Israel has pledged to remove some West Bank roadblocks as a start to "concrete steps" aimed at achieving a peace deal with the Palestinians this year.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday brought senior Israeli and Palestinian officials together and then announced that Israel will remove about 50 roadblocks and upgrade checkpoints to speed up the movement of Palestinians through the West Bank, while the Palestinians pledged to upgrade security.
The Israelis also will give Palestinians more security responsibility in the town of Jenin with an eye toward looking at "other areas in turn". They also pledged to increase the number of travel and work permits for Palestinians and to support economic projects in Palestinian towns.
In return, the Palestinians promised to improve policing of Jenin "to provide law and order, and work to prevent terror," according to a State Department statement.
Ms Rice, visiting the region for the second time this month in hopes of energise faltering talks, said the moves "constitute a very good start to improving" a Palestinian economy crippled by the Israeli restrictions.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad agreed to what the US termed "concrete steps" at a joint meeting with Ms Rice.
"We've been told that this is going to start and, hopefully even be completed in a relatively short period of time," Ms Rice told reporters. "I am expecting it to happen very, very soon."
"We will be monitoring and verifying," she added.
Samir Abdullah, the Palestinian planning minister, said he welcomed any improvement, but called Israel's moves "too little, too late".
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was sceptical. "We have heard in the past six months from the Israeli side and as many times their intentions to remove roadblocks and improve the situation on the ground," he said. "We would like to see this with our eyes and not only hear it with ears, and we hope that this time the Israeli side will deliver.
Notice Condoleeza Rice said they will be monitoring Israel's dismantling the roadblocks, but she didn't say anything about monitoring the progress of the Palestinians in stopping their rocket attacks and terror attacks.
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