"I believe that next week I will reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas," Abbas

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, May 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As Palestinian Premier Mahmud Abbas said he will reach a ceasefire with the resistance movement Hamas by next week Israel's Jewish settlers are gearing up for war against the peace roadmap.

In an interview published Thursday, May 29, Abbas – also known as Abu Mazen – told the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, "I believe that next week I will reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas".

His comments came a few hours before a key meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss implementation of the internationally drafted roadmap for peace, which calls among other things for an end to the Israeli military crack down and Palestinian resistance operations.

"Hamas will undertake to stop terrorism both inside the Green Line and in the territories," Abbas said. "In the wake of the agreement with Hamas, I hope also to reach an agreement with the Tanzim and Islamic Jihad, but we have not had a chance to meet yet."

The word “Tanzim” refers to armed groups linked to Fatah, the party founded in the late 1950s by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Abbas, and the most important of which is the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The Green Line is the line separating Israel from the West Bank.

“We agree to stop attacks against Israeli civilians if Israel stops its aggression against our people,” al-Rantisi

"We are engaged in talks on this subject with the organizations' leaders abroad and with the activists in the prisons," Abbas added.

When he was sworn in a month ago, Abbas vowed to disarm militant resistance groups in a bid to put an end to 32 months of Intifada and implement the roadmap.

However, Hamas' political leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi suggested that the Yediot story was putting too optimistic a spin on the situation, saying he did not consider the newspaper to be a reliable source.

He told AFP in Gaza City that "Hamas is still discussing the issue at the highest level but “we haven't reached a decision for the moment.

"Our position is unchanged, we agree to stop attacks against Israeli civilians if Israel stops its aggression against our people, the incursions and the assassinations. For a real ceasefire, we need attacks to be frozen on both sides."

Jewish Settlers Mobilize

Israeli hard line settlers are seen as the biggest obstacle before peace

On the other hand, the Jewish settlers are reeling from conciliatory comments toward the Palestinians from one of their staunch allies, Sharon, and his support for the roadmap plan which calls for a Palestinian state.

"It broke my heart," said Eliezer Hisdai, referring to Sharon's criticism of the Israeli army's prolonged reoccupation of the West Bank, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Hisdai, the mayor of the northern West Bank settlement of Alfe Menashe, said panic swept his community when Sharon, considered the architect of Israel's settlement policy, became the first Israeli Premier to recognize the Palestinian right to statehood.

As a member of Council of Settlement in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Hisdai knows that if the international roadmap is fully implemented, some of the 160 settlements dotting the territory will have to be dismantled.

The fact he is a member of Sharon's right-wing Likud party added to his dismay. He said he was not disappointed by his leader's apparent shift, only "confused".

Hisdai's settlement is large community of 5,000 people just two kilometers (1.2 miles) east of the Green Line, near the Palestinian city of Qalqilya.

The settlers consider the roadmap even "worse" than the 1993 Oslo accords on Palestinian autonomy, because it calls for an independent Palestinian state by 2005 and a provisional one by the end of this year.

The blueprint also urges Israel to dismantle all the settlement outposts created since Sharon's accession to power in March 2001 as part of the first of the document's three phases.

Hisdai said there were between 15 and 20 of these rogue settlements in the West Bank and claimed only four are considered illegal.

Two wildcat settlements have been set up since Wednesday in the southern West Bank region of al-Khalil, Israeli radio reported, in a show of force by the settlers ahead of Sharon's meeting with Abbas.

However, the Israeli anti-settlement organization Peace Now has counted up to 63 outposts since March 2001, inhabited or not.

Hisdai predicted Sharon could reach an agreement with the settlers for dismantling a few outposts and also vowed they would not resort to violence to oppose the roadmap but only "passive resistance".

However, this is only the council's official position and hardliners may use different methods.

Hisdai said he wanted to believe the roadmap had no chance of succeeding because the Palestinians will not succeed in putting an end to the violence and that Sharon's backing of the blueprint is only tactical.

But he was not planning to take any chances. The Council of Settlements is launching a campaign to contribute to the roadmap's collapse.

He was banking on support from the two nationalist pro-settler parties which joined Sharon's coalition last January and hold two cabinet portfolios.

"I forbid them to resign, because they can slow the train down and hopefully derail it," he explained.

The council was also planning to organize mass demonstrations such as those that took place during the Oslo process.

But the government at the time was led by the left-leaning Labor party, and the settlers would now have to mobilize against their natural political allies in the right-wing.

A first protest, scheduled for next week in Jerusalem will be a test for their determination to oppose Sharon's government.