AL QUDS: Within minutes of the long-awaited declaration of a ceasefire in what Israelis call the “thousand day war”, both sides were wondering if this was as far as the US-led road map to peace would go.

The Israeli government greeted the truce as little more than a respite from nearly three years of bloody intifada that has cost the Palestinians even more dearly than ordinary Israelis.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, which said they would suspend suicide bombings and other attacks for three months to give the peace process a chance, are sceptical that the Israelis want to end their war on the Palestinians.

But the real stumbling block could be the road map itself. Now that a ceasefire is in place, the plan requires the Palestinian Authority to use its security forces to begin “sustained, targeted and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons.”

Ariel Sharon, after weeks of opposing a ceasefire on the grounds it would merely give Hamas time to regroup after a series of Israeli raids against its commanders, finally gave his tacit approval to the truce, under American pressure, and agreed to pull troops out of most of the Gaza Strip.

But the Israeli prime minister is adamant that even if suicide bombings grind to a halt, he expects the Palestinian authorities to use the truce to disarm and dismantle the militant Palestinian groups, especially Hamas, by arresting their leaders and wrecking their infrastructure.

In Jerusalem on Sunday, Israel’s foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, told the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that the ceasefire is a ploy to keep the “terror infrastructure” intact, and that Israel will not permit the road map to advance if the Palestinians fail to confront Hamas or meet their other obligations.

But the Palestinian security minister, Mohammed Dahlan, whom the Israelis expect to head the assault on Hamas, told the Guardian earlier this month that a crackdown on Hamas would provoke a civil war and the resumption of attacks on Israel.

“No one will force us into a conflict with Hamas,” he said. “It would create internal Palestinian problems and ensure the continuation of operations [attacks] inside Israel.

“Our strategy is to preserve the internal integrity of Palestinian territory and at the same time stop all operations against Israelis.

“Despite all the pressures and blackmail being practised against us by the Israelis, and even the pressures from the opposition in Hamas, we are succeeding in realising our strategy. We do not intend to destroy it.”

The leaders of Hamas are equally firm that they have no intention of allowing their organisation to be dismantled, saying a ceasefire is not a surrender.

But now there is added pressure from the White House. President George Bush has concentrated most of his efforts in pushing the road map on getting Mr Sharon to sign up and grudgingly begin to meet Israel’s obligations.

But last week, Mr Bush put new pressure on the Palestinians. “It’s one thing to make a verbal agreement, but in order for there to be peace in the Middle East, we must see organisations such as Hamas dismantled,” Mr Bush said.

Senior Palestinian officials privately say that the fate of “terrorist groups” does not have to be a deal breaker because, if people in Gaza begin to see significant improvements to their lives with the Israeli army pull-out and the easing of restrictions on movement, Hamas will not wish to undermine its support by taking them back to war.

But the same officials are deeply sceptical about Israeli intent and fear that Mr Sharon will use any failure to dismantle Hamas as a justification to call a halt to the peace process.

Mr Dahlan has gone so far as to accuse the Israeli army of acting outside democratic accountability in launching military raids aimed at subverting the road map. But another Palestinian official said that if the killing stops, it will be difficult for either side to go back.

“I think it’s going to be difficult, if there’s no attacks, for the Israelis to hold up the whole process and say they haven’t got what they wanted so the road map can’t advance. The Americans understand that there’s nothing to be gained by this, if Hamas is contained,” the official said.

“The Israelis are also failing to meet their obligations, particularly on the settlements. They’re only pretending to dismantle the outposts and they have frozen expansion of the larger settlements. There’s going to have to be a lot of flexibility here.”

Neither ordinary Israelis nor Palestinians were celebrating on Sunday’s ceasefire, or the army’s pullout from most of Gaza.

On the brink of the truce declaration, the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, was confronted by a crowd in Ramallah at the weekend which demanded to know when he would secure the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, many held for months and years without trial under security legislation.

Mr Abbas assured them that the prisoners will be released. “There will be no peace or security if even one Palestinian prisoner remains behind bars. Be sure that we will exert our utmost in order to empty all prisons of prisoners,” he said.

But many Palestinians remain sceptical that the road map is going to deliver anything more than a less brutal form of occupation.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.