Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in talks late Tuesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel would provide humanitarian assistance for the Gaza Strip. In the talks, according to Israeli media reports, Abbas additional demanded that Israel lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is now under the control of the radical Islamic Hamas movement.
But a further issue in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, the future status of Jerusalem, was not discussed as had previously been demanded by Abbas.
The talks took place at Olmert's private residence. According to Israeli media, the leaders of the negotiations of both sides - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia - were also present.
Olmert is under internal political pressure, with the ultra- religious Shas Party threatening to quit his fragile coalition if any negotiations were begun on dividing Jerusalem.
According to the media reports, Olmert and Abbas did agree to try to accelerate the peace negotiations. The two men agreed to meet again in two weeks' time.
Earlier in the day, acting Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that Israel-Palestinian peace talks need to be speeded up if the sides were to reach their target of a deal before the end of 2008.
He told an audience of Jewish-American leaders in Jerusalem that "not enough has happened" since the sides agreed on November 27 at the US-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to renew peace talks after a seven-year hiatus, and to try and reach an final peace agreement by the end of the year.
The pace of the peace talks, Fayyad said, "has to be stepped up significantly."
The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been marred by disagreements over Israeli building plans in East Jerusalem, captured in the 1967 war but which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state, and by continued rocket attacks on southern Israel from the Hamas-administered Gaza Strip.
One of Olmert's key coalition partners has said the talks should be stopped because of the ongoing rocket fire, and other attacks by Palestinian militants, but Foreign Minister Livni, who is in charge of the negotiations with the Palestinians, rejected this.
"Halting the negotiations will not stop terrorism and anyone who says different has no hold on reality," Livni told a conference in Jerusalem.
She said Israeli territorial concessions were inevitable if Israel wanted to be a secure, democratic, Jewish state.
Early Tuesday, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian gunman who attacked them at the southern Gaza Strip border, an Israeli army spokesman said.
The gunman approached the border and opened fire at the troops stationed there, he said.
It was not immediately clear which militant faction he belonged to.
