Mideast gains

THERE ARE sound reasons to hope that yesterday's summit meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may mark the beginning of a new peacemaking dynamic that culminates in the two-state solution to their conflict that Palestinians and Israelis need more than ever.

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The cease-fire to which Sharon and Abbas pledged themselves is welcome not only as an immediate relief from the killing of innocents and the corroding bitterness that accompanies such bloodshed but also as an indispensable first step toward the renewal of political negotiations. Because of Yasser Arafat's death and the realization in both camps that the violence of the past four and a half years has led to a hopeless dead end, conditions are ripe for a return to reason.

Abbas and Sharon have made a good start. The new Palestinian leader has dispatched police to stop rocket attacks against Israelis. He has begun to unify and place under a clear chain of command all Palestinian security forces. Although Sharon declined to sign any formal agreement on a cease-fire, the actions Abbas has already taken to undo Arafat's double-dealing on security satisfy Sharon's terms for easing the harshest conditions of Israel's counterinsurgency methods.

It is a good sign that in conjunction with the cease-fire, the Israeli military will be leaving key towns in the West Bank. If the cease-fire holds, Sharon should also take some of the other measures that Abbas and the Palestinian people want. More Palestinian prisoners beyond the 900 already agreed upon should be released. All settlement activity should be frozen, and Israel should refrain from seizing Palestinian property in in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

These are gestures that are needed to rally Palestinian society to Abbas and his strategy of pursuing peace by peaceful means. They are also effective ways to isolate politically those Palestinian factions that want to renew what they call their armed struggle.

Sharon should understand the political and psychological utility of such measures; they mirror the actions he is demanding of Abbas. Sharon wants an end of attacks on Israelis to help prevent domestic opponents from derailing his planned withdrawal from Gaza. And like Abbas, he needs a period without violence to change the popular mood.

If Israelis are to follow Sharon on the path he sketched out yesterday from cease-fire to Gaza disengagement to renewal of the road map peace plan leading to a Palestinian state, Israelis will have to be given confidence that a two-state solution can be compatible with security. Abbas, who grasps this truth, merits the support of Washington as well as Cairo and Amman, Jordan.