Smiles And Handshakes In Mideast

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared Tuesday that their people would stop all military or violent activity, pledging to break the four-year cycle of bloodshed and get peace talks back on track.

Both men smiled broadly as they leaned across a long white table to shake hands as each side's top leaders met for the first time since Abbas succeeded Yasser Arafat after his November death. Sharon and Abbas themselves last met in July 2003.

Abbas said he told Sharon that Palestinians will halt all violence against Israelis. In return, Sharon promised an end to Israeli military operations everywhere against Palestinians, and that he hopes Palestinian state eventually will exist alongside Israel.

"Today, in my meeting with chairman Abbas, we agreed that all Palestinians will stop all acts of violence against all Israelis everywhere, and, at the same time, Israel will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians everywhere," Sharon said.

Sharon invited Abbas to his ranch in southern Israel, and the Palestinian leader accepted, senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir said. Meir did not say when the next Sharon-Abbas meeting would take place. Sharon owns Sycamore Ranch in southern Israel, near the Gaza Strip.

An invitation to both sides to meet separately with President Bush at the White House this spring added another round of momentum on the summit's eve.

Meir, who attended Tuesday's summit, said that "there was a great atmosphere in the talks ... smiles and joking."

He said everything went according to the carefully planned agenda, and no disagreements emerged.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the summit a "beginning" and said talks might continue in Israel as soon as Wednesday.

"We're determined to exert every possible effort to maintain this," Erekat said.

The cease-fire agreement to be announced later Tuesday will not be a formal written document, but instead a verbal declaration by each side to halt violence, said Gideon Meir, a senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry. An Egyptian official familiar with the deal confirmed that.

Abbas will declare an end to violence against Israelis, and Sharon will declare an end to Israeli military operations, Meir said.

In addition, Meir said that Israel will accept that in the short term the Palestinian Authority will not actively crack down on militant groups. However, in the long term, that must be done because otherwise "the Palestinian terrorist organizations will have the ability to derail the peace process, hijack the peace process," Meir said.

Another senior Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, made clear, however, that the halt to Israeli military operations still depended on a halt to Palestinian violence.

Israelis and Palestinians are as hopeful as they were skeptical, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger. There have been several other cease-fires in the past four years, and each one collapsed.

Possible prisoner releases also were on the agenda, but any negotiations toward a final peace deal must wait until later, Erekat said.

Militant groups say they'll resume attacks if Israel doesn't release all 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel says hard-core terrorists will not be freed.

A Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip also struck a cautionary note, saying the radical Islamic group, which has been responsible for hundreds of attacks against Israelis over the past four years, would evaluate the summit before committing itself to halting its campaign of violence.

"We agreed before with Mahmoud Abbas that if he succeeds to achieve our national goals, he should come back to the Palestinian factions to discuss the issue, and after that we will decide our stand," Mahmoud Zahar said.

Still, the verbal agreement was the clearest indication yet of momentum following Yasser Arafat's death, the election of a new Palestinian leader and a signal from the White House that it plans a renewed push for peace.

One hopeful sign was that the Israeli flag was among those flying on the route from the Sharm el-Sheikh airport to the resort hotel where the summit is being held, the Jerusalem Post reports. The last time Israeli and Palestinian leaders met there, in 2000, only the Jordanian, Egyptian, Palestinian and American flags were seen. At a summit in Aqaba in 2003, the Israeli flag was also absent.

An Israeli official said the presence of his country's flag shows a change in attitude.

Erekat said the agreement also included the establishment of joint committees — one to determine criteria for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, and the other to oversee the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities on the West Bank.

The senior Israeli official said that after Sharon's declaration of an end to military operations, the two sides would go back to operating as they did before the 2000 outbreak of fighting: In Palestinian-controlled areas, including most of Gaza and eventually most West Bank towns, the Israelis would coordinate with Palestinian security forces if they wanted to arrest someone.

It was not clear what rules would apply in the towns that for now continue to be under Israeli security control — Jenin and Nablus.

Significant steps have been taken since Arafat's death to reconcile Israel's primary concern of security with Arabs' main objective of getting the "road map" on the fast track.

Abbas has deployed police to keep the peace in Gaza, ordered arrests of some operatives and appears to have won pledges from militants to halt attacks on Israel.