Despite the dangerous fragility of the cease-fire between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian resistance, a well-articulated and “warm” handshake between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his counterpart Ariel Sharon may have set the stage for a new era of relative calm.

However, as in the aftermath of many “warm” Arab-Israeli handshakes in the past decades, this one will have its bitter skeptics as well as its hopeful optimists; and ultimately its durable successes (Camp David Accords, 1979) or disastrous failures (Declaration of Principles, 1993).

Last Tuesday’s meeting between Abbas and Sharon in the heart of west Jerusalem has created a new atmosphere whereby a declared Palestinian-Israeli commitment to implement the ‘roadmap,’ combined with extreme Palestinian physical and mental fatigue, may well lead to a settlement of the conflict by 2005; let alone Israel’s long-envisaged integration into the Arab World in the years to follow.

However, long before Israel can declare the rest of the region ‘kosher,’ the Israelis expect an end to Palestinian military resistance against Israeli occupation, both inside Israel as well as in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Ultimately, they also expect the Palestinians to abide by Israel’s terms of the ‘roadmap,’ which would entail a complete negation of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and an acceptance to establish a territorially-fragmented Palestinian state on less than 22% of historical Palestine. Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (illegal under international law) will have to remain as they are, because Israel expects to make its “painful concessions” by removing small outposts built on Palestinian hilltops in the past 2/3 years.

The Palestinian people, both skeptics and optimists, remain silent in the midst of this new era of “hope,” with the majority of people inside the occupied territories in a state of cautious observation and speechlessness.

Time, it appears, will be the measure of all things.