WEST BANK/ISRAEL: Israelis and Palestinians express renewed hopes for peace after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meeting

Israeli and Palestinians on Sunday (December 24) expressed their hopes for improvement in relations between the two nations after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olemrt on Saturday night (December 23). During the meeting, Olmert told Abbas he would unfreeze $100 million in withheld tax funds and remove some checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, officials said. But no breakthroughs were made on freeing Palestinian prisoners or on extending Gaza ceasefire to the West Bank in the first formal talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in nearly two years. Olmert and Abbas agreed to hold a series of meetings in the coming months with the goal of trying to revive long-stalled peace negotiations, aides said. In the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, residents expressed cautious optimism, saying they hope this first meeting would be followed by others. "I think even if there is no immediate results I think i'ts a good thing and they should meet more often," said one resident. "I hope that it will promote some relief in the checkpoints, some relief of the Palestinian suffering because for us as citizens it is very difficult watching it on television," added another one. In the Palestinian town of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, residents expressed less optimism following the meeting. "Nothing happened. they did nothing, they didn't release the prisoners, they didn't move the check points, they just released the money," said one of them as he was preparing for Christmas festivities. "I don't have any hope from this meeting, Israel doesn't want peace, nothing is real, they only give promises. 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are in the Israeli jail and I don't think Israel will release them. Israel want the negotiations (about prisoners exchange) to be via (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also called) Abu-Mazen, not with the Palestinian government which is led by Hamas," said another. But one young woman still had some hope for a better future. "We wish there will be an agreement that is good for the Palestinians," she said. Peace talks collapsed in 2000, and a Palestinian uprising erupted soon after. Hopes of reviving the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue appeared all but dead when the Hamas Islamist movement took power in Gaza and the West Bank in March. Olmert has been under pressure from the United States and the European Union to take steps to support Abbas since he called for early Palestinian elections, a move that Hamas has rejected as a "coup" and unconstitutional.

ITN Source | December 24, 2006

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