The Baltimore Sun

A vote for peace

January 11, 2005

NOW THE difficult work begins for Mahmoud Abbas. After handily winning the Palestinian presidency Sunday, Mr. Abbas has to transform his victory with 62 percent of the vote into a platform for reform and change. And he will require significant help from the United States, Europe and Israel to carry out that goal with the aim of restarting peace talks. Mr. Abbas is in a precarious spot - he has to try to effect substantive change without controlling the levers of change.

Palestinians who chose Mr. Abbas as the successor to the late Yasser Arafat want and deserve relief from the harsh restrictions of Israel's occupation, which has intensified in the four years since Palestinian militants unleashed a scourge of suicide bombers and rocket attacks against the Jewish state. Israelis want and deserve an end to the indiscriminate violence that targets civilians throughout the country.

To improve daily life for Palestinians, Mr. Abbas, a veteran peace negotiator and political moderate, will have to rely in large measure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who demands first an end to the violence. To meet that demand, Mr. Abbas will have to persuade Hamas, Islamic Jihad and militants in his own Fatah group to cease their punishing attacks. Their leaders speak of support for Mr. Abbas while they maintain their right to drive out the occupiers.

Mr. Abbas, who publicly criticized the militants' campaign of violence as a mistake, is dealing in a realm of competing philosophies, agendas and egos. He is a skilled interlocutor and political pragmatist who understands the unique opportunity before him to end the diplomatic stalemate of the final years of Mr. Arafat's chaotic rule. He commands a position of power, where in the past, as prime minister, he was outmaneuvered by Mr. Arafat.

But President Bush and other world leaders who profess support for Mr. Abbas must acknowledge their roles in helping him achieve some success and break the stalemate. Mr. Bush's White House invitation to Mr. Abbas must be more than a photo op; the president's decision to increase U.S. aid to the Palestinians will help Mr. Abbas' work. But as critical would be a commitment from Mr. Sharon, at Mr. Bush's urging, to ease travel restrictions in the West Bank and release some Palestinian detainees who have been held too long. A halt in settlement expansion would be a potent way to show Israel's intention to move this process forward. Egypt and other Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, should begin immediately retraining Palestinian security forces. The Europeans can take the lead on economic aid to help rebuild the decimated Palestinian economy.

Palestinians went to the polls Sunday in respectable numbers because they understood what was at stake - a chance to reclaim some control over their lives, to move toward a negotiated settlement of this deadly conflict, to improve their chances for an independent state.

Theirs was a vote for peace, and Mr. Abbas said as much: "We are ready for peace, a peace based on justice." Their act of hope must be met in kind.