OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 19 September — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the Israeli Army to halt attacks and withdraw from Palestinian-ruled territory yesterday after President Yasser Arafat told Palestinians to enforce a cease-fire.
Both leaders acted under fierce American pressure to end a year of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed widely seen as an obstacle to US efforts to forge an anti-terror alliance after last week’s attacks on New York and Washington. Sharon and Arafat had both faced a concerted campaign of pressure from United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, since the attacks on the United States.
The army withdrew tanks from the West Bank city of Jenin, but the two sides later exchanged fire in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus, and at Rafah near the border between Gaza and Egypt. Each accused the other of firing first. The new pledges to halt firing renewed hopes that the two sides will soon meet for talks and an elusive truce will emerge in a conflict that has killed more than 700 people.
But several earlier cease-fires, including one brokered by the United States in June, have failed and some Palestinian groups vowed to defy the peace effort. They included Islamic Jihad.
“I think it can become a turning point,” Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told CNN television. “The two armies have given orders...to stop shooting.” Peres said he and Arafat might be able to start long-delayed talks in days if the situation remains calm.
US President George W. Bush, whose administration has played a less direct role in peace moves than previous US governments, welcomed the commitment to ending fighting. “The president has called on all parties ... to seize this moment and do everything possible in the wake of this attack on the United States to move forward with the peace process in the Middle East,” spokesman Ari Fleischer said in Washington.
At stake is the US-led effort to draw Arab states into an international anti-terror coalition. Its first target is expected to be Osama Bin Laden, named by Washington as its prime suspect in the devastating US attacks. Continuing Israeli-Palestinian violence has been widely seen as a major obstacle to winning broad-based Arab support.
Arafat seized the initiative by announcing he had not only told his forces to observe a unilateral cease-fire but, in an unprecedented step, ordered them not to fire in self-defense. “We Palestinians and Israelis have to work together to break the vicious cycle of violence,” Arafat told reporters after a meeting in Gaza with about 20 diplomats from the United States, Canada, Japan and European and Arab countries.
Sharon, who has demanded 48 hours free of violence before truce talks can start, wasted little time in responding. Within hours, the Israeli Army said it had been ordered to withdraw from areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip which are under full Palestinian control and to “avoid any attacking activities against the Palestinians”.
