The Phones Are Dead

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In 1998, as Ariel Sharon prepared for his first-ever meeting with a member of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, the old general didn't hide his distaste at the prospect of sitting down with Palestinian leaders. "All of them are from Sodom," Sharon told a friend. "But we'll have to deal with someone after Arafat." Sharon decided to place his bets on the secretary-general of the P.L.O.'s executive committee, a taciturn moderate named Mahmoud Abbas. Sharon invited Abbas to Sycamores Farm, his 600-hectare ranch in the Negev Desert. If Abbas were ever to replace Arafat, Sharon later concluded, he was a man Israel could do business with.

That expectation is about to be put to the test. Seven years after their first meeting, Sharon and Abbas may have an opportunity to bring an end to the ruinous conflict between their peoples. Among many Israelis and Palestinians, the election of Abbas as Palestinian President on Jan. 9 stirred hopes of a chance to revive the peace process. But the mood of optimism was shattered, at least temporarily, when Palestinian militants last Thursday killed six Israelis at a freight-crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip. In response, Sharon suspended contact with Abbas' Palestinian Authority and ruled out a meeting with the new Palestinian leader until Abbas punishes the perpetrators of the attack. And yet there is sufficient respect between the two leaders that it may be just a matter of time before they sit down together. "They will have no difficulty talking to each other," says Dennis Ross, the former U.S. envoy to the Middle East. "But it won't matter what the words are. It matters what happens on the ground."

Sharon treats Abbas with a level of respect he never showed Arafat. At the peace talks in Wye River, Maryland, in 1998, Sharon refused to shake Arafat's hand and pretended not to hear anything the Palestinian leader said to him. But he chatted amicably with Abbas on a sundeck there. "Their personalities are very similar," says Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator who attended the Wye talks. "They're both very courtly, exceedingly polite and soft-spoken." During Abbas' tenure as Palestinian Prime Minister in 2003, Sharon invited him to Jerusalem and stood with him and George W. Bush at a peace summit in Aqaba, Jordan. Two weeks ago, Sharon privately told a U.S. visitor that he liked Abbas, though he added that he hadn't yet seen any attempt by the new Palestinian chief to rein in the terrorist groups.

Sharon's bottom line for a return to peace talks is for Abbas to confront the Islamists of Hamas and the gunmen of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and halt the rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip. The persistence of such attacks may jeopardize Sharon's plans to evacuate all Israeli settlers from Gaza as early as this summer, which is now viewed by U.S. officials as a critical first step toward peace. "Abbas doesn't have 100 days of grace. He doesn't even have 100 seconds," says Amos Gilad, an influential Defense Ministry policymaker. Top Palestinian officials say the attack at the Gaza checkpoint showed that extremists intend to use violence to bury any chance Abbas has of diplomatic progress — a strategy that yielded immediate results when Sharon suspended ties with Abbas the next day.

Abbas is feeling pressure. At a meeting last week of the central committee of Fatah, Abbas' political party, there were heated exchanges between party officials who told Abbas that he must act soon to energize the economy and end violence. "People look to you as a reformer," said Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, according to Fatah officials who attended the meeting. "You have to prove that you're for real."

After Abbas' election victory, Sharon placed a call to his former houseguest. According to Israeli and Palestinian officials, Sharon congratulated Abbas and said he was "looking forward to meeting with you to discuss issues." Abbas responded that they would meet soon, "God willing." The attack in Gaza put all that on hold. Restoring confidence in the prospects for peace will require Abbas to show some will of his own.