Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas concluded their meeting in Jerusalem on Monday with an agreement to get peace efforts back on track.
Describing it as a "very important" meeting for the peace process, Gil Hoffman, a chief correspondent and analyst for Israeli English daily Jerusalem Post, told Xinhua that Olmert and Abbas resumed their meeting interrupted since Feb. 19 and promised to meet every two weeks.
"That is really a life-saving meeting to get peace process back on track," Gil said in a phone interview with Xinhua, adding that it is probably a new starting of regular meetings between Israel and Palestinians, "even a new hope for the peace process".
Olmert initiated peace talks with Abbas on Dec. 23, 2006 and vowed to take a series of concrete steps to improve the Israeli- Palestinian situation in efforts to bring peace to the region.
Since the ice-breaking meeting, Olmert and Abbas have had regular meetings as frequent as one or two in a month through the whole year of 2007.
Their peace talks were formally relaunched at the U.S.- sponsored international peace conference in Annapolis last November and supposed to be based on the U.S.-backed "Road Map" which sets a series of stages leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
The first stage of the road map calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity and for the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups. However, both sides accused each other of failing to met their obligations.
