Nazir Majally, Asharq Al-Awsat

RAMALLAH, 23 September 2003 — Palestinian President Yasser Arafat declared a commitment to reaching a total cease-fire with Israel in a letter given to envoys of the peacemaking “Quartet”, Palestinian officials said yesterday.

But the letter cited conditions, including an international observer force to help enforce US-led peace moves, that Israel has already rejected.

Israeli officials swiftly dismissed Arafat’s initiative as a ploy to avoid threatened expulsion.

The four-month-old road map peace plan sponsored by the international Quartet has been stymied by a relapse into tit-for-tat bloodshed in recent weeks with Washington preoccupied by turmoil in occupied Iraq and a looming election campaign at home.

Violence continued heedless of diplomacy by the Quartet, which consists of the European Union, United States, United Nationals and Russia, with Israeli troops killing a wanted Palestinian militant in the West Bank yesterday.

In a move that could ease tensions with the Palestinians, a deal appeared to be in the making under which Israel may free Marwan Barghouti, a leader of Arafat’s Fatah faction, in a prisoner exchange with the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

A senior Israeli security source said: “An agreement could be struck soon, but it’s not fixed yet.” With German mediation, Israel has been negotiating with Hezbollah for the release of an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers believed to have died after capture on the Lebanese frontier three years ago.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Arafat received Quartet envoys from the EU, UN and Russia in his half-demolished West Bank compound where Israeli forces have confined him for almost two years. “President Arafat handed them a letter in which he said he is committed to a total cessation of violence against Israelis anywhere, provided the Quartet intervenes to revive the road map and sends monitors to commit the two sides to implement it.”

Erekat said Arafat also reiterated his support for the road map, which calls for an end to violence and the start of reciprocal steps leading to a Palestinian state by 2005.