A PROMISING lull in Israeli-Palestinian violence ended this week, after Israel assassinated an Islamic Jihad commander and three other militiamen Wednesday, and retaliatory rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel the next day. The resumption of violence was disturbing not just because civilians were once again subject to rocket and missile attacks, but also because it threatened efforts, mediated by Egypt, to explore a longer cease-fire.
Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, and the United States all share an interest in limiting the damage from the new violence. But because the Islamist movement Hamas - not the Palestinian Authority - controls Gaza, only Hamas can enforce a ban on the launching of rockets fram Gaza. Hence it is only realistic to seek Hamas's cooperation in arranging a cease-fire.
Israel and Hamas have been reluctant to talk to each other directly. Yet indirect negotiations on a cease-fire between the two sides - discussions that went unacknowledged until recently - need to continue.
Without explicitly saying so, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit outlined the general contours and goals of such a cease-fire during a joint press conference with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week in Cairo. "I think we agree, both of us, that there has to be a kind of cessation of hostilities," Gheit said. "No missiles are to be fired on the Israelis, but the Israelis also are required not to respond in the manner that they have been responding over the last few days."
Gheit implied that such a cease-fire is a precondition for successful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. His comments also indicated that US officials had given Egypt a green light to try to arrange this "period of quiet and order." This Bush administration acceptance of the need for a cease-fire between two parties was perhaps the most promising element of the lull that was shattered in the last few days.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni forthrightly told Globe writers and editors this week that her government, the Bush administration, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Egypt all wish to "delegitimize Hamas." Nevertheless, the road to any final-status peace agreement must pass through a cease-fire with Hamas.
Livni, who is leading the Israeli team negotiating on the "core issues" of a peace agreement with Abbas's administration, has sagely adopted the stance of Israel's slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: To fight terrorism as if there were no peace process, and to pursue negotiations as if there were no terrorism.
But even the best-intentioned negotiators will not be able to forge the historic agreement the two peoples need if they go on killing each other. Temporary peace is the best preparation for a permanent peace.
