Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu promised a Palestinian delegation that met with him in Jerusalem Tuesday evening that he would send a letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in two weeks.
The document will be a response to a letter from Abbas which the Palestinian delegation delivered to Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and Abbas have not met since September 2010. On Tuesday, however, Netanyahu spoke with PA negotiator Saeb Erekat and the head of Palestinian intelligence Gen. Majad Faraj in Jerusalem.
After the meeting, Netanyahu's office said that Israel was committed to peace. It added that it hoped the exchange of letters between the two leaders would advance the peace process.
Netanyahu met with Palestinian officials despite Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's last minute cancellation of his participation in the meeting.
Fayyad was reluctant to be seen as engaging with Israel on a day when more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners began a hunger strike to protest against their conditions in Israeli jails, the officials said.
Netanyahu's office had released no details of a time or venue for what were to have been the highest-level talks with the Palestinians since peace negotiations broke off in 2010.
But Israeli officials, asking for anonymity because no official announcement on the talks had been made, had said on Monday that the meeting was to be held on Tuesday.
Palestinian officials said Fayyad was to have delivered a letter to Netanyahu from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas detailing Palestinian grievances on the stalled peace talks and reiterating a call to halt settlement building.
Instead the letter was handed to Netanyahu by other Palestinian officials.
Earlier, an Israeli official said Netanyahu would reiterate his call for talks to resume without any preconditions and for a meeting with Abbas.
The last-minute cancellation may cast new light on divisions within the Palestinian political establishment, which has struggled to craft a winning strategy to achieve statehood.
The letter could serve as a prelude to a renewed unilateral Palestinian move for statehood recognition in the United Nations, an effort suspended last autumn amid stiff opposition from Washington and Israel.
Palestinians said the letter would accuse Israel of failing to carry out its obligations under a 2003 "road map" agreed by both sides, which include a halt to settlement activity.

JPost.com