Road map put into test

At long last, after 33 months of bloody battles between Palestinian hardliners and Israeli forces, the two sides reached an agreement on Sunday for a hudna, or ceasefire, a conciliatory gesture made by the belligerent parties to partially implement an international peace plan called the "road map for peace in the Middle East".

The agreement may only be a small step in the long winding road to peace, but if the truce holds and is followed by more concrete and sincere measures from both sides, the step may become a great leap forward for the future generations of the Israeli and Palestinian people.

Still, at least for now, it is a heartening result of the peace plan -- jointly drafted by a quartet comprising the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- that envisages the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state by 2005 to live peacefully and amicably with Israel.

The Israeli government withdrew its troops and armored vehicles from parts of Gaza on Sunday afternoon and will do likewise from the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Wednesday, thereby returning the right to self-rule of these territories to the Palestinian Authority. This, obviously, is another significant step taken by the Israeli government, after its dismantling of the Jewish settlers outposts in Palestinian territory just weeks ago.

A similar conciliatory gesture was also shown by the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the armed militants of the Fatah factions under Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who announced that they supported the decision of their leaders, Arafat and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, and agreed to a three-month hudna with Israel. In return, they demanded that the Jewish government stop assassinations of the militants and end the siege against President Arafat at his Ramallah compound in the West Bank, as well as the release of Palestinian fighters currently detained by Israel.

Although the ceasefire was marred by the shooting incident on Monday in the West Bank by members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah, it nevertheless did not derail the initial phase of the peace plan, because the group later pledged to honor the ceasefire agreement in their statement: "We, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, have decided to desist from all sorts of resistance and to stop our action against the Israelis."

Despite all this and the expectation of the world community that peace would prevail in the Middle East, many still believe that -- considering the complexity of the region's peace issue -- the newly attained temporary ceasefire agreement is volatile and may be disrupted by both Palestinian and Israeli diehards who oppose the "road map".

Besides, decades of animosity between the two peoples cannot be wiped out in just one day of talks. More action is needed to build confidence among the Palestinian and Israeli people that they, in fact, can silence the guns if they really want to -- just as they are doing now -- so that they can build toward a better and peaceful future.

Meanwhile, all other parties involved in the peace process, especially the countries of the peace quartet, as well as Arab and Muslim nations, should work harder to maintain, if not improve, what has thus far been achieved so as to prevent any more blood from being spilled in the region.

It is high time for the United Nations to give more muscle to the Palestinian Authority to deal with the renegade parties that oppose the peace plan, while putting more pressure on the Jewish state to fully and immediately implement the UN resolutions regarding the Arab lands currently still under Israeli control.