British Foreign Minister Jack Straw walks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Amman airport in Jordan on Sept. 24. Straw was enroute to Iran, on the first leg of a regional tour, which includes Israel and Egypt, to build support for the anti-terror coalition the United States is building. He infuriated Israelis by telling an Iranian paper that `One of the factors that helps breed terror is the anger that many people in the region feel at events over the years in the Palestinian territories." by Israeli military sources, that the level of violence, though not com- pletely halted — Palestinian gunmen carried out two fatal ambushes of Israeli Women driving on West Bank roads — has dropped considerably during the past week. Israeli sources also say that Arafat, for the first time since the intifada began exactly a year ago, is acting in earnest to restrain would-be terrorists. This sentiment — along with much international pressure helped pro- vide the opening for Wednesday's meeting near the Gaza airport. In a joint communique issued after two hours of talks, the rwo sides renewed their commitment CO recom- mendations made in May by the Mitchell Commission, a U.S.-led international panel that set out a series of confidence- building meas- ures to help end the Israeli-Palestinian violence. The communique said the two sides would resume security coopera- tion, Israel would lift its blockades on Palestinian population centers and Arafat would clamp down on Palestinian attacks against Israel. Peres and Arafat also agreed to hold a second meeting "within a week or so," the communique said. Arafat's decision to end the violence is seen as a direct response to the pop- ular Palestinian reaction that followed the Sept. 1 1 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Palestinian and outside observers say Arafat and his top leadership were appalled by the scenes of public rejoicing in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. For the Palestinian lead- ership, these scenes, captured by Western media despite the Palestinian Authority's strenuous efforts, evoked memories of Arafat's dalliance with Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War and the huge price, in terms of Western support and popu- larity, that the Palestinian cause paid for that blunder. Indeed, American public support for the Palestinians fell dramatically after Sept. 11, according to polls. Arafat knows, say analysts, that if the Palestinians' standing continues to plummet in American public and governmental opinion, there will be powerful forces in Israel that will move to exploit his weakened situa- tion, perhaps even by removing him and his coterie altogether. On the Israeli side, that is precisely the sentiment one hears on the politi- cal right — much of which is repre- sented in Sharon's Cabinet. They argue that the new world configura- tion against terror immediatelyfollow- b ing Sept. 11 presented the Jewish state with a golden opportunity to defeat and perhaps even remove Arafat. After all, Arafat had encouraged — or at least not pre- vented — acts of indis- criminate terrorism per- petrated against Israel over the past 12 months. Another powerful player on the right, with influence over Sharon, is former Prime Minister Binyamin The body of Salit Shitreet is carried by mourners Netanyahu. during her fitter al on Sept. 24 in the village of Sde . In a slew of state- Eliahu, Israel. She was shot and killed in a West ments since Sept. 11, Bank ambush by Palestinian gunmen near the Netanyahu openly village of Bardaleh. Israel-Palestinian truce talks compared Arafat to AN ALYSIS Peres Arafat meeting embroiled in competing post-terror forces. DAVID LANDAU Jewish Telegraphic Agency Jerusalem t is too early to tell whether the :E long-awaited and controversial meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat will produce a true cease-fire and a resumption of peace negotiations between the two sides. Wednesday's meeting, which pro- duced a commitment to turn a shaky, week-old truce into a lasting cease- fire, had a symbolic significance that went beyond any of the details con- tained in its final communique. Indeed, it made its impact felt even before the meeting was held on the eve of Yom Kippur. It almost brought down Israel's unity government, with intense argu- ments raging about whether to hold the meeting at all. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon found himself awkward- 9/28 2001 24 ly placed between his government's rightist faction and Peres, his Labor Party foreign minister. And it became entangled in a web of diplomatic maneuvering by the United States to form an interna- tional coalition against terror. If the Peres-Arafat meeting does prove a turning point in the Israeli- Palestinian relationship, and the course of events is markedly changed, the catalyst will have been the terror attacks on America and the diplomatic aftermath. The Palestinians say the armed intifada is now effectively over, or at least greatly reduced. They cite the categorical orders issued publicly by Arafat, in Arabic, last weekend to military and paramilitary groups under his command to cease their attacks on Israel and Israelis and to rein in the opposition and funda- mentalist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They cite, too, the fact, confirmed sought by the United States were again put off Monday after the shooting attack, but resumed Wednesday with an agreement on interim "confidence building" steps.