Gaza cease fired agreement set for Sunday

Jerusalem Post:

Israel has accepted a Palestinian offer of a cease-fire to go into effect Sunday morning, and will halt operations in Gaza in return for an end to all Palestinian violence, including rocket fire, tunneling, and suicide bombers, the Prime Minister's Office announced Saturday night.

The dramatic announcement followed a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the Prime Minister's Office, Abbas phoned Olmert and told him he had received an agreement from all the different Palestinian factions to the cease-fire, and in response "requested that Israel would stop all military operations in the Gaza Strip, and withdraw all its forces from there."

The statement said that after speaking to his senior ministers and top security officials, Olmert told Abbas that Israel would respond favorably "since Israel was operating in the Gaza Strip in response to the [Palestinian] violence."

Olmert, according to the statement, told Abbas that "the end of the violence could bring about the end of Israeli operations, and his hope that this would bring stability to both sides."

...

The flaw in this agreement is that Abbas has to rely on the word of various groups of terrorist. In the past the Palestinian Authority has said that it was not responsible for the actions of these groups and, indeed, set some of them up in order to avoid direct responsibility. Unless Abbas takes responsibility for stopping the rocket attacks there is little hope that the hudna will last more than a few days.