Nazir Majally, Asharq Al-Awsat

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 8 December 2003 — Talks among Palestinian factions aimed at a cease-fire to end three years of violence ended in failure in the Egyptian capital Cairo yesterday. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei left Cairo without the hoped-for call for a cease-fire, unable to secure agreement from the hard-line groups.

Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, dismissed the effort. “Israel is not a party to the Cairo talks, which anyway seemed to be a discussion about which Israelis it was permissible to kill and which ones it wasn’t.” he said.

During the talks, the groups considered a pledge only to halt strikes inside Israel, leaving Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza as legitimate targets.

Sharon rejected the distinction. “Israel of course can’t differentiate between citizens and soldiers,” he said, “or whether he lives here or there.” He said if violence stops, Israel would scale back its military activities. “Of course if terror activities continue, Israel will feel responsible for the defense of its citizens and Israel will act,” he warned after meeting the country’s president in the afternoon.

In Cairo, a senior official from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Husam Arafat, said: “The talks have reached a dead-end. There was no agreement on the Egyptian proposal for a total cease-fire or to authorize the Palestinian authority to pursue peace moves... The meeting ended without agreement on the major issues and there will be no joint statement. The factions will issue a press statement in which they will say they will pursue the dialogue in the future. It is a cover for failure.”

Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief and key mediator in the talks, had told the 13 Palestinian factions that simply halting attacks inside Israel was not sufficient and called for a full cease-fire offer.

Other Palestinian delegates confirmed the talks had ended without a full cease-fire deal. They said the groups would issue a statement stating their readiness to continue dialogue in the future.

“The meetings have ended without agreement. There will be no final joint communiqué,” said a senior official from Hamas, one of two Islamic groups which have spearheaded attacks in Israel.

Mohammed Nazzal, a Hamas delegate, said: “We think that the Palestinians do not have to do anything. Rather it’s Sharon who must stop his aggression against the Palestinian people.”

It was not immediately clear how the collapse of the talks would affect a planned meeting between Suleiman and US officials in Washington tomorrow or a meeting between the Palestinian and Israeli prime ministers. Suleiman had been expected to ask Washington for commitments to send monitors for any truce agreement reached