US mediated indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians will be a last chance to keep the Middle East peace process alive, the Palestinian chief negotiator said on Monday.

"The relationship has deteriorated to this stage where the US is trying to save this peace process with the last attempt - by the way, mark my words - this will be the last attempt in order to see if it can be a tool to make decisions between Palestinians and Israelis," Saeb Erekat told Israel Army Radio.
 

US envoy George Mitchell held talks in the West Bank city of Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas following meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on restarting statehood negotiations.
 

Both sides have agreed to indirect contacts to revive talks suspended since December 2008, in a boost to US President Barack Obama's difficult quest to end decades of conflict.
 

"Today President Abbas will hand a written response to Senator Mitchell about our acceptance of the proposal of the proximity talks," Erekat told Reuters.
 

But many observers and politicians doubt the negotiations, in which Mitchell is widely expected to shuttle, at least initially, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, can succeed where years of talks have failed.
 

In news that coincided with the fresh push for peace, Israel said it approved building 112 new Jewish homes in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Ilit.
 

The construction, it said, was part of an on-going project that was not included in a partial West Bank settlement building freeze that Netanyahu announced in November under US pressure.
 

"The Israeli government has begun planting landmines on the path to indirect negotiations," Mohammed Dahlan, a senior official in Abbas's Fatah movement, said in response.

Security and borders
The Palestine Liberation Organisation endorsed the indirect talks on Sunday, following Arab League backing last week for four months of negotiations which the Palestinians say should focus on security and borders of a future state.
 

Abbas had demanded a complete halt to Israeli settlement building as a condition for resuming talks with Israel and has rejected its 10 month limited freeze as insufficient.
 

But the PLO and Arab League decisions gave the Western backed leader political support for re-engaging with Israel without a total settlement moratorium.
 

Erekat said he hoped Abbas and Netanyahu would take the lead in the coming talks and reiterated the Palestinian outline for a peace deal - a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along the lines in place before Israel captured the two territories in a 1967 war, "with agreed swaps".
 

Israel's previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, had pursued a peace agreement under which land inside Israel would be transferred to a Palestinian state in exchange for major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank.
 

Netanyahu has not endorsed the concept of a territorial trade but has said he would be open, under a peace deal ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state.
 

Source: Reuters