At Sharm El-Sheikh the Israelis arrived with demands which the Palestinians were expected to meet, reports Magda El-Ghitany "This is not about optimism or pessimism, it is all about credibility," said Saeb Erikat, senior Palestinian delegate to this week's Sharm El-Sheikh summit. According to Erikat the four way summit that convened on Tuesday at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, bringing together the heads of state of Egypt, Jordan and Palestine and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "was simply a beginning and not an end". Statements made by Palestinian officials before and after their arrival in Sharm El-Sheikh showed few illusions. Palestinians know that whether they like it or not they have to commit to the "cease-fire" Israel demands. They can do little beyond hope that Israel, in return, will honour its own commitment to ending aggressive military operations conducted by the Israeli army. "We hope that this commitment will be genuinely mutual and that there would be a total cession of all Israeli military operations," said Erikat. Along with a commitment to end hostilities against Palestinians Erikat said the Palestinian delegation hoped to return from Sharm El-Sheikh with an agreement to release large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have been held in Israeli prisons for over 20 years. They were also seeking agreement from the Israeli government to facilitate the movement of Palestinian workers and allow the Gaza air and seaports to reopen. While conscious that this week's summit was not the venue to discuss final status issues, including the borders of the would-be independent Palestinian state, the status of East Jerusalem and the issue of refugees, Erikat insisted the Palestinians would stick to legitimate demands to establish a viable state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and find a fair and legal solution to the question of millions of Palestinian refugees. While the Palestinian delegation demanded a halt to the illegal construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 it was unclear what Israel's position would be. Yet, Erikat said, the issue had to be raised since it is "extremely important" and "of major concern to the Palestinian side". Fully aware that little of real substance would emerge from Sharm El- Sheikh the Palestinians hoped that the first summit between the recently elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in the presence of President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan, would offer a "beginning for a peace process, an end for the use of violence, as well as for bilateral, instead of Israeli unilateral, actions". But, Erikat argued, the efforts invested in Sharm El-Sheikh could only bear fruit if the international community, "especially the US, exerted every possible effort to secure for the Palestinians what is needed and not what is offered". While Israeli delegates to Sharm El- Sheikh described the summit as kick- starting a peace process they stopped short of saying what it is they are willing to promise to ensure that the summit initiates a substantial political process. Ra'anan Gissin, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, made no effort at Sharm El-Sheikh to conceal Israeli pleasure over the death of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. According to statements made by Gissin on Tuesday the death of Arafat had removed the "main obstacle that had blocked the peace process for years". Gissin was less forthcoming in answering questions over how Arafat had obstructed peace, or how Israel itself might remove some of the obstacles it has put in place, including the construction of illegal settlements and a separation wall on occupied Palestinian territory, a target-to-kill policy and the by now routine military invasion of Palestinian towns. As far as Gissin was concerned there was a single answer to all these questions: "The terror has to stop". The Israeli delegation's sole objective in coming to Sharm El-Sheikh was to extract a Palestinian commitment that no armed operations would be conducted by the Palestinian resistance and that the PA would act to end what Gissin called "incitement" -- for which read any criticism of the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or calls for the liberation of land occupied in 1967. Gissin did manage to acknowledge that, like Israelis the Palestinians too want a peaceful life and said that Israel was "willing to go very far" to attain "two democratic states that can live in peace beside each other". The summit, he said, offered "the first step on a new page" as long as the Palestinians "tried hard on the ground to stop violence. This is the condition -- a total cessation of Palestinian violence."
