Three-year-old Palestinian Imran Karameh looks at an Israeli soldier during a military operation in the West Bank city of Hebron. (Reuters)

Cairo, Feb. 9 (Reuters): Israel gained most from West Asia summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh but a ceasefire could hold until Israelis and Palestinians start to tackle core disputes, Arab commentators said today.

While Arabs close to conservative governments said they saw a slim chance for progress towards a settlement, others said they doubted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was ready to take the kind of steps that could lead to a long-term solution.

At yesterday?s summit, Israel and the Palestinian authority announced separately that attacks would stop. But Palestinian militant groups, which have carried out most of the recent attacks on Israelis, said they were not part of the agreement. The summit did not attempt to tackle the disputes at the root of the conflict, such as the borders of a future Palestinian state or the rights of Palestinian refugees.

Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab states to sign peace treaties with Israel, took part in the meeting and promised to help the parties with future talks. They also rewarded Sharon by agreeing to send their ambassadors back to Israel.

?What Sharon obtained in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday is enough for him... There is no call for any other gifts,? said Abdel Wahhab Badrakhan, deputy editor of the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. ?Arabs jumping to reward him with normalisation should at least put him in a probation period,? he said in an editorial.

?It?s totally disappointing and only one winner emerged from the summit: Sharon. He was able to get a pledge of a halt to resistance operations without giving anything real in return,? added Essam Erian, a leading member of Egypt?s Muslim Brotherhood, which is close to Hamas.

?Only Sharon was able to benefit from the summit by appearing as a champion of peace... If that is the criterion of success for the summit, one can say it succeeded. But the Palestinian cause is still stuck,? said Salah el-Hadja, chief editor of Tunisian Arabic daily Assarih.

Taha al-Ameri, a political analyst in Yemen, reflected a widespread view when he said that the Sharm el-Sheikh agreements, which covered short-term details such as Palestinian detainees and Israeli withdrawals from some Palestinian towns, had postponed a crisis but not solved it.

?The summit did not bring anything new. The Palestinians had presented concessions at Oslo and Camp David and received nothing in return,? he said, referring to previous Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

Some commentators were more hopeful that the change in atmosphere could lead to real change on the ground as Israelis and Palestinians put behind them the fears and grievances built up in the four years since the start of a Palestinian uprising.

?It is a reversal of a certain trend of deterioration and it gives a strong sense of a new beginning,? said Abdel Moneim Said, director of the al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.