Israel said on Sunday it would prepare for a summit with the Palestinians after the two sides held their highest level talks since Hamas militants rose to power.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “sees no reason not to hold a future meeting with (Palestinian President) Mahmoud Abbas,” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said after a meeting in Egypt with the Palestinian leader.
Olmert had been widely expected to meet with Abbas after the Israeli leader’s talks this week in Washington with President Bush, but Livni’s comments were the firmest indication yet that such a meeting would take place.
Israel had frozen contacts with the Palestinian government after Hamas, a group whose charter calls for the Jewish state’s destruction, scored an upset win in a January election, but has lately launched back-channel talks with more moderate officials.
“The idea as we agreed here, is to prepare more for such a meeting,” Livni added after meeting Abbas on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
She and Abbas would hold further talks. “It seems to me that this is not the last meeting, it certainly shouldn’t be, and that is the understanding between us,” Livni said.
Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Abbas, said: “It was a good and a positive meeting” and that more would be held.
Humanitarian efforts
Officials travelling with Livni said Sunday’s talks were mainly an effort to head off a humanitarian crisis in Palestinian territories hit by a world led economic boycott of Hamas, and not a bid to renew peace talks.
During the meeting, Israel’s cabinet agreed to release $11.18 million in frozen funds to hospitals in a bid to ease a deepening fiscal crisis in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Israel, backed by the U.S. and European Union, has conditioned any negotiations on Hamas recognizing Israel and past peace deals as well as renouncing violence. Livni stuck to these conditions, one Israeli source said.
“As Israel sees it, the Palestinian Authority is headed by Hamas and is not a partner for dialogue.”
Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate for his role in negotiating a 1993 accord, who was also at the meeting, told Reuters Abbas may be gaining enough strength to strike a deal with the Jewish state independent of Hamas.
“It may be that Abu Mazen is now gathering some more strength than before, and if he can be in charge of it, it will be very meaningful,” Peres said, using a nickname for Abbas.
“The problem is not peace talks, but peacemaking. We can talk. The problem is if the Palestinians have the capability to fulfil their part.”
