How desperately one yearns to believe it. The handshake between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas seems to presage the true opening of a new era. The fact that both these men look similarly grandfatherly, the warmth of their mutual body-language, the reciprocal invitations — to Abbas to visit Sharon in the Negev and to Sharon to visit Abbas in Ramallah — all these things make one want to believe that maybe, just maybe this is the breakthrough we dream about.

Certainly, the Sharm-el-Sheikh summit represents some hitherto unimaginable developments. In Ha’aretz — the Guardian of Israel — once Sharon’s most bitter and implacable enemy, Yoel Marcus muses on one such extraordinary change:

‘A distant observer of this ceremony might wonder at Sharon's transformation from the most hated, war-mongering man in the world to a man of peace and hope in the eyes of Europe and America. But more than anything else, he has been transformed in the eyes of the Arabs into the only Israeli leader who can lead to a permanent agreement. Sharon is the man of the hour. The image of a hesitant foot-dragger has been replaced by a decisive and determined leader, who has resolved to put an end to the anomaly of a state living without borders in a permanent state of war. Never was a leader forced to make such a daring political breakthrough under such harsh domestic conditions, with such great opposition from within his own camp and from all the crazed Greater Israel adherents’.

Hmnn. The heart pulls one way, the head pulls in another. Ha’aretz itself has been electrified by Sharon’s proposed disengagement from Gaza, a renunciation of his own supposed ideological position (I say ‘supposed’ because I think the truth about Sharon is much more complex, but that’s another story) which carries the most enormous risks to his premiership, not to mention also the threat to his life at the hands of Jewish extremists.

But as many other commentators have pointed out, the handshake does not get us very far. As another Ha’aretz writer, Aluf Benn points out:

‘Abbas and Sharon will spend 2005 dealing with their domestic problems, Sharon against the rebels and settlers and perhaps new elections, Abbas with his rivals in Fatah, Hamas and other rejectionists, trying to stabilize his regime and lead the PA to parliamentary elections in the summer. Only after they complete their struggles against their opponents will they reach the moment of truth, where they will have to seriously deal with the road map. Yesterday's meeting was a good start to that process.’

But this, of course, is where reality kicks in. The observations about Sharon having changed are correct, as far as they go — and in the Israeli political context, that’s undoubtedly a very long way. But what the world finds so hard to acknowledge -- and what we must never lose sight of -- is that the source of this terrible conflict is not Israel’s behaviour. It is not the settlements, the road blocks, the prisoners. It is not, despite the near-universal assumption, the absence of a Palestinian state. The source is the Arab world-backed Palestinian terror war against Israel’s existence.

The onus is therefore squarely on Abbas to end that war by dismantling the entire infrastructure of Palestinian terror. It is possible — and we must all pray that this is so — that he will turn out to be capable of the statesmanship necessary to end this 100-years war of ethnic cleansing against the Jews of Israel, and to give his own community an identity other than the impulse to destroy another people. But the signs are not auspicious.

Abbas, whose own doctoral thesis comprised a piece of Holocaust-denial, has repeatedly said he will not forcibly disarm Hamas, Islamic jihad et al because he will never cause a civil war among the Palestinians. He has also made it plain that he does not renounce violence on moral grounds but solely as a tactical manoeuvre in order more effectively to realise his aims. And those aims remain — like Arafat’s — not just a Palestinian state but in addition the demand for unlimited Palestinian settlement in Israel, which would of course destroy it as a Jewish state.

As Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi writes in a sobering article for the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, the cease-fire that Abbas appears to have brought about (excluding Hamas, which says it doesn’t accept it) is not even a cease-fire in the sense that we understand it in English, since the Arabic terms ‘hudna’ (cessation of hostilities) or ‘tahdi’a’ (calm) which are being used carry a far more contingent meaning:

‘The term "calm" represents a careful approach by both the PA and the terror organizations. It signifies a declaration of intent that does not require an agreement between the sides and is meant to enable continued discussions with Israel on the conditions for a hudna or cessation of hostilities. It is neither a unilateral cease-fire nor an acceptance of Israel's conditions, but rather a reversible, tactical step if Israel does not provide the appropriate political compensation according to Palestinian expectations. On the Palestinian side, there is broad agreement that the PA will not grant Israel a "free cease-fire." The "calm" on the part of the terror organizations is aimed primarily at enabling the Palestinian Authority to negotiate a hudna with Israel from a more comfortable political position in which the political "ball" is in Israel's court. The announcement by Israel's chief of staff (on 28 January 2005) that the IDF is curtailing offensive military actions in PA territory is regarded as an important signal, but this by no means satisfies Palestinian demands… According to the expanded Palestinian concept of hudna, "resistance to occupation" remains legitimate as a major element in sustaining the struggle against Israel simultaneously with the opening of political channels. According to Abu Mazen, "resistance to occupation" is "a right that is implicit in international covenants," one that "the Palestinian people will never relinquish."

In Abu Mazen's view, this "right" is to be fitted into current political circumstances in a way that brings maximum benefit in both international public opinion and at the political level, and prevents the continued "tarnishing" of the Palestinian struggle by defining it as terrorism. In this context, political and popular agitation (in the form of violent demonstrations) against the security fence is viewed as a successful model of the preferred approach for the Palestinian Authority. Even though Abu Mazen himself disparaged turning the intifada into a military struggle, "resistance to occupation" also includes, according to some of the terror organizations, the use of weapons in the territories (including Jerusalem) against military targets and settlers in response to what they perceive as Israeli "aggression." Abu Mazen indicated this himself when he stated in March 2003 that "resistance by any means is legitimate" with regard to Israeli settlers.’

The uncomfortable reality is that, while it is possible that Abbas will turn out to be a world-class statesman, what looks rather more likely is that he is instead a world-class tactician, who will be able to pose with ostensibly clean hands — and the approval of the gullible, Israel-hating west — disclaiming the murderous terrorism that Hamas and co will continue to inflict upon Israel, thus forcing Israel to react and casting it even more decisively as the regional bully. If this is so, then Israel is in even more danger now than it was in before — the danger of being trapped inside a far shrewder and more sophisticated dance of death.