President Bush’s comments on the Arab war against the Jewish state put us in mind of the headline last week over the New York Times’s interview with the president of the Palestinian Authority, “Abbas Declares War With Israel Effectively Over.” The article was based on an interview that Mr. Abbas gave to the New York Times bureau chief in Israel, Steven Erlanger. What Mr. Erlanger actually quoted Mr. Abbas as saying was that the war with Israel would be over “when the Israelis declare that they will comply with the agreement I made in Sharm el Sheik….” In other words, at best it was a conditional termination of hostilities. Declaring the “end of conflict” is a Palestinian concession that they are keeping up their sleeves for permanent status negotiations. It was raised at Camp David in July 2000.

The Roadmap for Peace, to which the Bush administration has committed itself, is explicit in demanding that the Palestinians offer an “unconditional” cease-fire – and not a truce that is dependent on how they interpret Israel’s response. What Mr. Abbas said last week fails to meet even the standard set by the road map, let alone by the Israeli government. In Arabic, the truce Mr. Abbas is declaring is not even called a cease-fire but rather a tahdi’a, or, in American, a “calm.” According to the road map, moreover, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to begin to “dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism.” The Palestinian leadership has made clear that it is not intending to go this far. But for a Palestinian cease-fire offer to be more than just words, this minimal road map standard needs to be still met.

A week ago, Haaretz reported that the head of the research branch of Israeli military intelligence was telling the Knesset that the terror organizations are continuing to build their organizational infrastructure. He added: “There is quite a lot of organizing going on to prepare attacks, including big attacks.” Readers of the New York Times report might wonder what agenda it is supposed to serve. Clearly, the Page 1 headline puts the ball in Israel’s court, for it portrays a huge Palestinian concession. This is dangerous given the current situation on the ground and the tremendous amount of work the Palestinians still need to undertake in security. Everyone hopes that Mr. Abbas is able to lead to a new era of relations with Israel. But this will happen only if the world holds him to his agreements to implement what he has to still do and doesn’t prematurely feed him with a public relations advantage that he does not deserve.