"I believe in the future of your country. I believe the future of this great country lies in finding a solution in which Palestinian people can live side by side with the people of Israel under a solution that will bring peace and security for both," said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton after meeting Tuesday in Tel Aviv with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
"With great changes going on in the region, it's even more important than ever and I will do all I can to help support the people of Israel and the Palestinian people to find that solution," she added.
Since January 3, negotiators from the two sides have been holding a series of informal face-to-face discussions in Amman under Jordan’s auspices in a bid to seek ways of reviving direct peace talks.
But there has been little tangible progress, and the Palestinians have threatened to call a halt to such meetings by Thursday, prompting a flurry of diplomatic activity to keep the sides talking.
"The fact that negotiators are talking to each other face-to-face is encouraging," Ashton said in a statement issued before her arrival in Israel.
"I'll be looking for positive signs from both sides that they are prepared to turn this progress into real gestures and negotiations," she said, indicating she would make "every effort to push the peace talks and encourage the parties in the path towards a negotiated solution."
But although the main aim of Ashton’s three-day trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories was to focus on reviving negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the Iranian issue took centre stage in her talks with the Israeli leaders.
Her visit came the day after the 27 EU Foreign Ministers, which Ashton chairs, took the decision to impose an unprecedented oil embargo on Iran.
"The purpose of those sanctions is to persuade Iran to come back to the negotiating table, to pick up either the ideas that we left there when we met in Istanbul last year, or to put on the table their own ideas, to help us move forward, to help them move forward under their own international obligations," she said.
Monday's decision was welcomed by Israel as "a step in the right direction," but Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak urged the bloc to go even further.
"We think these decisions are heading in the right direction but it is very important to tighten them even more and to add steps against the central bank and other measures," he said on meeting Ashton.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also hailed the European move to tighten sanctions on Iran, telling a joint press conference in Jerusalem that he hoped it would "really bear fruit."
"It was a courageous move and a right one. It is a long time since Europe took such a clear position under very complicated circumstances," he said.
During the evening, Ashton was to dine with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah before returning to Jerusalem for talks with Quartet representative Tony Blair.
She was expected to spend most of Wednesday in Gaza, with a visit of the Training Center where she will sign the Financing Agreement with UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), and meet representatives of civil society.
She then will have talks in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.