Historic agreement, but many challenges ahead

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to a cease-fire in a historic summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. NBC News’ Martin Fletcher reports from Sharm el-Sheikh on the agreement and the many challenges that lie ahead in order to ensure a lasting peace.

Q: What is the significance of today’s agreement?

Fletcher: It’s huge, if it’s actually implemented. After four years of brutal fighting, with 4,000 dead and many more thousands wounded on both sides, imagine if you are Israeli or Palestinian today.

Suddenly you can walk in the streets without getting blown up if you are Israeli, or without the fear of getting on a bus or sending your kids to school.

And if you are a Palestinian, suddenly these roadblocks that have made your life miserable over the last few years, they’ll be lifted. If you’re a Palestinian militant who has been fighting Israel, now you’ll be able to walk in the streets, instead of hiding, and you can live with your family again

The impact on the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians obviously will be huge. As I stress, if this is implemented. With all the fine words and the high hopes of this summit, and the very encouraging statements from the Palestinians and the Israelis, none of the details have been worked out. These are just statements and not even joint statements.

FREE VIDEO Middle East cease-fire agreement Feb. 8: NBC's Martin Fletcher reports from Sharm al-Sheik, Egypt. MSNBC

The details of how the Palestinians will actually stop the militants from attacking Israelis have not been worked out yet. The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas still has to sell this to Hamas and to the Islamic Jihad. He has to persuade them to actually do what he tells them to do. It isn’t clear that they are actually going to obey him. They may in the short term, but how long will that last for?

Hamas has said that they are going to look very carefully at what the deal is, what Israel does, and then they’ll decide whether to support their prime minister or not. So, that could be a big challenge to Abbas.

The Israeli army will presumably carry out all of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s commitments. But, when the next big phase turns up — which is the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza — we already know there’s going to be a huge problem then because the settlers have already begun their campaign to fight against the withdrawal. For instance, in the last couple of days, there has been an outbreak of graffiti in Israel — in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — graffiti of death threats against Sharon.

So, both sides have big challenges before they can implement the steps that they promised today. But, of course, if they do implement them, this will have a huge impact on the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.

Q: With no written agreement to the cease-fire, how do they plan to implement it?

First of all, the fact that it’s not written just means that they decided to go ahead before they had all the details worked out. So now, various committees are going to be set up. 

For instance, Israel already said that it was going to release 900 Palestinian prisoners from its jails. The Palestinians are very unhappy with that number. They want a lot more, because, I think there are at least 5,000 to 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails (maybe even more). So Palestinians want a lot more released, and they’ve established a committee to work out the details of that.   

Other committees will be working on how to ensure security cooperation between Israeli troops and Palestinian police.

The Palestinians now need to work out exactly how they will get their militants to stop attacking Israel. They’ve got to work out whether they will collect the guns from the militants or whether the militants will simply agree not to carry the guns in the street.

Then they have to see if any deal that is worked out, whether that deal is acceptable to Israel.

So there are still many details that need to be worked out, and various committees will start work immediately on those. 

Ultimately, if all goes as planned and outlined today, then the next step would be to resume peace talks within the framework of the “road map.” That would also continue the progress toward peace in a very clear and delineated way.

But, again, there are so many obstacles; one can imagine so many pitfalls along the way, that it’s sort of hard to see it happening.  But, this is a great challenge to both sides. This really is history today.

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