Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded that Israel "totally halts" its colonisation of Palestine's West Bank territory while peace talks brokered by US President Barack Obama take place.
Mr Obama began hosting the talks between Palestinian, Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders by asking: "Do we have the wisdom and the courage to walk the path of peace?"
Speaking at a joint press conference with the other four leaders at the White House, President Obama said he was cautiously hopeful that, despite Israel's 62-year occupation of Israel, a peace agreement can at last be reached.
Israel has already destabilised the talks by declaring that a partial freeze on building homes on occupied Palestinian territory for Jewish settlers will not be continued when it expires towards the end of this month.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ominously insisted that "peace requires security arrangements," but attempted to strike a conciliatory tone at least while in the White House and went on to describe President Abbas as "my partner in peace."
Mr Netanyahu said that "it is up to us to overcome the agonising conflict between our peoples and to forge a new beginning," while Jordan's King Abdullah said that, for the process to succeed, the Middle East leaders needed the US president's "support as a mediator, honest broker and a partner.
"If hopes are disappointed again, the price of failure will be too high for all," he warned.
President Obama's Middle East special envoy George Mitchell countered criticism that a peace deal would be unlikely to be achieved within the one-year timescale insisted upon by his boss and argued that allowing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to "continue indefinitely is more risky than making hard decisions.
"It's very important to create a sense that this has a definite concluding point - and we believe that it can be done," he asserted.
However, Palestinian Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri declared that the group, which won democratic elections held in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank in 2006, would continue to treat Israel as an occupier and would continue to target Israelis during the peace talks.
"Operations of resistance will continue and the measures by the occupation will not block them," Mr Zuhri warned.
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