For the first time in its history, the Palestinian Authority has published a policy platform that doesn't include "armed resistance" to Israel as a core principle.
A new program presented by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salaam Fayyad has drawn praise from peaceniks on both sides, and fresh scorn from Hamas, after the Arabic word muqawama was left out of the document for the first time since the PA was established in 1993. The program was presented to cabinet Thursday, but details began to emerge only yesterday.
Muqawama means "resistance" but has come to be associated with violence after being appropriated by groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to rationalize everything from rocket attacks to suicide bombings.
An aide to Mr. Fayyad said the deletion didn't mean Palestinians are any more accepting of the 40-year-old Israeli occupation. Instead, the government will embrace what Mr. Abbas has called "popular struggle" while rejecting armed attacks on Israeli targets.
"We have the right to refuse and resist the occupation, but our experience shows that peaceful, active resistance - like in the first intifada, which was absolutely non-violent - could be more effective," said Jamal Zakut, a close confidante of Mr. Fayyad's.
The first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, lasted from 1987 to 1993, and is widely seen as having brought both sides to the table to negotiate the Oslo accords that created the Palestinian Authority. During the uprising, the primary Palestinian tactics were strikes and demonstrations, though violence frequently did break out.
The second intifada, which began in 2000 after the peace process stalled, has been marked by suicide bombings and gun attacks across the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel as well as harsh Israeli retaliations that included air strikes, home demolitions and major military operations. In more than six years of violence, some 5,200 people have been killed, 4,200 of them Palestinians.
"I, personally, am against summarizing the resistance only as these catastrophic suicide bombings and the useless firing of rockets," Mr. Zakut said. He added that Palestinian attacks had helped Israel justify its occupation and its own violence to the international community.
Most of the Palestinian attacks during the recent intifada were carried out by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent offshoot of Mr. Abbas's Fatah movement. While the new government program could lead to a dramatic drop in West Bank violence, where Fatah holds sway and the Israeli government has recently praised the PA for its help in preventing attacks, it's likely to have little impact in Gaza, where Hamas is in complete control.
The Islamist movement, which won the legislative election in early 2006, doesn't recognize Mr. Fayyad's government and considers its decrees to be illegal. Islamic Jihad and other factions regularly fire rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.
"Fayyad only represents himself and his junta in [ending armed resistance]because the Palestinian people will never put their confidence in a government that surrenders totally to the occupation," said Hamas legislator Yehya Moussa.
Nonetheless, the new program is the latest and most dramatic step in a rapid warming of relations between Israel and the PA since the dramatic armed takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas last month.
Among other measures, some 178 Palestinian fighters affiliated with Fatah were granted amnesty by Israel this month, after they handed in their weapons and pledged to cease attacks on Israeli targets. Another 255 Palestinian prisoners, most of them affiliated with Fatah, were released from Israeli jails.
Diplomats and officials on both sides speak of a spreading optimism ahead of an international peace conference scheduled for some time in the fall, although no one seems to have a strategy for how to deal with a Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Yossi Beilin, a left-wing Israeli politician who was shown the new program during a meeting with Mr. Fayyad, described the document as "a very clear commitment to peace" by the new Palestinian government.
Mr. Beilin, who helped draw up the Oslo accords along with Mr. Abbas, said it was important that Israel now reciprocate with more gestures of its own to build momentum ahead of the fall peace conference.
"There is a short while in which we can move ahead," he said.
Mark MacKinnon