MIDEAST: In what is potentially the most positive move in 33 months towards ending the intifada, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two Palestinian groups responsible for most of the suicide bombings and other attacks which have killed hundreds of Israelis since autumn 2000, announced yesterday that they were halting attacks for 90 days.
A similar ceasefire announcement from Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction of the PLO followed a few hours later.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry official publicly dismissed the truce as a trick, asserting that the Palestinian extremists would merely utilise the time-out to regroup and rebuild. However, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, told the visiting US National Security Adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice yesterday that Israel would try to help the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, make a long-term success of the ceasefire.
This would be in the expectation that the authority would work to prevent any resumption of attacks by confiscating illegal weaponry and deploying security personnel to thwart future bombers.
In a further step forward, Israeli and Palestinian officials yesterday reached agreement on an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the northern Gaza Strip. The pullback, which started last night in the town of Beit Hanoun, may be followed by an army withdrawal later this week from the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Mr Abbas and his officials, who have also been meeting Ms Rice, gave assurances that they would deploy security personnel in those parts of Gaza which the Israeli army leaves, to prevent rocket fire by Hamas at Jewish settlements and into sovereign Israel.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad surprised Mr Abbas in issuing their ceasefire declaration yesterday.
Mr Abbas, who has now been invited by Ms Rice to visit the White House in the near future, had anticipated issuing a joint declaration, endorsed by all Palestinian groups. However, the Islamic extremists did not agree to all the language in the joint draft - including the references to the state of Israel, which they do not recognise, and to the US-backed "road map" to Palestinian statehood, whose terms they reject - and therefore issued their own declaration.
It announces a suspension of "military operations against the Zionist enemy" but also demands "the total cessation of all forms of Zionist aggression against our people", the release of Palestinian prisoners and an end to Israeli assassination attempts on its leaders.
Mr Sharon and Ms Rice discussed an Israeli release of some, but not all, Palestinian prisoners, possibly rebuilding Gaza's international airport and the need to show "sensitivity" in weighing what Israel calls "targeted strikes" against intifada kingpins.
However the US has neither obtained nor sought a pledge from Israel not to strike at "ticking bombs" - bombers and gunmen en route to carry out attacks.
Although Ms Rice's talks in Jerusalem were generally positive, she clashed with Israeli ministers when criticising the concrete "security fence" Israel is building along its border with the West Bank, which at points departs from the pre-1967 border to include a strip of West Bank land sometimes several kilometres wide. Mr Abbas had protested to Ms Rice about the effective annexation of this strip of West Bank land; Mr Sharon said the fence was not a border but a vital obstacle to suicide bombers.
Mr Sharon also repeated Israeli concern that Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and gunmen and bombers from Mr Arafat's Fatah, will exploit their perceived immunity from Israeli attack during the truce to prepare explosive devices and select targets for a future wave of violence.
Mr Mohammad Dahlan, Mr Abbas's Minister of Security, reiterated at the weekend that the PA would not aggressively confront Hamas and made no pledge to arrest its leaders.
Rather, PA officials say, they hope that the evidence of improved conditions for ordinary Palestinians as a result of the ceasefire, Israeli withdrawals, eased travel restrictions and the renewed possibility for more Palestinians to work in Israel, will reduce the bombers' motivation and undermine what has been a dramatic growth in support for Hamas.
A company of the quasi-military Israeli border police is to be disbanded after four of its members were indicted for killing a Palestinian. Others are being investigated for alleged harassment of and theft from Palestinians. The commander of the unit, based in Hebron, has been fired.
An investigation found that after five members of the unit were killed by Palestinian gunmen in an ambush last November (12 Israelis died in all), others began carrying out acts of "revenge".