Earlier today the Palestinian Authority and several Palestinian terrorist organizations, including, most prominently, Hamas, wrapped up their meeting in Cairo with an agreement to extend their ceasefire with Israel until the end of this year, assuming Israel meets a variety of conditions. As I watched the press conference and statements by leaders of the various organizations on Al-Jazeera earlier, the most oft-repeated demands were “and end to Israeli aggression” and “freeing of the prisoners” – the latter a reference to terrorists which currently inhabit Israeli prisons. The Islamist daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi phrased the united position this way:

ÄQuoting Amr Sulayman, head of Egyptian intelligenceÅ ‘this political program for the year 2005 provides for, in the current environment, fulfillment of the truce in exchange for the fulfillment by Israel of a stopping to all forms of aggression against our land, and our people wherever found.’ The participants also called for the freeing of all the families and the prisoners, emphasizing also that continuance of the settlements and building of the wall and the Judiazation of East Jerusalem are provocations.

The demand for an end to Israeli settlement building is reasonable; in fact Israel has already agreed to this, and there is a growing consensus within Israel that the West Bank settlements will have to be given up. There are also reasonable objections which could be made to the location of Israel’s security wall, as parts of it are built through Palestinian villages. But the absolute objection to the wall is not reasonable, except (from Hamas’ perspective) to the extent that it is intended to keep Israel vulnerable to terrorism, since the incomplete wall has already made a significant contribution to stopping suicide bombers.

Even more unreasonable is the demand for the freeing of the prisoners, and it is important to understand why. These “prisoners” are not by and large Palestinian youth arrested for throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, Intifada-style, but hard-core members of terrorist organizations such as Hamas. Furthermore, most notable was the time limitation – even if Israel fulfilled all these obligations, this would only buy it peace until the end of 2005.

In other words: Give up your protection wall, free our fighters, agree not to attack us and we will give you roughly ten months of peace. It is really difficult to see why Israel would have any interest in this proposal.

One can certainly imagine an alternative route that Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas could have chosen which might have led to peace. He might have irrevocably and unconditionally disavowed terrorism, thus refusing to coalition with Hamas and the rest. He could then have made reasonable demands upon Israel, such as withdrawal of the settlements from the West Bank as well as Gaza, a transfer of Israel’s security wall from its current location to Israel’s 1967 borders, the release of prisoners at the end of the final settlement (not in exchange for a temporary truce) and some sort of shared arrangement in regard to Jerusalem. He might not have gotten all of this, especially in regard to Jerusalem, but he would have gotten much more than any responsible Israeli government could give him based on what we saw today.

This is sad to say, but the current negotiations are starting to look like Oslo II. The first Oslo Accords, sealed in 1993, raised high hopes for peace but ended in an outbreak of terroristic violence in 2000. In 1993, Israel was negotiating with Yasser Arafat, a life-long terrorist who claimed to have given it up for good. Now Israel is negotiating chiefly with Abbas, a man who has never been personally involved in terrorism, but who is now in coalition with a group of terrorist organizations which openly avow the need to annihilate Israel. It is not clear which seems preferable.

Contributed by Kirk H. Sowell at Window on the Arab World, and More!