The long-stalled Middle East peace process has witnessed signs of progress in the past few days, with both Israel and Arab states displaying positive attitudes in engaging dialogues with each other.

During an Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, the Arab League chose Egypt and Jordan to take the lead to persuade Israel to accept a reactivated Arab peace initiative, which has also been described by Israel as "interesting."

The initiative was first adopted during 2002 Arab Summit in Beirut and reactivated at Riyadh summit last month. It calls for Israel's pullout from Arab land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in return for the normalization of ties with Arab.

Just one day after the meeting, a group of Israeli lawmakers headed to Amman for talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II.

Some observers said both sides seem to have started moving towards the direction of reviving the peace process, although it might only be a small step.

During Thursday's meeting, King Abdullah II called on Israel to adopt the Arab peace initiative and urged the Jewish state not to miss out the opportunity for peace in the long-troublesome region.

For her part, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) Speaker and Acting President Dalia Itzik, who led the delegation, invited the Jordanian king to visit Israel and try to convince the Israeli public to adopt the proposal despite Israel's many reservations regarding the Arab initiative.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, responding to Arab decision to contact the Jewish state, said on Wednesday that he is hopeful of achieving peace with Arab neighbors since some of them are showing "first signs of understanding" towards the Jewish State.

The remarks convey another positive sign for the resumption of the Middle East peace process.

Addressing a conference in Jerusalem, Olmert said there are also first signs of developments that in the coming year Israel could manage to make progress on resolving conflicts with its neighbors, especially with the Palestinians. In addition, the contact between Israel and the Palestinians is also making slight progress.

Palestinian National Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Olmert on Sunday held their first biweekly meeting, which Olmert's office said was a "positive and serious working meeting."

During the meeting, Israel pledged to take further measures to ease the restrictions on Palestinians' daily life, while Abbas offered Israel a plan that could partially defuse Israel's security concern.

The plan, according to local media, was composed with the help of a US general, and detailed the deployment of Palestinian security forces in Gaza to prevent weapon-smuggling from Egypt and Palestinian militants' rocket attack against Israel.

There are also media reports that Abbas is negotiating with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Holy War) and trying to persuade the militant group to halt rocket attacks on Israel.

Although Islamic Jihad on Wednesday denied reports that the movement agreed to halt rocket attacks on Israel, it admitted talks on the issue were underway.

However, in spite of all these positive signs that emerged in the past few days, it is still premature to say that the Middle East peace has entered a new phase.

For the moment, Israel still disagrees with some of the basic principles set by the Arab peace initiative, including border issue, the status of Jerusalem, especially the return of the Palestinian refugees.

Olmert has recently reiterated Israel's stance that no Palestinian refugees could be allowed to return.

Before the Riyadh summit was held in late March, Israel had called on the Arab League to amend its peace initiative, but it was ratified again unchanged.

Although Olmert has said that Israel is willing to listen to the views from the Arab countries, he also stressed that Israel could not be dictated.

Meanwhile, Israel still refuses to deal with the new Palestinian unity government, which includes Hamas and the moderate Fatah, and is continuing its efforts to press the international community to boycott the government, citing its platform falls short of meeting international demands of recognizing Israel and renouncing violence.

There are still a lot of works need to be done before substantial Middle East peace talks start.

(Xinhua News Agency April 20, 2007)