza.

Gold said that with Arafat out of the picture, it was up to Abbas to make good on Palestinian commitments to end attacks as Israel contemplates releasing more prisoners and withdrawing troops from a few West Bank cities. Those, steps along with the Gaza pullout planned for this year, have “front-loaded” the process this time, Gold said.

“The $64,000 question is whether Abbas will follow through and take the necessary security measures to kick-start the peace process,” Gold said.

Some Palestinian observers, though, hear worrisome strains of 2003 in the discussion: an early emphasis on security matters but not much talk about Israel freezing its settlement activities.

The earlier experience “is very similar to what is happening between the two of them in this new phase,” said Palestinian Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib. “It’s ironic. I hope that this time things go beyond that.”