JERUSALEM: There were no immediate signs of progress as US envoy George Mitchell wrapped up his latest visit to the Middle East on Thursday after holding "proximity talks" with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
US and Israeli officials declined to comment on three and a half hour talks between Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the special envoy was scheduled to depart shortly after the meeting.
Israeli media had reported that Netanyahu would offer a package of goodwill gestures to encourage the Palestinians to proceed to direct talks, which they have refused in the absence of a total freeze on Israeli settlement building.
The gestures are said to include the release of prisoners, the lifting of some more roadblocks in the West Bank and the expansion of those parts of the territory under limited Palestinian self-rule.
Israeli media have also said Israel plans to free up land currently allocated to settlements for a road linking a large-scale planned Palestinian community to the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.
Mitchell met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday and was given letters of protest against the killing of a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank, allegedly by an Israeli settler, and the killing of an elderly farmer in Gaza by the Israeli military near the heavily guarded border.
The letters also addressed "the numerous Israeli provocative statements of the last few days," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said, referring to statements by Netanyahu and other officials that settlement construction would continue in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.
Mitchell plans to shuttle between Washington, Jerusalem and Ramallah as part of the indirect peace talks launched on May 9.
Israel, which captured east Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community, considers the Holy City its "eternal and indivisible" capital, while the Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.
There have been no major announcements of new settlements since March, but Israeli officials have adamantly denied any freeze in east Jerusalem.
"I hope that nobody’s actually hinting that a freeze will happen," Mayor Nir Barkat told reporters and diplomats on Thursday.
He added that both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem would be expanded under a masterplan that has been 10 years in the making.
The last round of direct negotiations between the two sides collapsed in December 2008 when Israel launched a devastating offensive against the Gaza Strip in a bid to halt Palestinian rocket fire aimed at Israeli towns.
